Speaker 1: Text with Technology with tech Stuff from hastaff works dot com.
Speaker 1: Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I am your host,
Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland, wishing you a happy Valentine's Day. That's when
Speaker 1: this episode is originally airing February eighteen, and because it's
Speaker 1: publishing on Valentine's Day, and because I love tech, this
Speaker 1: is my Valentine to Tech. Although, to be more specific,
Speaker 1: I thought it would be fun to look at an
Speaker 1: app designed to connect people with the possibility of romance
Speaker 1: in their near future. I'm talking about Tender. But first
Speaker 1: I thought I would start all this off by actually
Speaker 1: relaying a story to you guys about myself. Now, I
Speaker 1: have never really used Tinder, because I've been a married
Speaker 1: man for longer than Tinder has been around. I did
Speaker 1: download Tinder, and, as I was explaining to my super
Speaker 1: producer Ramsey just a minute ago, uh, I actually called
Speaker 1: up my wife as soon as I downloaded it to
Speaker 1: let her know, Hey, sweetie, I'm doing an episode about Tinder.
Speaker 1: So I downloaded Tinder. Please don't get mad or divorce me.
Speaker 1: I haven't really used it, but I did download it
Speaker 1: in the interest of, you know, really exploring what this
Speaker 1: whole topic is about. But I do have a history
Speaker 1: with technology and falling in love. See when I was
Speaker 1: in college, nearly two decades before Tinder would become a reality,
Speaker 1: the Web was just starting to become a thing. At
Speaker 1: that time. In fact, I was Internet savvy. I was
Speaker 1: using the Internet on a regular basis, but I had
Speaker 1: very little interest in the Web at that time. That
Speaker 1: was a brand new element to the Internet. And sure,
Speaker 1: the Web had graphics and could present things in a
Speaker 1: way that didn't make it look like it was just
Speaker 1: big blocks of text, which is the way most other
Speaker 1: Internet tools presented information. Wasn't very attractive. It was really
Speaker 1: data heavy and probably appealed more to computer scientists than
Speaker 1: anyone else. But that's how I got used to the Internet.
Speaker 1: And the Web was also kind of slow and cumbersome.
Speaker 1: It took a really long time for pictures to download
Speaker 1: on the Web at that point, so to me, it
Speaker 1: just seemed like it was a waste of time. You're
Speaker 1: you're waiting a minute and a half for something to load. Nope,
Speaker 1: give me a good tell net client. Any day of
Speaker 1: the week, I would log onto tell net based chat
Speaker 1: rooms and there I would tell jokes to people. I'd
Speaker 1: get into debates, and occasionally I would feed the trolls
Speaker 1: because I was young and stupid. Things are very different
Speaker 1: now because now I'm old and stupid. But anyway, I
Speaker 1: guess it would be good to explain what telling it is,
Speaker 1: just in case you are not familiar with it. It
Speaker 1: is a network protocol, and a protocol just means it's
Speaker 1: really a set of rules that a technology follows in
Speaker 1: order for things to work, so that this particular protocol
Speaker 1: allows you to log onto another computer that is connected
Speaker 1: to the same network your computer is on. So it
Speaker 1: doesn't have to be the Internet, it can be an intranet.
Speaker 1: The Internet's construction, however, meant that any computer connected to
Speaker 1: it could act as a tell net server if you
Speaker 1: wanted it to, and users on their computers would be
Speaker 1: called clients in this relationship, and the clients would log
Speaker 1: onto servers through tell net. That's was That was the
Speaker 1: set of rules that would connect the two, and the
Speaker 1: computers would run software that turned them into virtual terminals
Speaker 1: for that server. So it's like you're accessing this distant
Speaker 1: computer using your actual physical computer right in front of you.
Speaker 1: So your your physical computer is a window into this
Speaker 1: distant computer. And you could do a lot of different
Speaker 1: stuff this way, So it's not just like it was
Speaker 1: used for games or chat rooms, but that's what I
Speaker 1: was using it for. I was using it to access
Speaker 1: chat rooms and games and games like multi user dungeons,
Speaker 1: things like that. The chat room would be hosted on
Speaker 1: one of those server computers, and by using telling that
Speaker 1: I could remotely log into that computer under a user
Speaker 1: account and chat away. Now, typically the way this works
Speaker 1: is you would log in and you would choose a handle,
Speaker 1: and some of the chat rooms would even allow you
Speaker 1: to password protect the handle, so that way you could
Speaker 1: register a handle so that it was only yours and
Speaker 1: anytime you saw someone with that name popping up in
Speaker 1: a chat room, you knew who that belonged to, or
Speaker 1: at least you knew the personality that belonged to. Uh.
Speaker 1: Some chat rooms didn't have that, which meant that you
Speaker 1: might show up and find out that your handle has
Speaker 1: already taken. If it was something that was really popular,
Speaker 1: I didn't tend to go to those, and one day
Speaker 1: I found myself on one of these chat rooms chatting
Speaker 1: with a young woman who had charmed me right away
Speaker 1: because she recognized that the handle I was using was
Speaker 1: a reference to classic literature. Specifically, there was a reference
Speaker 1: to one of Victor Hugo's novels, of course, the infamous
Speaker 1: Les Miserable. And it turned out this particular young woman
Speaker 1: had studied French extensively and even worked at the French
Speaker 1: embassy in Washington, d C. We started chatting for a while,
Speaker 1: and we found ourselves really enjoying each other's virtual company.
Speaker 1: And this continued for quite some time, and eventually our
Speaker 1: chat room conversations gave way to long distance phone calls,
Speaker 1: because back in those days, long distance was still a thing.
Speaker 1: You had to have actually paid to have a phone
Speaker 1: call that was long distance. And eventually this culminated with
Speaker 1: the young woman taking a big chance, and she took
Speaker 1: a train ride down the Eastern seaboard in order to
Speaker 1: visit me. And I was smitten, and for some reason,
Speaker 1: so was she. And that's how I met my wife,
Speaker 1: and we've been married for twenty years now. In fact,
Speaker 1: this fall, it will be twenty one years now. I
Speaker 1: tell that story to illustrate how technology can foster connections
Speaker 1: between people who otherwise might never have had the chance
Speaker 1: to even know that the other person existed. Let alone
Speaker 1: fall in love. But in our case, the tech was
Speaker 1: just a conduit for conversations. It wasn't intended specifically to
Speaker 1: create these sort of relationships. So what about a technology
Speaker 1: that has been built to do that From the ground up.
Speaker 1: It was all meant to get Cupid's arrow to do
Speaker 1: the whammy on a couple of would be lovers. And
Speaker 1: that's why we're gonna talk about the story of Tender. Now.
