Images: Courtesy of Tinder
Tinder may soon dethrone Snapchat as everyone’s favorite app for sending sexy, self-destructing selfies.
On Thursday, the popular dating app launched a new ephemeral photo-sharing feature called Moments. The tool, says Tinder CEO Sean Rad, should make it easier for people to start conversations on the app. “We’re approaching 2 billion matches, and we’ve built an awesome product that helps break down the barriers when it comes to making new relationships,” he tells WIRED. “But in the process of forming so many new connections, we realized users need a better way to get to know their matches.”
The one thing every smartphone user wants is a quick and easy way to communicate.
In other words, Moments will make it easier to flirt. But while this feature may be a natural extension of Tinder’s core business, it’s also part of a larger trend emerging in the tech industry: so many companies want to be more like Snapchat. That fact was evident at Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference this week, where the technology giant announced that its new iMessage service would include messages that self-destruct, the feature most synonymous with Snapchat. And Facebook not only tried to acquire Snapchat outright for $3 billion last year, according to reports, but it also built its own failed Snapchat knockoff, known as Poke.
What all of these companies are realizing–including Tinder–is that while social networks may devolve, mobile games may flame out, and dating apps may grow stale, the one thing every smartphone user wants is a quick and easy way to communicate. Nothing draws users back into an app like knowing they might have five new messages waiting for them. And as Snapchat’s success has proved, photos are now becoming the most popular form of messaging there is. By co-opting a bit of the Snapchat playbook, these companies are hoping they can keep their audiences coming back for more.
The Moments feature draws not only from Snapchat, but also from Instagram, allowing users to take a photo, stick a filter on it, doodle over it, write a message, and broadcast it to all their Tinder matches. Matches can view or like the photos for 24 hours before they self-destruct, but the person who took the photo can keep her own gallery of “moments” forever.
Though Rad says Tinder doesn’t have a problem keeping users engaged, he acknowledges that for many users, getting a conversation started on Tinder is a challenge. And if you’re not actually talking to anyone on an app like Tinder–which is all about meeting people–logic would have it that you might give up on the app sooner. By effectively giving users more talking points, the Moments feature could convince even Tinder’s most timid users that there’s a reason to stay.
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