Facebook has started recommending you add your old Tinder matches as friends on the social network.
A number of Twitter users reported today that their dating matches were appearing on Facebook’s “People You May Know” section.
Some Grindr, Scruff and OkCupid users also noticed the same thing happening, which was first spotted by So So Gay.
Tinder requires you to log in via Facebook, accessing your “status updates, photos, likes, relationship interests and profile”.
In addition to this, it accesses “your basic profile info and list of friends.”
Tinder says they don’t post anything to Facebook, and so far the connection between the two services seems to have been one way – Tinder taking information from Facebook.
We contacted Facebook about this, and received this comment from Facebook spokesperson Tim Rathschmidt:
“Tinder matches are based on your Facebook friends, since you have to login via Facebook and the premise of the app is that it connects you with friends of friends for dating. People you may know is based off your Facebook friends. There’s going to be natural overlap.
“Grindr is geo based. Many gay people are friends of friends in every city – since they are communities within a community in a location.
“It’s all coincidence. We don’t take any data from Grindr or Tinder to inform people you may know. People are speculating/conflating. It’s just a natural outcome of friends of friends in the same geo area.”
Although Tinder doesn’t only match you with friends of friends, it does make sense that there would be some overlap with matches and friends.
However it does sees odd that a considerable number of people only started noticing it today.
See people’s (pretty angry) tweets about the development below:
