Tinder is pivoting away from its signature endless swiping, instead embracing artificial intelligence to revitalise matchmaking for Gen Z and combat app fatigue.
The world’s largest dating application is rolling out a swathe of new features, hoping to re-engage younger users. These innovations leverage AI to identify personality traits for more tailored connections, alongside initiatives promoting real-life dating and student-specific matching.
Hillary Paine, Tinder’s vice president of product management, said the app was “invented for millennials” and therefore “built for a generation that was really geared towards convenience”.
But she said Gen Z, which makes up about 60% of its user base, wants different things when it comes to dating.
She said: “We’re hearing more and more from young daters that app fatigue is real, not just in the dating space but generally how much time they’re spending on their phones.
“There’s been this craving from younger daters to get out into the real world and almost more serendipitously meet new people and start dating.
“They’re looking for authenticity and compatibility rather than convenience and volume.
“A lot of the work that we’re doing is in reaction to this new generation’s ways of dating.”
Tinder, which launched in 2012, helped bring online dating into the mainstream and is now the world’s most-used app with more than 630 million downloads.
The Los Angeles-based company is owned by Match Group, which owns a raft of dating platforms including Hinge and OkCupid.
New features for the app include an AI tool, which users can opt into, to scan the camera roll on people’s phones and spot patterns such as interests, lifestyle and elements of their personality.
This, along with asking the user specific questions, means they can receive a daily curated recommendation for a match.
Other new features include music and astrology “modes” to help people find matches based on specific tastes – building on the college or university mode for students to connect to others on their campus.
Nearly 85% of users of its double date feature, launched in the UK last summer, are under 30, and it experienced a surge in invites during peak events such as Christmas and New Year’s Eve.
Meanwhile, Tinder said it was piloting a new events feature in Los Angeles in a bid to tap into growing demand for real-life experiences, as well as a soon-to-be-launched video speed dating option.
