In just two years, dating app Tinder had acquired 50 million users– each of them logging into the app an average 11 times a day.
Prior to Tinder, online dating services like The Leading Online Dating Site for Singles & Personals : Match.com
and OkCupid were the popular ways to know someone romantically.
However, anyone who has tried them will tell you that they are tedious
and quite frustrating.
But ever since Tinder
was released in 2012, the entire online dating scene, heck, even the
offline dating scene has been changed forever.
This has also sparked a new era, represented by a whole slew of apps entering the market that feel a lot like Tinder.
So how did a single app change the entire dating scene, and inspire a whole new generation of dating apps in its wake?
1.
Tinder knocked out traditional dating services with an app that’s easy
to use, minimizing creepy spam and the fear of rejection.
Every word-of-mouth story begins with a crucial ingredient: an awesome product that really works and solves existing problems.
For Tinder, they had an app that totally obliterated the obstacles and frustrations of existing dating services:
A. Effortless to set-up and use:
No more filling up of forms: simply link up with your Facebook profile
and you’re good to go. To use the app, simply swipe right if you like
that person, and swipe left if you don’t.
B. Eliminated fear of rejection and creepy spammers with the double-opt-in feature:
In Tinder, swiping left or right is the only action you can take,
unless both of you had swiped right for each other’s profiles. In that
case, the option to start messaging would appear.
Firstly, you’d only know when the person you like liked you back, and not when you had been rejected.
As Nick Aull, a Tinder college rep says, the app is:
a way to meet new people without being creepy. And it’s a confidence-booster for a lot of people.
C. Made spontaneous meetups easy with the proximity feature:
Tinder users can adjust their proximity filter to only show those
within their immediate vicinity. This helps to facilitate spontaneous
dates, hook-ups and to find that cute girl or guy sitting behind you in
the event hall.
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2. Tinder acquired more than 10,000 new users by getting sorority girls and fraternity boys to sign up for the app.
Tinder’s CMO Whitney Wolfe. Image: Vaunte
Tinder’s
early customer acquisition success can be attributed to then-CMO
Whitney Wolfe’s idea – travelling to colleges around the country.
In an interview with Bloomberg, Tinder’s technical co-founder Joe Munoz explained:
(Whitney Wolfe) would go to chapters of her sorority, do her presentation, and have all the girls at the meetings install the app. Then she’d go to the corresponding brother fraternity—they’d open the app and see all these cute girls they knew.
Tinder
started off with less than 5,000 users before Whitney Wolfe made her
trip, and had around 15,000 by the time she returned.
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3. Tinder has college campus reps host Tinder-themed parties where guests need to download the app before entering.
To boost their domination of the college population, Tinder hires “college campus reps” to help promote the app to their peers.
They
do so by organizing college parties, with some specific entry
requirements. Some make it compulsory for guests to download the app
before entering, while others require guests to find a date on Tinder,
and bring them to the party.
These guidelines help the company ensure that their product gets the maximum exposure and downloads.
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With
an app that changed the entire dynamics of meeting people, dating and
hooking up, Tinder has been extremely popular amongst young adults,
especially millenials.
But
indeed, such a world-changing app wouldn’t have become popular if not
for the early decision to engage the college demographic. With them
spearheading conversations about Tinder and its ability to hook you for
casual sex or dates, it was only a matter of time before the world knew
about the app.

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