What is Tinder?

Founded in 2012, Tinder is basically a dating app or website that allows you to virtually match singles in your area and around the world.

At the time of its launch, Tinder was a pioneering app in the online dating space. Following its massive success, similar dating apps, including Hinge, PlentyOfFish, and OkCupid — all owned by the same parent company and Match Group — came to market and began to appear.

In general, Tinder's app works pretty simply: swipe to indicate who you're most interested in, and that's it. Anyone can sign up for free on the toy website, but Tinder offers some membership-based premium features that you can opt for.

Here's what you should know about Tinder:

How does Tinder work?

Tinder is commonly referred to as a "hookup app," but at its core it's a dating app that works like its competitors, offering a gateway to relationships and even marriage for a more tech-savvy generation.

It supports traditional dating culture, which usually encourages you to go out and interact with strangers in physical spaces. Instead, it brings to the fore the diverse dating pool that you - or may or may not - have access to directly to you at a bar or club.

To use Tinder, you must create a profile that identifies you, specifying your current location, age, gender, distance, and gender preferences. Then you start swiping. After you see someone's photo and a short bio, you can swipe left if you dislike them or right if you like them. If another person swiped right, then you are both matched and you can start chatting with each other.

Tinder previously used an infamous Elo rating system to match users, essentially pushing people forward by a user-driven attractiveness algorithm. The more people like and swipe on a person's profile, the higher their rank. That profile will then start appearing with the same rank. 

As a result, this has created the dating bubble, defeating the purpose and benefits of a dating app, which is to help you find the perfect match more quickly and efficiently beyond the simple physical attraction factor, which is usually very easy.

It has since abandoned this approach, and in a 2019 blog post, the company revealed some of what goes into its matching system. "Our algorithm is designed to be open," the company wrote in its entirety. "Today, we don't rely on Elo one bit - although it's still important to consider both parties' profile preferences for matchmaking."

According to Tinder, the app prioritizes the most active users at all times and will match you with others who are active at the same time. It never collects race or income data, but it does take into account the details you provided when you signed up — things like how far someone is from you, their gender and age.

With new features like Smart Photos, which identify photos that Tinder thinks work best for you, Tinder can spit out your next potential date.

Tinder Premium Services

Although Tinder is free, there are tiered subscription options that you can pay monthly or annually for. You can subscribe to premium services for Tinder in one-month, six-month, or one-year increments, whichever works best for you. To upgrade your Tinder account, you should always go to your settings. Then you can do the rest yourself.. 

Tinder Gold 

Starting at around $18 per month, the Premier feature gives you all the Tinder Plus benefits but you can also view the profiles of people who like you before you say yes or no, as well as a curated selection of top picks for potential matches that change daily. In it They will come with specific labels that describe them with selling points like "fashionista," "creative" and "adventurer."