Speaker 1: I wish I could say the story I'm going to
Speaker 1: tell you is just filled with sweetness and flowers and
Speaker 1: chocolates and be dovey stuff, But it's also filled with
Speaker 1: some really complicated corporate relationships, a lot of controversy, some
Speaker 1: allegations of sexual harassment, and some weird maneuvers at the
Speaker 1: executive leadership level that can get a bit confusing at times.
Speaker 1: But let's begin at the beginning. And the story behind
Speaker 1: Tinder is actually a bit murky because there were a
Speaker 1: lot of people involved early on with the project, some
Speaker 1: of whom would later be acknowledged as co founders of
Speaker 1: the company and some of whom would not be, and
Speaker 1: in at least one case, that contributed to some major
Speaker 1: problems for Tinder. Further down, the road. Now, one person
Speaker 1: who was certainly a co founder was Sean Rad. Rad
Speaker 1: grew up in Los Angeles. He attended private high school
Speaker 1: where his path would cross with another person who would
Speaker 1: become important to Tinder. That would be Justin Matine. And
Speaker 1: then Sean Rad would go on to enroll at the
Speaker 1: University of Southern California. Really he was studying business development,
Speaker 1: essentially a course in how to be an entrepreneur. While
Speaker 1: at USC, Rad ended up running into Justin Mateen again,
Speaker 1: the same guy he had kind of crossed paths within
Speaker 1: high school, and they took a math class in two
Speaker 1: thousand four and it was in that class where they
Speaker 1: hit it off. They became best friends. Now, while Goal
Speaker 1: going to college, Rad and Matteen would work on projects
Speaker 1: outside of its side gigs. They would have these side
Speaker 1: businesses they were trying to develop partly as part of
Speaker 1: their studies. And by projects i'm talking about like real
Speaker 1: startup companies. Rad's first business was one called or gou
Speaker 1: O r g o O. It was a communications platform
Speaker 1: that combined elements of email and instant messaging into a
Speaker 1: single service. And it didn't exactly just burst out of
Speaker 1: the gate. In two thousand four, they got a lot
Speaker 1: of interest. There were more than a million people who
Speaker 1: had signed up to be notified when the service would
Speaker 1: go online, and by two thousand and eight it was
Speaker 1: still in pre release mode. Ultimately, according to Rad in
Speaker 1: an article in Business Insider, it got quote wrapped up
Speaker 1: in some IP issues with another company and unfortunately had
Speaker 1: to shut down end quote. But the idea itself wasn't
Speaker 1: at fault necessarily. Now, both Rad and Mattine continued to
Speaker 1: work on projects as they attended USC In two thousand
Speaker 1: and seven, Rad convinced Matine to give up his beloved
Speaker 1: BlackBerry phone and switched to an iPhone. Remember, the iPhone
Speaker 1: was brand new in that time, but Rad saw that
Speaker 1: the iPhone was going to usher in a new era
Speaker 1: of computing, computing, and and and a little bit later,
Speaker 1: he became convinced that mobile devices would be the evolution
Speaker 1: of computing and more people wouldn't be moving away from
Speaker 1: classic desktop and laptop machines. In fact, he went so
Speaker 1: far as to say that mobile devices would completely eradicate
Speaker 1: traditional computers, which hasn't happened yet, but we certainly have
Speaker 1: seen the mobile devices have heavily impacted things like web traffic,
Speaker 1: and more and more of a website's traffic tends to
Speaker 1: come from mobile devices than from your traditional laptops and desktops.
Speaker 1: In September two eight, at the beginning of his senior
Speaker 1: year at USC, Rad dropped out of college. He was
Speaker 1: going to focus completely on developing business ideas, and the
Speaker 1: following year he launched a new service called ad dot
Speaker 1: l Y or Addlee. Now, this was a platform upon
Speaker 1: which celebrities could endorse products and services in return for
Speaker 1: a fee. So the idea was that addle could connect
Speaker 1: brands with celebrities. So let's say that you've got a
Speaker 1: deodorant and you want Bruce Campbell to be the guy
Speaker 1: talking about your deodorant, you might use a service like
Speaker 1: ad Lee in order to get that connection. So, in
Speaker 1: other words, Rad was all about connecting influencers with brands,
Speaker 1: and it took a couple of years to really get moving.
Speaker 1: And at that time, Rad was kind of fed up
Speaker 1: with dealing with two things that I think would try
Speaker 1: anyone's patients, and those two things would be celebrities and advertisers.
Speaker 1: He decided he would sell his stake and then free
Speaker 1: himself up to go do something else, and he would
Speaker 1: get hired on at an incubator company towards the end
Speaker 1: of two thousand eleven beginning of two thousand twelve. And
Speaker 1: in case you're curious, an incubator company is essentially an
Speaker 1: organization that exists to give people the opportunity to develop
Speaker 1: and launch startup businesses. In return, typically the incubator company
Speaker 1: has a portion of ownership in whatever businesses are launched
Speaker 1: out of it. This particular incubator company was called Hatch Labs,
Speaker 1: and hatch Labs is one small part of an enormous
Speaker 1: empire overseen by a company called Interactive Core, which is
Speaker 1: better known as I a C. And let's just talk
Speaker 1: about I a C for a moment. I a C
Speaker 1: started off as a shell corporation, which means it didn't
Speaker 1: have any business operations of its own or real assets.
Speaker 1: So this is a company that doesn't have office space,
Speaker 1: it doesn't have office supplies, doesn't have employees. Instead, shell
Speaker 1: corporations can be used to do stuff like act in
Speaker 1: place of another entity for the purposes of large business transactions,
Speaker 1: which sometimes can be shady, But there are lots of
Speaker 1: legal uses for shell corporations, so it's not just something
Speaker 1: that is done to move money around. Sometimes there are
Speaker 1: real legitimate purposes for it. For example, a startup might
Speaker 1: use a shell corporation in order to raise funds. So
Speaker 1: you might have a startup that has a fun quirky name,
Speaker 1: but it might be a fun quirky name that isn't
Speaker 1: really the best to get investors on board. So you
Speaker 1: have a shell corporation that's really handling the fundraising aspect
Speaker 1: of things, and all that money ends up going to
Speaker 1: the startup company. In this case, this particular startup company
Speaker 1: was created on behalf of the Home Shopping Network. It
Speaker 1: was called Silver King Broadcasting Company and it was used
Speaker 1: to purchase regional television stations in the nineteen eighties in
Speaker 1: an effort to expand the Home Shopping networks viewer base.
