Now before we begin; for all those who don’t know what ‘Tinder’ is, here’s a short brief!
The Sunset Boulevard-based Tinder – is simply an online dating app which gives you the opportunity to meet, interact and chat with new people for dating, friendship, or networking.
Tinder was launched in 2012 by Sean Rad – CEO & Co-Founder along with Jonathan Badeen and Justin Mateen at Hatch Labs, a mobile incubator backed by IAC – InterActiveCorp and Xtreme Labs.
When it first started, it was misunderstood by users and was also being used more for hook-ups or casual sex. But that scene clearly changed with time!
Tinder works in a pretty much simplified manner! All one needs to do is;
- One can ‘Only’ login to Tinder using their Facebook account
- After that, you need to create your profile
- You can only choose from the pictures that are available on your Facebook
- And it’s done! ‘Swipe Left’ if you don’t like a profile and ‘Swipe Right’ if you like one
- If you ‘Swipe Right’ and the other person also does the same, then it’s a match and a Chat Box opens. And you can take it from there!
- Tinder finds the locations of its users using GPS, within the chosen boundary of the user! Your profile visible to the Tinder World includes First Name, Age, Photos, and any Pages liked on Facebook.
As per Wikipedia; Tinder is available in 24 languages and has roughly 50 million users, almost globally. And as of January 2015, Tinder users swipe through 1.5 billion Tinder profiles and make more than 21 million matches per day.
Latest Updates
So the Dating app has gone one step further and has launched their latest ‘Premium Paid Subscription’ version – Tinder Plus.
Tinder Plus, which has been under rigorous testing for the past one year, has included diverse subscription fees, which varies by age and country.
In United States, the users under 30 will have to pay $9.99/month and the subscribers above 30 will be paying $19.99/month. Whereas, the price will be as low as $2.99/month in the emerging markets, depending on the country!
Other than that; with Tinder Plus comes with some more features as well! It fills in the two most-requested elements through ‘Passport’ & ‘Rewind’, apart from unlimited liking capabilities.
Rewind – Like the name itself suggests, Rewind allows its users to “take back” a swipe! So if you accidently happen to swipe left on a profile — only to lose a potential date — you can easily Rewind. But the catch is that; you can only “Rewind your last swipe”
Passport – Unlike its name; it obviously doesn’t let you travel the world physically, but it does allow you to change your location to connect with people around the world — ahead of a planned vacation or a business trip, for instance! Basically, it lets you change your location to connect with people anywhere globally.
Now with the launch of Tinder Plus, it drew more criticism than praises for a differentiated pricing system, from the reviewers.
In fact, Phone Arena blog went on to say that it “quite frustratingly.. borders on age discrimination.” & Tech blog Endgadget belittled Tinder Plus by calling it “sleazy.”
But Tinder’s spokeswoman came for the rescue of their product and boldly defended the move.
She first cleared the air by stating the obvious that; many other products offer differentiated price tiers by age, and that they have priced Tinder Plus based on an amalgamation of factors!
And went on to say that, these has been learned and after a year of testing, which unambiguously voices out that these price points are being happily adopted & accepted by different age demographics.
Now other than that; while all this was in news, another huge announcement was made by its parent company! Tinder had got its new CEO – Christopher Payne! Payne last had served eBay as their Senior Vice President of North America Marketplaces.
And this was confirmed when Payne tweeted – “It’s a match!” “I swiped right on Tinder!”
Obviously this was no shocker for the market because the parents of Tinder were looking for a more mature CEO; following the controversy that took place when Sean Rad was accused and sued by former executive Whitney Wolfe of subjecting her to “horrendously sexist, racist and otherwise inappropriate comments, emails and text messages,” before firing her.
What we have to say about Tinder Plus?
Well, accept the fact; come what may – critics will remain critics!
Now when on one side critics are crying that the company is violating price discrimination laws. We beg to differ!
Obviously every single person is different and perceives things differently; so when you have more than one type of customer; you have to have more than one type of pricing practice.
And if you decide to be a stuck-up & keep a standard price for all, you’re likely going to lose out on a ton of cash, especially when you have millions of users like Tinder. That is exactly what Tinder is doing with Tinder Plus!
Quite frankly, all this change will do is; it will make things as simple as possible for its users at a minimal price!
And as per recent stats; the youth or the masses in general are quite happy with the latest development and are quite kicked about the new features!
To be precise; in a survey conducted by priceintelligently.com amongst hundreds of Tinder users, the crunched data discloses that Tinder Plus is absolutely justified!
As matters of fact – 18 to 29 year olds were willing to pay as much as close to $10, whereas, the older folks were willing to chip in a much higher range of close to $25/month.
Image credit: play.google.com, gotinder.com and priceintelligently.com
