Tinder Has Made 1 Billion Matches

Tinder

Tinder has announced the app has made 1bn matches.

The app launched in September 2012 at a party at the University of Southern California.

Since then its growth has been incredible – last January they said it had facilitated 1m matches, by the end of the year this had risen to 500m.

CEO Sean Rad maintains that this growth shows that Tinder’s appeal goes beyond the “hookup app” tag it has, saying to Tech Crunch: “Tinder is here to stay. Tinder is absolutely solving a core human issue that people have with social discovery.”

Rad has been hinting at utilising the Tinder model in areas other than dating, and said in February that they were planning on releasing something “very soon” that will answer some questions as to their future plans. 

He said: “The problems that we’re solving are universal, whether you want to meet somebody for romantic purposes, or for a business relationship, or a friendship, you’re put in this position where you’re either a hunter going after a relationship and you feel rejected and you put yourself out there, or you’re being bombarded and people are coming after you, and you feel just overwhelmed.

“Tinder’s all about filtering through that noise and just letting people who want to communicate with each other communicate.”

The app also recently announced they are introducing a verification feature for celebrity users, as many don’t get matches because other users assume they are fake.

They also hope to launch in China by the end of the year.

Read Emily Witt’s GQ piece Love Me Tinder, on the story behind the birth of the app here.