Speaker 1: Now that shell corporation began to buy up other properties,
Speaker 1: and at first it was local TV stations, but then
Speaker 1: it was a majority stake in the Home Shopping Network
Speaker 1: itself and at that point it changed its name to
Speaker 1: h s N Incorporated. The company continued buying up other properties,
Speaker 1: mostly media companies, including a movie studio called Savoy Pictures
Speaker 1: and that owned four Fox affiliate TV stations, and then
Speaker 1: in the late nineties, the company bought Ticketmaster Group. Hs
Speaker 1: N bought the TV side of Universal Studios all of
Speaker 1: their television assets for about four billion dollars a suite
Speaker 1: sum I would say. At that point, a company's name
Speaker 1: changed to USA Networks Incorporated, and in the two thousand's
Speaker 1: the company would end up selling off many of its
Speaker 1: traditional TV production and broadcast companies and instead start to
Speaker 1: invest in online acquisitions, web based acquisitions, and app based acquisitions.
Speaker 1: And that brings our story in connection with some companies
Speaker 1: I've talked about in recent episodes of Tech stuff like
Speaker 1: the Vendi Universal Entertainment that was the company that ended
Speaker 1: up taking over some of those divested TV properties. USA
Speaker 1: Network purchased Expedia and a few other websites and online
Speaker 1: companies and change its name a couple more times, ending
Speaker 1: with Interactive Core in two thousand three and I a
Speaker 1: C in two thousand four. Now I a C kept
Speaker 1: acquiring other companies, including stuff like Hotwire, dot Com, lending Tree,
Speaker 1: ask Jeeves, trip Advisor, College, Humor Dictionary, dot Com, Urban Spoon,
Speaker 1: and more. So. It's almost like a shark. It was
Speaker 1: made to eat other companies, or at least bring them
Speaker 1: under the fold. Now, one of the properties I a
Speaker 1: C owned was Match dot Com, which as a leading
Speaker 1: online dating service, and that would also become the centerpiece
Speaker 1: of a division within I a C. Called Match Group
Speaker 1: ended up being kind of spun out as its own thing.
Speaker 1: So you have the umbrella company I a C. And
Speaker 1: a subsidiary company called match Group, which also oversees a
Speaker 1: bunch of other smaller companies, including Match dot Com, and
Speaker 1: ultimately this would become the home to Tinder. Tender would
Speaker 1: become part of match Group, and Match Group would become
Speaker 1: its own publicly traded company in two thousand fifteen. But
Speaker 1: that's jumping ahead of the story at this point. The
Speaker 1: important thing to note is that Rad went to work
Speaker 1: for hatch Labs, the incubator owned by I a C.
Speaker 1: And another company also had steak in hatch Labs. That
Speaker 1: was Extreme Labs, which would later be acquired by a
Speaker 1: company called Pivotal in two thousand thirteen. I told you
Speaker 1: this was going to get complicated. So the reason it's
Speaker 1: important to talk about all those companies behind hatch Labs
Speaker 1: is that they had a stake of ownership in the
Speaker 1: businesses that launched out of the incubator. So it's not
Speaker 1: just hey, these two big companies own this place and
Speaker 1: Tender came out of that place. It's these companies not
Speaker 1: only gave Tender a place to develop the app, but
Speaker 1: also they owned part of the business. Now, Rad's first
Speaker 1: gig over at Hatched Labs was to work on a
Speaker 1: location based service, an app called Cardify c A R
Speaker 1: D I F Y that was sort of a customer
Speaker 1: loyalty program that was location based, kind of like a
Speaker 1: punch card you would get for buying coffee at that
Speaker 1: cool place where they draw the cute bird in the phone.
Speaker 1: I love that place anyway. Cardify was all about working
Speaker 1: with smartphones to leverage their ability to tie a person
Speaker 1: to a general location. Now, this was in two thousand eleven,
Speaker 1: when location based services were really just starting to take off.
Speaker 1: So Rad would end up working with a guy named
Speaker 1: Jonathan Baddeen on this project, and Baden would on to
Speaker 1: become another important person in the birth of Tender. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: Justin Mattine had co developed a couple of companies called
Speaker 1: cover Canvas and Site Canvas, so he was busy as well.
Speaker 1: He was not part of Hatched Labs at this point,
Speaker 1: but he was still friends with Seawan Rad. In early
Speaker 1: two thousand twelve, hatch Labs had a hackathon, which is
Speaker 1: an event in which creators are given time and resources
Speaker 1: to put together something you now. Sean Rad was paired
Speaker 1: with another guy named Joe Munrios, a developer who had
Speaker 1: been looking at an app that could match people to
Speaker 1: local businesses that might interest them. So, in other words,
Speaker 1: if you're walking down the street and you've got a
Speaker 1: history of buying hats and there's a really cool hat shop,
Speaker 1: you might get a little notification saying, hey, hats are
Speaker 1: us is right around the corner. Maybe you should stick
Speaker 1: your head in there and take it out with a
Speaker 1: hat on it. Well, together, Rad and Munio's started to
Speaker 1: brainstorm what they were gonna do for this hackathon, and
Speaker 1: they thought they might create a dating app does signed
Speaker 1: to match people up, and they decided to put together
Speaker 1: a rough prototype, which was the earliest build of what
Speaker 1: would eventually become Tender. I'll talk a little bit about
Speaker 1: what that prototype was and their ideas behind it in
Speaker 1: just a minute, but first let's take a quick break
Speaker 1: to thank our sponsor. Al Right, around this time, the
Speaker 1: app still didn't have a name, and it certainly wasn't
Speaker 1: gonna be called Tender. The working name was Matchbox, and
Speaker 1: according to a presentation deck that Rad and Munio's put
Speaker 1: together in February twelve, which I found on a lengthy
Speaker 1: tech Crunch article, it was subtitled The Flirting Game, and
Speaker 1: the presentation suggested that Matchbox could take the place of
Speaker 1: the singles experience of going to bars to meet people.
