The announcement that Tinder teased yesterday with a tweet promising the “next level of swiping”, is a Snapchat-style photo sharing feature.
Moments will let Tinder users share ephemeral pictures with all their existing matches.
Tinder CEO Sean Rad said they introduced the feature “to help users to get to know their matches better”.
This seems to be a reaction against the fact that many Tinder conversations have a short life-span – with users racking up many matches, but not continuing to engage with them.
Users can take a photo – or upload one from their camera roll – that is broadcast to all their existing matches, who can either like, or dismiss it.
Moments is a whole new section in the app – users can view all pics posted by their matches, and share their own.
This is in the hope they will rediscover old matches, and connect again through sharing content.
Rad said: “You can see who is interested in you based on liking content.
“And people love using Tinder for the joy of swiping, so we wanted to use the same experience to help people get to know each other.”
Users can also edit, filter and add captions to their pictures.
Rad hopes this feature will help to convince users that Tinder is more than a hookup app, saying to TechCrunch:
“Just because you match, doesn’t mean you need to date that person; you could match with a friend who you want to share a moment with.”
However, while Snapchat’s self-deleting pictures – and now messages and videos – are between friends, there are obvious worries about users, mostly women, receiving unwanted photos from strangers.
You can, however, block and report users, or simply have the option to stop seeing their “moments”.
The new update also adds an invisible feature to Tinder – you can chat and share pictures with your current matches, without appearing on Tinder’s main discovery function.