Swiping meant dating this decade, and it’s time for a change
Reported today on The Verge
For the full article visit: https://www.theverge.com/2019/12/11/21004916/tinder-bumble-okcupid-swipe-decade-online-dating-match-change
Reported today in The Verge.
Swiping meant dating this decade, and it's time for a change
Tinder is the swipe, and the swipe is Tinder. But as we close out the decade, it might be time to retire the swipe we once knew. Tinder's introduction in 2012 ushered in not only the beginning of an era in which seemingly everyone dates online, but also the beginning of the "swipe" as a design and interaction concept. A left swipe means no and a right swipe means yes - but of course, you already knew that.
While it feels rudimentary to explain the swipe, it once seemed radical. Before its existence, online daters built profiles, on a website, that took hours to perfect. OkCupid gave users seemingly endless questions to answer, and eHarmony focused on personality quizzes, all in an effort to assign people scores and offer compatibility figures. Then came the swipe. It removed the work from online dating and instead asked one essential question: do you think this person is hot? If yes, swipe right. If no, swipe left. Easy.
The swipe was born only seven years ago, and in that time, it's conquered online dating and made it mainstream. Dating apps are expected to top 25 million users in the US this year, and as of 2017, 39 percent of heterosexual couples in the US said they met online, up from 22 percent in 2009, according to a recent study.
Tinder lowered the barriers to online dating and gamified it. Profiles are bare, and picking people you're interested in is borderline thoughtless. Instead of requiring work up front, daters download an app and immediately start matching. Even more brilliant, Tinder, at one time, required daters to link their Facebook account, filling in some essential profile details like their age and school. It relied on phones' built-in GPS to determine wher