Speaker 1: So instead of trying to muster up the courage to
Speaker 1: approach a stranger in a bar and potentially face rejection
Speaker 1: right then and there, the app would allow people with
Speaker 1: then the general area to view profile photos of each other,
Speaker 1: and at that point you could express interest in the
Speaker 1: photo or you could choose to dismiss it to pass
Speaker 1: on it. Though there was no swiping at this stage,
Speaker 1: that was not part of the app yet. You just
Speaker 1: would use a little buttons on the app to indicate
Speaker 1: whether you were interested or now you're not so interested
Speaker 1: in that person. If both parties showed interest in each other,
Speaker 1: the app would then allow them to send messages back
Speaker 1: and forth, but if one of the two did not
Speaker 1: express interest, communication channels would remain closed, and in fact,
Speaker 1: the person who didn't say anything didn't accept or didn't
Speaker 1: swipe right, as the case would be later on, would
Speaker 1: never even know about the second person, So it was
Speaker 1: meant to only allow communication between people who had jointly
Speaker 1: expressed interest in each other. According to the presentation, the
Speaker 1: app would base location data off of WiFi signals rather
Speaker 1: than GPS coordinates and thus be hyperlocal, and the app
Speaker 1: could be designed to narrow searches based off of common
Speaker 1: interests or friends that both parties might have in common.
Speaker 1: Matchbox would become a project at Hatch Labs, although Sean
Speaker 1: Rad was still officially working on Cardify, he just found
Speaker 1: himself spending a lot of time thinking about this pet project,
Speaker 1: then really focusing on Cardify, which he felt at that
Speaker 1: point had pretty much gone as far as he could
Speaker 1: take it before it would end up becoming an official app. Also,
Speaker 1: they were really concerned with making this a gamified experience,
Speaker 1: having this this sensation of playing a game where you're
Speaker 1: choosing yes or no. This is kind of based off
Speaker 1: of a website called hot or Not where you would
Speaker 1: rate people's appearance based on a photo that was uploaded
Speaker 1: to the site, and it gives you that really quick
Speaker 1: feeling of I don't know pleasure for being able to
Speaker 1: judge someone really on on the spot, just based upon
Speaker 1: their appearance primarily, and they thought that by gamifying this
Speaker 1: it would it would end up inspiring more engagement, and
Speaker 1: if you were able to monetize that, whether by serving
Speaker 1: ads up against it or some other method, then you
Speaker 1: could make money off of this. So in March two
Speaker 1: thousand twelve, Jonathan Baden and Chris Golsinski would join Hatch
Speaker 1: Labs and begin working on the design for Cardify, and
Speaker 1: by extension, they joined the Matchbox team. They used a
Speaker 1: workspace that was owned by Justin Mateen, and that's because
Speaker 1: the Hatch Labs office that was in Los Angeles had
Speaker 1: limited resources. Hatch Labs has a couple of different locations.
Speaker 1: The one in New York was reportedly really really well
Speaker 1: decked out, but the one in l A not so much.
Speaker 1: So they decided to use a space that Justin Matteen had.
Speaker 1: Even though Matine at this point was not still not
Speaker 1: part of Hatch Labs, he was just Sean Rad's really
Speaker 1: good friend, and so he let them have use of
Speaker 1: the space as sort of a favor to two Sean. Now.
Speaker 1: In May of two thousand twelve, Whitney Wolf would join
Speaker 1: Hatch Labs and at some point between May and September
Speaker 1: two thousand twelve, she would begin to work with the
Speaker 1: Cardify and Matchbox teams, starting with Cardify and then transitioning
Speaker 1: over to Matchbox. As it turns out, she would play
Speaker 1: a significant role in tenders history now. Sean Rad presented
Speaker 1: Cardify to an event called tech Crunch Disrupt in New
Speaker 1: York City, which is an event that helps fledgling startups
Speaker 1: get more attention potentially investment support. Rad was hoping to
Speaker 1: find some partners for the app and entice shop owners
Speaker 1: to join the service because again, Cardify was a shop
Speaker 1: loyalty program, so he needed the buy in of merchants
Speaker 1: and vendors to create value for users. Otherwise, if you're
Speaker 1: a user and you're signing up for the service and
Speaker 1: no shopkeepers are on board, there's nothing to be loyal too.
Speaker 1: So they also submitted Cardify to the iPhone app Store.
Speaker 1: It was ready to go. Now is at this point
Speaker 1: that they hit a little bit of a snarl. Apple's
Speaker 1: app approval process is something that has always been to
Speaker 1: some extent shrouded in mystery. Apple executives always say they
Speaker 1: want to make sure that the apps in the iPhone
Speaker 1: Store provide a good experience and are of value to
Speaker 1: iPhone owners. App developers sometimes have a different point of
Speaker 1: view on this. There have been complaints that sometimes work
Speaker 1: can be rejected for seemingly arbitrary reasons, or sometimes without
Speaker 1: any real reasoning at all, and it could be infuriating.
Speaker 1: Sometimes it feels like it just depends on what time
Speaker 1: of day Apple is reviewing your app. Cardify was stuck
Speaker 1: in an approvals process that was dragging on for a
Speaker 1: few weeks and that was a bit too long for
Speaker 1: Rad and his team. They wanted to get to work
Speaker 1: on something else, so while they were waiting on Apple's approval,
Speaker 1: they got to work seriously developing the matchbox app into
Speaker 1: a working product. Around this same time, Hatch still needed
Speaker 1: someone to help market Cardify to shop owners, and Hatch
Speaker 1: would end up hiring two people as sales reps for Cardify,
Speaker 1: and those two people were Whitney Wolf and Alexa Mattein.
Speaker 1: Now Alexa is Justin Mattein's sister, and she was also
Speaker 1: really good friends with Whitney Wolf. So depending upon whose
Speaker 1: story you believe, because there are conflicting reports about all this,
Speaker 1: Justin Matteine introduced both Whitney wolf and Alexa Matine to
Speaker 1: his buddy Sean and suggested that maybe these women would
Speaker 1: be great sales reps for Cardify. Now keep in mind
Speaker 1: that at this time Justin was still not working in
Speaker 1: any official capacity with the company. He was just really
Speaker 1: good friends with Sean Rad. So Rad hires these two
Speaker 1: women and they start hitting the road to land agreements,
Speaker 1: either for Cardify or for Tender, depending upon which story
Speaker 1: you're looking at. Rad ended up rejoining his team to
Speaker 1: actually build out Matchbox, which of course evolves into Tender. Now.
Speaker 1: Windy Wolfe later said that her time was really spent
Speaker 1: marketing Matchbox, not Cardify, that she was going to these
Speaker 1: different places and trying to talk up the app that
Speaker 1: was still in development. Other accounts dispute that and say
Speaker 1: there wasn't anything to market yet, that she was actually
Speaker 1: still working on Cardify. But whatever the truth is, and
Speaker 1: I don't I don't know what it is, I wasn't there.
Speaker 1: One thing is certain, and that is that Matchbox was
Speaker 1: going to need a name change because I a C.
