Tinder have just made their first acquisition, with messaging app Tappy.
Tappy is a Snapchat-style ephemeral messaging app, owned by Chill.
To start a chat on Tappy, you must open the conversation with a picture, after which you can chat away to friends, individually or in groups.
All your messaging activity on Tappy disappears after 24 hours.
Tinder do have a similar feature, called Moments, where users can send photos to their matches.
Tinder say the feature is used every day by 50% of their user base.
If such engagement figures are true, then Moments has certainly been a success, and acquiring Tappy will allow the dating app to further tailor and improve this photo-sharing feature.
The move could also mean Tinder plan to introduce Snapchat-style private photo messaging.
And regarding the ephemeral nature of Tappy, Tinder may follow other dating apps like Coffee Meets Bagel, and direct competitor Bumble, by adding a time-limit to conversations between matches.
Speaking about the acquisition to TechCrunch, Sean Rad said: “We’re growing and recruiting like crazy. It’s incredibly difficult to find talented people to join us fast enough to keep up with our roadmap for 2015, which includes some ambitious plans.
“When I spoke with Brian, we found that our goals for two separate products were such a great match. There are some specific things that they’ve done in the past that we wouldn’t have to figure out on our own moving forward.”
Tappy was co-founded by Brian Norgard and Dan Gould, who were investors in Rad’s first major business, Adly, a company that liks celebrities with brands for endorsements on social media.
Tinder also revealed they now see over 1.5bn swipes, and make 21m matches, each day.
Visit Tappy’s site here.