Product lessons from how Tinder de-stigmatized online dating and won

Anton
UX Collective
Published in
3 min readFeb 18, 2019

Tinder grew from $0 revenue in 2015 to $800M in 2018. Tinder now accounts for almost half of Match Group’s annual revenue. Much of this revenue came from expanding the online dating market. How did Tinder expand the market?

Online Dating before Tinder

Before Tinder, online dating was characterized by high overall value, high effort, and delayed gratification.

  1. Online dating was high value. The prospect of meeting your soulmate may be the epitome of a high value service!
  2. Online dating was high effort. People had to complete lengthy profiles, craft personalized messages and hope to not be rejected. This meant that people had to be desperate to date online. And because only desperate people were dating online, the entire genre was stigmatized as desperate.
  3. Online dating was delayed gratification. Although the ultimate value from online dating has always been high, gratification was delayed for days. As a man, you’d spend 30+ minutes agonizing over your profile, then browse prospects for several hours, spend 15 minutes crafting each message, and wait several days for a response. Often, you’d never get a response — talk about delayed gratification! As a woman, you’d also field dozens of messages from unattractive mates (or worse, none at all).

Online Dating after Tinder

Tinder started with a service that was fundamentally high value: online dating. But they invented a product that was low effort and instant gratification.

  1. Tinder is high value. Tinder is still online dating, and the ultimate end game of Tinder could be your soulmate. The service has become increasingly casual through the years, but I would venture to guess the number of soulmates found via Tinder has increased on an absolute basis, too.
  2. Tinder is low effort. All you need is a social media account to get started on Tinder. The focus on photos that are readily available on Instagram, Facebook and the camera roll means no more agonizing over your profile. Likewise, you don’t need to craft any opening messages. You just swipe and hope for the best. This means you don’t have to be desperate to try online dating, which destigmatizes the genre as the general population uses the product.
  3. Tinder is instant gratification. This one’s a more sensitive topic, but the “Hot or Not” paradigm has always been fun. Objectifying potential sexual partners by swiping Yes or No panders to our most basic judgmental instinct. We feel like we’re in control. Within 1 minute of downloading the app, the user is already gleefully swiping. That gratification thread continues when she matches, sends or receives her first message from someone she knows is interested, and when she actually meets in person.

What are the lessons?

  1. Start with a solution that’s high value. If the problem isn’t worth solving, making the solution easier or more gratifying won’t help. On a scale of zero to finding your soulmate, how significant is your user’s problem?
  2. Reduce the effort. Even with something as high value as finding your soulmate, the entire genre was stigmatized because the effort was too high for most people to try it. Tinder made profile creation a 30-second step and removed the annoying requirement to send an opening message just to gauge interest. How much effort does it take for your user to start seeing any value?
  3. Reduce the time-to-value. The earlier your user receives value from the product, the more likely they are to continue to the next step. Tinder replaced the traditional profile directory with a “Hot or Not”-style game. That game was fundamentally fun, and so the user experienced value within one minute of install. When does your user first feel like they’re getting any value? Minutes? Hours? Days?

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Published in UX Collective

We believe designers are thinkers as much as they are makers. Curated stories on UX, Visual & Product Design. https://linktr.ee/uxc

Written by Anton

building the metaverse @pocketworlds

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