Speaker 1: Executives felt it was too close to their other property,
Speaker 1: match dot Com. Remember that was like the jewel of
Speaker 1: the match group. So it's a matchbox sounds too much
Speaker 1: like match dot com. People are gonna think the two
Speaker 1: things are connected, and really they're not. So it became
Speaker 1: a hatch Labs project, an overall project for the entire
Speaker 1: incubator company to come up with a new name for
Speaker 1: Matchbox Now. Chris Golzinski had created a flame logo for Matchbox,
Speaker 1: and everyone wanted to keep that. They liked the logo,
Speaker 1: so they started spitballing ideas for names, and again there's
Speaker 1: some disagreement about who originally proposed Tinder, but no matter
Speaker 1: who was responsible for that name, it is what the
Speaker 1: team chose as the new name for the service. And
Speaker 1: one of the other key elements of Tinder, the thing
Speaker 1: that people probably associate with it the most, is that
Speaker 1: swipe right or swipe left gesture you would use when
Speaker 1: looking at potential matches. So, in case you've never used
Speaker 1: the app or heard how it works, when you open
Speaker 1: it and you're browsing photos for people who are in
Speaker 1: your area, you can choose to indicate your interest in
Speaker 1: a person, or you can dismiss that option, and one
Speaker 1: way to do that is with gestures of swiping so
Speaker 1: if you swipe left, the person's photo is dismissed into
Speaker 1: the ether and never seen again by you. Anyway, a
Speaker 1: swipe to the right means, hey, this person interests me.
Speaker 1: I wouldn't mind getting a chance to talk to them.
Speaker 1: And if that person swipes right on your photo, then
Speaker 1: you can message one another. That's when the communication channels
Speaker 1: open up. Now, where did that notion come from to
Speaker 1: use gestures instead of just controls on a screen? Again,
Speaker 1: this is a matter of some disagreement, like a lot
Speaker 1: of things with tenders past. Jonathan Badeen says he thought
Speaker 1: of incorporating the gesture after he got all the shower
Speaker 1: one morning and it was all steamed. His mirror was
Speaker 1: all steamed up, and so he wiped his mirror in
Speaker 1: one direction to clear away some steam. Then he looked
Speaker 1: at himself, and then he wiped in the other direction,
Speaker 1: and he thought eureka. But Chris Golzinski said that Bedean
Speaker 1: really took the concept from another app that he had
Speaker 1: worked on before joining the Matchbox team. That was a
Speaker 1: flash cards app for a company called CHEG c H
Speaker 1: E G G. Golzenski said he had suggested swiping should
Speaker 1: be a gesture after he watched friends try to use
Speaker 1: the app and those friends were just naturally trying to
Speaker 1: swipe on the photo. Was unprompted and thought maybe we
Speaker 1: should incorporate that into the actual service, But no matter
Speaker 1: who came up with it, because again we don't know
Speaker 1: the actual truth. The gesture ended up being one of
Speaker 1: the sticky elements of Tender figuratively speaking, figuratively sticky, hopefully
Speaker 1: not literally sticky, but it was a satisfying way to
Speaker 1: interact with the service. Some people likinged it to Lauren
Speaker 1: brick Ter's invention of pull to refresh. You know, where
Speaker 1: you put your finger on the screen, you pull it
Speaker 1: downward and it helps refresh the window that can be
Speaker 1: found in numerous apps today, but it was It was
Speaker 1: a revelation and user interface design, and people point to
Speaker 1: that as being one of the really brilliant ideas in UI,
Speaker 1: and it helped again increase the gamification of the experience.
Speaker 1: It made it really fun to go through profiles. It
Speaker 1: was effortless, it was quick, and it was satisfying to
Speaker 1: find someone and then swipe right on their profile. It's
Speaker 1: almost like looking at potential dates. Had an addictive element
Speaker 1: to it something like Civilization Player might call just one
Speaker 1: More Turn. Well. By August, the app had a soft
Speaker 1: launch in the iPhone App Store, so It's pretty quiet
Speaker 1: wasn't really lauded or anything, because they needed to try
Speaker 1: and find a way to build up the user base
Speaker 1: enough to really get the ball rolling. So Sean rad
Speaker 1: at that point reached out to Justin Matein to lead
Speaker 1: the marketing efforts for the app for the first couple
Speaker 1: of months, and matteen joined the team first as a
Speaker 1: contractor before becoming an official employee uh and when he did,
Speaker 1: he would become the chief marketing officer for Tinder. According
Speaker 1: to most stories I could find, one of Justin Mattine's
Speaker 1: first moves was to send out text messages to his
Speaker 1: contact list of friends and acquaintances asking them to download
Speaker 1: the app, and he did the same with several other
Speaker 1: members of the team. He said, hey, send out these messages.
Speaker 1: We want to get people downloading this as soon as possible,
Speaker 1: and then established the first few hundred people on Tinder.
Speaker 1: Apparently he blasted or text blasted about three to five
Speaker 1: hundred folks on that first night, and Justin Matine felt
Speaker 1: that they should really target college populations with their app
Speaker 1: because college students are interested in dating, and he thought,
Speaker 1: if we can win them over, because they're gonna be
Speaker 1: pretty discerning with experience, as if the experience isn't fun,
Speaker 1: well know, because college students won't use it. But if
Speaker 1: they do use it, we know that we've got something
Speaker 1: that's going to appeal to a broad population. So he
Speaker 1: brought Whitney Wolf and Alexi Matine over to the Tender
Speaker 1: side over from Cardify again depending upon which account you read,
Speaker 1: and at some point Justin Matine and Whitney Wolf began dating.
Speaker 1: Wolf was hierarchically speaking, Matins subordinates, so this was problematic
Speaker 1: from the beginning if a boss is dating an employee,
Speaker 1: and that relationship would end up being the focus of
Speaker 1: an extremely public and ugly battle in Tender's history. But
Speaker 1: before all of that blew up, Mattine and his marketing
Speaker 1: team worked on getting college students on board. Matein was
Speaker 1: able to work with his younger brother to convince a
Speaker 1: college student that her birthday party really should be converted
Speaker 1: into a Tender promotional party, and she agreed because they
Speaker 1: were gonna pour money into the party, and they also
Speaker 1: threw a big party at Mateen's family home. They actually
Speaker 1: bust students from USC to Mateen's parents house and they
Speaker 1: had a big pool party with an inflatable slide and
Speaker 1: all sorts of stuff and a big Tinder logo mounted
Speaker 1: on the house itself. Entry to the party had one requirement,
Speaker 1: you had to prove that you had downloaded the Tender
Speaker 1: app to your smartphone. And the parties were a huge success.
