Tinder: The Unique Story Behind The Swipes

For the uninitiated, Tinder is a smartphone app that at first seems like a higher tech version of “hot or not.” Users are shown photos of nearby potential matches and can swipe right to “like” and left for “nope.” Mutual right swipes result in a match, followed by the prompt to either send a message or “keep playing.” This “Keep playing! Keep playing!” mantra has led to an epidemic of 500 million swipes (and 5 million matches) a day.

As soon Tinder launched in the year 2012, it became the next big wave of change to hit the world after the debut of internet. Just like every major revolutionary idea, the impetus for Tinder occurred to one of the founders while doing an extremely menial task, going to the bathroom! Remember the online card game solitaire? When the largest online dating platform was first created, profiles of the users was stacked like a digital stack of cards.

The app was founded by Sean Rad, Jonathan Badeen and Justin Mateen, a trio of 27 year old entrepreneurs who “seeded” it in the University of Southern California with just 300 people. By the end of the week, the platform had 1000 users and a brand new craze was born. Most of Tinder’s success and kick starting journey can be traced back to Badeen’s shower story.

When he got out of the shower, he realised the swiping technique used whilst cleaning the mirror was a tool which could be used on an online/mobile app. Initially, Tinder was only created for the Apple IOS format. However, when the founders realised there were a large number of people who wanted to use the platform, they moved to Android as well. While the concept for swiping your matches to left and right was a unique idea, the founders had to work really hard to turn the process into a game.

Although the app is seen largely as a fling and miss kind of a platform, the founders are looking at expanding Tinder’s user notions to being larger than one just for casual hook ups. The purpose of the platform is to grow beyond what it is now and to become a place where people meet in order to create serious relationships and bonds. Six years down the road, Tinder now has over 1.4 billion swipes a day, across 196 countries! Talk about a match made in heaven!