Tinder Plus launched a few weeks ago to some indignation, with users annoyed at the high price bands, and people accusing the app of of ageism.
Users under 30 can pay $9.99 for the Undo and Passport features, and users over 30 have to pay $19.99.
In addition to this, Tinder introduced limited swipes, for those users and spammers who constantly swipe right to every profile.
This was designed to encourage “people who right swipe like crazy to be thoughtful in their swiping”, the algorithm working by “intelligently limiting the number of likes a user can make in a consecutive 12 hour period.”
These changes were part of an attempt to foster, or take back control of, the community aspect of Tinder.
And in a blog post, Tinder have revealed some early results of these moves.
The IAC-owned app said they’ve seen a dramatic increase in the quality of matches.
Since introducing limited swipes, they have seen a 25% increase in the number of matches per right swipe, and a 25% increase in the number of messages per match.
They also say this move has driven a 52% decrease in the number of spam bots on the service.
And while people can pay to bypass this limit, and continue to swipe, the paywall will deter many – including spammers – from continuing their behaviour.
In addition to these changes, Tinder have also introduced beefed-up user reporting and review tools.
These include a review question when users unmatch or report someone.
And according to TechCrunch, singles can also report bad user behaviour after they’ve met up offline with a Tinder user.
Tinder then uses this information to contact the users, to warn them about their behaviour before removing them from the app.
So the early signs are that the limited swiping algorithm is working as intended – to create a better user experience, but the real interest for most in the dating industry is the success of their monetisation system.
The first signs as to how their paid service is performing will likely come in the next few IAC earnings calls, as The Match Group executives relay to investors about its performance.
Read the Tinder blog post here.