Speaker 1: Mateine had been throwing big parties for profits since his
Speaker 1: college days. He had done this as sort of a
Speaker 1: promotional thing, and he was really good at it, and
Speaker 1: it got buzz going for the app, and the user
Speaker 1: base grew as a result. Matteine would repeat this process
Speaker 1: with other college campuses. Contacting fraternity and sorority houses is
Speaker 1: an early point of entry and then encouraging adoption from there.
Speaker 1: So he believed that if he could get influential members
Speaker 1: of a community on board, he could more easily grow
Speaker 1: the user base, and it turned out that this was true.
Speaker 1: It also meant that for its first year, Tender was
Speaker 1: almost exclusively used by college students. According to multiple sources,
Speaker 1: nine of users in that first year were between the
Speaker 1: ages of eighteen and twenty four. Tender incorporated in April
Speaker 1: two thousand thirteen, and by then it was clear the
Speaker 1: app was going to be a huge success. It would
Speaker 1: be a couple more years before they introduced any sort
Speaker 1: of paid content to the app. They were generating revenue
Speaker 1: mostly just through ads they were sharing, serving up ads
Speaker 1: along with the experience, and that was how they would
Speaker 1: supplement the uh the revenue for Tender or actually generate
Speaker 1: the revenue for Tender at that point, and at this stage,
Speaker 1: the focus was really mostly on bill ending out that
Speaker 1: user base as much as possible before incorporating some other
Speaker 1: methods to make money. So if you make Tinder a
Speaker 1: buzzworthy term and get as many people on it as
Speaker 1: the service could handle, and you get them addicted, then
Speaker 1: you can figure out how to really leverage that. I'll
Speaker 1: talk about how they did that in just a minute,
Speaker 1: but first let's take another quick break to thank our sponsor.
Speaker 1: All right, let's go back to Tinder. At this time,
Speaker 1: behind the scenes, the rocky romance between Justin Matene and
Speaker 1: Whitney Wolf was causing friction. To be gentle about it.
Speaker 1: By most accounts, the two had a tumultuous breakup and
Speaker 1: we're done dating each other. By early two thousand fourteen. Uh,
Speaker 1: depends on who you ask. Some of them said that
Speaker 1: things ended in some said by February, but certainly by
Speaker 1: March things were over. And then Wolf would end up
Speaker 1: filing a sexual harassment and sexual discrimination lawsuit against Tender,
Speaker 1: naming Justin Mattine as the perpetrator, and she had some
Speaker 1: screen captures of text messages that helps support her case. Now,
Speaker 1: in addition to her complaints against Matteine, she claimed that
Speaker 1: she was stripped of co founder status and that she
Speaker 1: had earned that status at Tinder, which could constitute a
Speaker 1: demotion and depending upon how the company handled it, it
Speaker 1: could be a real legal hazard for them. There was
Speaker 1: a really long piece on tech Crunch that went into
Speaker 1: this whole ordeal, and it actually ended up questioning some
Speaker 1: of her claims and cited anonymous sources that had a
Speaker 1: different account of what happened. But Wolves attorney would respond
Speaker 1: to that piece by stating that it was filled with
Speaker 1: inaccuracies and reliance upon unreliable witnesses. Now, I was not there,
Speaker 1: and I don't know anyone who was there, so I
Speaker 1: really don't feel comfortable commenting on this. Uh, it seems
Speaker 1: like it's too complicated a case, and I don't know
Speaker 1: all the particulars, but what I can say is that
Speaker 1: the content of the messages Mateine sent to Wolf, the
Speaker 1: ones that she shared in her screen captures, is really
Speaker 1: upsetting and definitely not appropriate communications between any two people,
Speaker 1: let alone in the context of a boss subordinate relationship.
Speaker 1: So there was definitely bad behavior going on there, at
Speaker 1: least in those text messages they were They were not good,
Speaker 1: and you can find them online if you really are curious,
Speaker 1: but be warned there's some pretty awful stuff in there.
Speaker 1: Sean Rad and Justin Matteine were friends who went way
Speaker 1: way back, and still to this day, Rad considers Matine
Speaker 1: one of his best friends. But these accusations were serious,
Speaker 1: and Wolf was providing evidence that they were not entirely
Speaker 1: without merit. So Tender suspended Justin Matteine and definitely in
Speaker 1: June two and fourteen. He would later resign from his
Speaker 1: position in September of two thousand fourteen. As for Wolf,
Speaker 1: she and Tender settle her lawsuit out of court, and
Speaker 1: then she went off and co founded a new company
Speaker 1: called Bumble. Like Tender, Bumble lets you browse profiles and
Speaker 1: select those that interest you. So again you can swipe
Speaker 1: on different profiles and say, all right, this person is
Speaker 1: attractive to me and this person is not. But unlike Tender,
Speaker 1: Bumble puts the control into the hands of women who
Speaker 1: are using the service, which obviously, this particular example I'm
Speaker 1: going to give applies to heterosexual relationships, and that's where
Speaker 1: Bumble really has gotten a lot of its focus. So
Speaker 1: in a heterosexual matchup, the woman in the match has
Speaker 1: the option to send a message to the man. So
Speaker 1: the man's already swiped right, but he doesn't know anything
Speaker 1: about the rest of that relationship. The woman swipes right,
Speaker 1: she then has the opportunity to send a message to
Speaker 1: the man, but the man would remain unaware of any
Speaker 1: matches unless he saw an incoming message. So in that way,
Speaker 1: women would have more time to decide whether or not
Speaker 1: they wanted to act on their initial impression of a
Speaker 1: person or if they just wanted to let slip. Bumble
Speaker 1: would go on to hire a lot of women on
Speaker 1: the corporate side, so there are many women executives and
Speaker 1: women engineers over at Bumble, and the company really became
Speaker 1: an example of one that was working actively to give
Speaker 1: women opportunities in the tech space as well as in
Speaker 1: the dating world. Oh In a Chris Golsinski also left
Speaker 1: Tinder for Bumble, so he joined that team as well.
Speaker 1: Back to Tinder, the Matins scandal worried executives at I
Speaker 1: a C. Who did not want to see their investment
Speaker 1: crumple in the wake of bad publicity regarding the former
Speaker 1: chief marketing officer. The app, though, had been doing incredibly
Speaker 1: well in two thousand and fourteen before the scandal broke.
Speaker 1: It received a ton of media attention after a snowboarder
Speaker 1: named Jamie Anderson said that the app was gaining popularity
Speaker 1: among Olympic competitors during the two thousand fourteen Winter Olympics.
