Tinder Forecasts Twofold Increase In Paid Subscribers In 2016

Popular dating app Tinder is expecting to see its paid subscribers double by the end of the year, new information from analysts at Cowen and Company has revealed.

Last year, the app launched its first subscription-based model, Tinder Plus, which offered users the option to pay a monthly fee in order to have access to the app’s range of premium features.

Its premium features include the highly-anticipated “Super Like” – a feature that lets individuals show an elevated interest in another person’s profile, and a reverse button, which gives users a second change swipe right on profiles they had accidentally discarded.

In the U.S, Tinder users aged below 30 are required pay $9.99 each month, a cost which increases to $19.99 if you are aged 30 and above.

This age-based price difference was heavily criticised by users of the app when it launched, but despite the backlash, has been left unchanged by the app.

Since the launch of Tinder Plus, the Match Group-owned app has witnessed substantial growth in its paid subscribers, recently confirming it had gained over one million paid users.

The app has now confirmed it predicts to double this figure throughout the remainder of 2016, given that revenue from new, premium features had exceeded their expected projections for the first quarter of the year.

The analysts, led by John Blackledge, also found that Tinder users are highly engaged with the app on a day-to-day basis, with the average user spending around 35 minutes on the app everyday, and swiping left or right 140 times.

In light of the success of its paid subscription, its parent company’s CFO, Gary Swindler said that its plans to monetise the app were in fact “ahead of schedule.”

He also noted that the company now has space to update its premium features – which the analysts say have not changed since the rollout of the Super Like last year.

Due to this high engagement with the app, analysts have also predicted that advertising will begin to acts a large source of Tinder’s revenue over the coming months, and increasingly into 2017.

Last week, Tinder’s CEO Sean Rad announced the app is taking steps to become more welcoming for transgender singles, by adding more gender options to its profile-building process.

Speaking at Recode’s Code Conference on Thursday, Rad said that this update will launch on the app at some point in the next two months.

Read more about the update here.