Tinder
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Tinder is a mobile dating application that allows users to meet others based on physical attraction. Users swipe right if they like the person or swipe left if they do not. A match is made when two users both swipe right on each other. Tinder is popular on college campuses, where students use the dating service for many possible reasons. It has been known to be a hook-up application, but due to Tinder’s simplicity, users also use it for downtime fun, to make new friends, or to find their future partner.
History
Sean Rad, Justin Mateen, and Jonathan Badeen are the founders of Tinder. Sean and Justin both grew up in Los Angeles and knew of each other since they both went to private high school together. However, they did not become close until math class freshman year at USC in Fall 2004 [1].
In 2009, Sean launched Adly, a celebrity social advertising platform where users create campaigns [2]. He shortly sold the company in Fall 2011 due to a decrease of interest in dealing with celebrities and advertisers. Sean then joined an incubator called Hatch Labs, funded by IAC and Xtreme Labs (Hatch Labs was later shut down in 2013) [3]. There Sean met Jonathan Badeen, and the three of them came up with the idea of Tinder. This dating application mimics another application called “Hot or Not”, a rating site where users rate the attractiveness of the person in the photograph on a scale of 1-10 [4].
Tinder was seeded on a few college campuses and later spread to more due to the traction and attention it got from college students. The dating application started off with a user base majority made up of 18-24 years old and has now expanded widely to other age groups, where 45% of users are between 25 – 34 years old [5]. (put up statistics graph)
Tinder was released on September 12, 2012. As of March 2015, there are 196 countries who use Tinder, roughly 50 million users, and 26 million matches made daily [6].- ↑ [http://time.com/4837/tinder-meet-the-guys-who-turned-dating-into-an-addiction/ Inside Tinder: Meet the Guys Who Turned Dating Into An Addiction]