Speaker 1: The user base had changed as well. At that point,
Speaker 1: college students now made up only air quotes fifty percent
Speaker 1: of the users instead of ninety and in the spring,
Speaker 1: often tender marked the occasion of making one billion matches,
Speaker 1: not bad for a company that was embroiled in an
Speaker 1: ugly behind the scenes controversy. Also in two thousand fourteen,
Speaker 1: I a C. Bought off the outstanding stake in Tender
Speaker 1: that had existed back in the hatch Labs days, and
Speaker 1: the company moved into a new headquarters located in West Hollywood.
Speaker 1: There were about forty employees and ten thousand feet of
Speaker 1: office space, and while the app hit one billion matches
Speaker 1: in a soft launch in two thousand twelve to the
Speaker 1: spring of two thousand fourteen, it only took a couple
Speaker 1: more months for that number to double, so by the
Speaker 1: summer of two thousand fourteen they had hit two billion matches.
Speaker 1: The app was doing really well, but at the executive level,
Speaker 1: I a C. Was still very much worried, so by
Speaker 1: November two thousand fourteen, head Han Shows at I a
Speaker 1: C made their well known unto Tinder, and Sean Rad
Speaker 1: was forced to step aside as CEO. He would become
Speaker 1: the president of Tinder, so he remained with the company,
Speaker 1: but he no longer controlled it. This announcement was made
Speaker 1: before I a C. Had actually found a suitable replacement,
Speaker 1: so it kind of was effectively under Rad's guidance for
Speaker 1: a while longer, but eventually I a C. Chose a
Speaker 1: guy named Chris Payne, who had worked at companies like
Speaker 1: Amazon and Microsoft. However, Payne ultimately was considered not a
Speaker 1: good fit for Tender, and in two thousand fifteen they
Speaker 1: got a new CEO, and by that I mean they
Speaker 1: got an old CEO, and by that I mean Sean
Speaker 1: Rad took over again. Yeah, Rad was removed a CEO,
Speaker 1: served as president, and then was reinstated as CEO just
Speaker 1: a few months later. The following year, in two thousand
Speaker 1: and sixteen, Rad would step down as CEO again, but
Speaker 1: this time by choice. He became the chairman of the
Speaker 1: company and Greg Blatt, who had been the chairman of Tinder,
Speaker 1: would switch places with Rad and become the new CEO.
Speaker 1: Blatt was also the CEO of Match Group, which was
Speaker 1: Tinder's parent company, and you'll remember Match Group was again
Speaker 1: part of the I A C Empire, So yeah, it's
Speaker 1: still complicated. Rad's new role over at the company is
Speaker 1: to run an investment vehicle called Swipe Ventures. Swipe is
Speaker 1: so important with Tinder. This would be more about acquisitions
Speaker 1: and partnerships, so he was more about forming relationships and
Speaker 1: acquiring other companies to make Tinder more robust. So back
Speaker 1: to Tinder itself. In two thousand fifteen, the company introduced
Speaker 1: Tinder Plus, which turned Tinder into a freemium app, which
Speaker 1: meant it's free to use the basic functions of Tinder
Speaker 1: it's ad supported, but it's free to use, but if
Speaker 1: you pay just a little bit more or just a
Speaker 1: little bit, you get access to some other features. For example,
Speaker 1: the Tender Plus experience was ad free, and you could
Speaker 1: also rewind, so you could reverse a decision. Whether that
Speaker 1: was that you had dismissed someone and you suddenly thought, oh,
Speaker 1: wait a minute, they were kind of cute, I would
Speaker 1: like to swipe right, or you could dismiss someone you
Speaker 1: had swiped right on and then you suddenly got cold
Speaker 1: feet or a deep sense of regret that haunts you
Speaker 1: to this very day. Well, you could reverse that. You
Speaker 1: could also change your location using a feature called Passport
Speaker 1: with Tinder Plus. This was handy if you were planning
Speaker 1: on traveling somewhere like going on vacation, and you wanted
Speaker 1: to see what the dating scene was like at that location.
Speaker 1: Since Tinder is a location based service, typically you're restricted
Speaker 1: to people who are actually in your same general location,
Speaker 1: but this would open things up a bit. Maybe you're
Speaker 1: going to travel in a week or two to some
Speaker 1: place like some city. Maybe you're going on a business trip. Also,
Speaker 1: I know I'm old, and I know I shouldn't put
Speaker 1: any judgment about any of this, but you sorry, that's
Speaker 1: maybe that's just the old married man talking there. Your
Speaker 1: kids with your tender apps and your hookups arranged way
Speaker 1: in advance. Tinder plus also allowed you to use super
Speaker 1: likes at the tune of five per day. So as
Speaker 1: super like sends the owner of the photo you just
Speaker 1: fell for a notification that someone has sent a super
Speaker 1: like on them, and there's a limited number per day,
Speaker 1: so if you use it, it tells the person on
Speaker 1: the other side, Hey, this this other person out there
Speaker 1: thinks you're worth spending a limited super like on you. Uh.
Speaker 1: This would just allow that person then to look at
Speaker 1: your profile and choose whether the swipe right or swipe left.
Speaker 1: According to Tender, that increases the odds of engagement significantly.
Speaker 1: So in other words, if you're just going through the
Speaker 1: app and you're just swiping away, there's no guarantee that
Speaker 1: the person on the other side of all of your
Speaker 1: swipe rights will ever even see your photo, not even
Speaker 1: giving you the chance to make a match. But using
Speaker 1: the super like would increase those chances. Uh. Typically you
Speaker 1: would remain unaware if someone had swiped around your profile
Speaker 1: until you swiped right on them, but this was a
Speaker 1: little way to send that notification and giving those more
Speaker 1: of a chance for reciprocation. Later in two thousand seventeen,
Speaker 1: Tender would introduce a new tiered kind of payments system
Speaker 1: for Tender Gold. This was a kind of a an
Speaker 1: additional premium service on top of Tender Plus, and included
Speaker 1: such features like boosting your profile so that your image
Speaker 1: would be served up more frequently in searches for about
Speaker 1: half an hour, so for like thirty and It's you
Speaker 1: would be a star Tender profile and show up on
Speaker 1: more people's apps as they opened it up, kind of
Speaker 1: pay to play baby, And it would also let you
Speaker 1: see anyone who had swiped right on your photo, meaning
Speaker 1: you didn't have to operate in the dark. You could
Speaker 1: actually go through those swipe rights and be super picky.
