Tinder Has Built A Highly Selective Service For Celebrities & Top Users
Tinder has been running a secret invite-only version of its dating service for the past six months.
The exclusive service, called Tinder Select, appears to be for celebrities and other top percentage types on Tinder.
The existence of the platform was revealed recently by TechCrunch, after it was sent screenshots of the app and invitations prospective users had been sent.
The invite message reads: “I’m inviting you to join Tinder Select, a members only community. To complete your invitation, tap here”, followed by a link to select.gotinder.com – which now shows a 404 error.
Those who have access to Tinder Select, which has not been publicly acknowledged by Tinder yet, appear to be able to toggle the service on and off when in the normal Tinder app, as with group feature Tinder Social.
The exclusive matchmaking area has a blue colour scheme, as seen above, and an “S” logo on the toggle switch.
Details around the service are scant, but it seems Tinder runs a highly-selective entry system, inviting members and only allowing certain people to “nominate” others to join.
There is a suggestion entry could be based on Tinder’s “elo score”, an internal ranking system the company uses to rate the popularity of members.
The new service, which Tinder will likely publicly comment on soon, has apparently been live for around six months.
It sees Tinder follow a similar strategy to apps like selective services The League and Raya, and follows its own thread of introducing “blue tick” verification on Tinder, something that launched in March 2014 but didn’t take off.
A service like Tinder Select would certainly help Tinder restore an elusive quality to the product it has courted, and used to its advantage, since the app’s college years – one that is difficult to maintain when a product becomes so ubiquitous.
It will be interesting to see how the company proceeds with Tinder Select, especially around how it gatekeeps the service and steers its marketing and press strategies.
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