The secret behind Tinder, according to its founders, is that it’s not really about dating at all. Well, it is— the app has led to billions of matches and millions of romantic encounters. But that’s the result the app provides. What attracts people to it in the first place? The fact that at its core, Tinder is a game.
“Nobody joins Tinder because they’re looking for something,” Former CEO Sean Rad said in an interview with Time Magazine. “They join because they want to have fun. It doesn’t even matter if you match because swiping is so fun.”
According to Sean, the founding team of Tinder put countless hours into developing the game-like vibe of Tinder— a process that led to a lot of disagreement.
“I wouldn’t call it bickering,” Rad says. “I’d call it debating… actually I wouldn’t call it a debate, rather a collaboration.” This ‘collaboration’ involved everything from where to place icons to how matching would work inside the app.
Sean Rad made many controversial statements while he was at the helm of the company. In one interview, he made uncomfortable jokes about people with mental disorders, saying, “Justin needed help meeting people because he had, what’s that disorder you have where you don’t leave the house?” The disgraced former CEO
In fact, one of the most transformative features that Tinder unleashed on the world isn’t related to dating or relationships at all. It’s as simple as the action of swiping left or right.
That’s right— before Tinder, virtually no apps used side-swiping gestures to display different content on the smartphone screen. They all used onscreen buttons or icons. Even Tinder initially launched without the swipe functionality, until one of its founders was trying to remove fog from the mirror in their bathroom after a shower and was struck by how simple the act of swiping from left to right was.
Thus, the world’s most addictive game was created. Want proof about the effect Tinder has on people at a physiological level?
When you feel attraction to someone, your heart rate is elevated. There are companion apps to Tinder that use smart watches or other sensors to register your heart rate, making them able to tell whether you’re experiencing feelings of attraction when you look at pictures on someone’s Tinder profile. The app will then automatically swipe left or right based on your heart rate.
If that’s not proof of the addictive power of dating through apps like Tinder, we don’t know what is.