Speaker 1: You could filter through them and not have to go
Speaker 1: through all the trouble of doing all that exhausting swiping
Speaker 1: on your own. Um. Of course, this is assuming that
Speaker 1: you are of an attractive enough nature to have warranted
Speaker 1: a lot of swipe rights in the first place. I'm
Speaker 1: glad I'm married, because I am convinced that if I
Speaker 1: weren't married and I was using Tinder. I would be
Speaker 1: very upset at how infrequently people had swiped right on
Speaker 1: my profile. Maybe that's just my insecurities talking. Luckily I
Speaker 1: don't have to worry about it. Ha ha. Married Later,
Speaker 1: the company made the decision to offer this as a
Speaker 1: t approach based upon user age. Tender Plus would cost
Speaker 1: nine dollars ninety nine cents a month if you happen
Speaker 1: to be thirty years old or younger. But if that
Speaker 1: little gem on the palm of your hand goes dark,
Speaker 1: it meant you would need to pay nineteen dollars in
Speaker 1: ninety nine cents per month for the same service. Also,
Speaker 1: hit me up if you understand the reference I just made,
Speaker 1: because I would really be impressed anyway, This pricing struck
Speaker 1: some people as being totally wrong. One of those people
Speaker 1: was a guy named Alan Candelore, who said that by
Speaker 1: charging two different amounts for the same service based solely
Speaker 1: on a person's age, it amounted to age discrimination, and
Speaker 1: he filed a lawsuit in California, which has the Unrust
Speaker 1: Civil Rights Act and the Unfair Competition Law that protect
Speaker 1: against such things. The case originally went to trial, and
Speaker 1: initially things went in favor for Tender a judge ruled
Speaker 1: that the practice did not constitute discrimination, but Kendalloure's lawyers
Speaker 1: appealed this decision, and in an appeals court in two
Speaker 1: thousand eighteen, like literally hours before I went into the studio,
Speaker 1: the reaction was different. The appeals court made a very
Speaker 1: specific conclusion, and I swear I am not making this up.
Speaker 1: I'm going to read their conclusion verbatim. It goes like this,
Speaker 1: no matter what tenders market research may have shown about
Speaker 1: the younger users relative income and willingness to pay for
Speaker 1: the service as a group as compared to the older cohort,
Speaker 1: some individuals will not fit this mold. Some older consumers
Speaker 1: will be more budget constrained and less willing to pay
Speaker 1: than some and the younger group. We conclude the discriminatory
Speaker 1: pricing model, as alleged, violates the UNREACT and the u
Speaker 1: c L to the extent it employs an arbitrary class
Speaker 1: based generalization about older users income as a basis for
Speaker 1: charging them more than younger users. Because nothing in the
Speaker 1: complaints suggests that there is a strong public policy that
Speaker 1: justifies the alleged discriminatory pricing, the trial court aired in
Speaker 1: sustaining the demurer. Accordingly, we swipe left and reverse. And yes,
Speaker 1: a judge actually said we swipe left. I want to
Speaker 1: fist bump that judge. Tender continues to be an incredibly
Speaker 1: popular app for those looking for Mr. Or Mrs Wright,
Speaker 1: or maybe just Mr and Mrs right now. According to Forbes,
Speaker 1: the company's valuation is at a cool three billion dollars,
Speaker 1: and according to a site called Business of Apps, it
Speaker 1: also boasts the following statistics. The app is available in
Speaker 1: more than forty languages, and these days it generates around
Speaker 1: eight hundred million swipes a day and twelve million matches
Speaker 1: a day. A New York Times article stated the app
Speaker 1: as close to fifty million and users, with the average
Speaker 1: person spending ninety minutes a day on the app. Esquire
Speaker 1: held a survey with their readers about Tender and they
Speaker 1: found out that six of the respondents use it as
Speaker 1: a way to relieve boredom rather than actually looking for
Speaker 1: a special someone. And of those people are female. Oh,
Speaker 1: and men swipe right about forty six percent of the time.
Speaker 1: Women are more picky and only swipe right four percent
Speaker 1: of the time. Interesting facts. I think now there's a
Speaker 1: lot more I can say about tender, and honestly, again,
Speaker 1: I'm at an age where the whole thing seems like
Speaker 1: witchcraft to me, But I get its appeal. I get
Speaker 1: the gamification aspect of it. I get the fact that
Speaker 1: you can very quickly go through a lot of different
Speaker 1: potential profiles and express interest. There's definitely part of me
Speaker 1: that feels like it's a little shallow to judge people
Speaker 1: simply on photos, especially since photos can be an unrealistic
Speaker 1: representation of what a person is all about. But at
Speaker 1: the same time, I have to admit, in most real
Speaker 1: world situations, people's appearances end up being the first thing
Speaker 1: that is a an element of attraction between two folks,
Speaker 1: at least upon first meeting. It. Maybe that you would
Speaker 1: more likely find a better, more stable relationship by becoming
Speaker 1: friends with someone first before trying to segue into a
Speaker 1: romantic relationship, but there's no guaranteed route of success one
Speaker 1: way or the other. So while I am an old
Speaker 1: fogy and tender still frightens and confuses me, I don't
Speaker 1: judge anybody for making use of the up and trying
Speaker 1: to find love in this crazy world. Help you, guys,
Speaker 1: are able to express your emotions and affections for each
Speaker 1: other on this day, Valentine's Day, the day that we
Speaker 1: have been told by giant corporate rations, is the appropriate
Speaker 1: day for us to at least give a cursory nod
Speaker 1: of affection to those that mean a lot to us. Man,
Speaker 1: I'm getting cynical. I need to go out and buy
Speaker 1: some flowers from my wife, so I'm gonna go do that. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: if you guys have any suggestions for future topics I
Speaker 1: should cover on this show, let me know. You can
Speaker 1: send me a message on email. The address I used
Speaker 1: for the show is tech Stuff at how stuff works
Speaker 1: dot com, or you can drop me a line on
Speaker 1: Facebook or Twitter. The handle of both of those is
Speaker 1: tech Stuff hs W. Remember we have an Instagram account
Speaker 1: you should follow that. You can learn all sorts of
Speaker 1: cool stuff and see behind the scenes photos on occasion.
Speaker 1: And if you want to watch me record one of
Speaker 1: these live, go to twitch dot tv slash tech Stuff.
Speaker 1: You'll find a schedule there. I record on Wednesdays and Friday's.
Speaker 1: You can watch me as I stumble through my notes
Speaker 1: on a daily or twice a week basis, and you
Speaker 1: can even participate in the chat room. And I'm happy
Speaker 1: to chat with you guys. I love seeing you show up.
Speaker 1: It means a lot to me and I hope you
Speaker 1: will give it a try and I'll talk to you
Speaker 1: guys again really soon. For more on this and thousands
Speaker 1: of other topics because at how staff works dot com