Tinder – Mobile dating app with radius radar

Tinder – the mobile dating app for singles tested and compared

Overall impression: [Rating:75/100]

Tinder is a free mobile app for Apple's iOS, Android and Windows Phone, which enables singles to quickly and easily meet new acquaintances in their area.

In addition to a smartphone, you also need your own Facebook profile to use the flirting app.

This mobile dating app from the USA and was first distributed on the campus of the University of Southern California. Apparently, after a very short time, sixty percent of the users were already using the program daily, and a majority of these users were even using it several times a day (as of 2013).

However, due to its great success in the States, it is also seen as having great potential here. Tinder practically sets new standards, especially when it comes to design and user-friendliness.

To date, no other comparable app has managed to be so pleasant and intuitive to use. The design of the app looks very elegant and high-quality and does not contain unnecessary bells and whistles.

sparked a real hype around Tinder during the 2014 Olympic Games when she revealed her dating secret for the Sochi Olympics on Twitter. During this period, Tinder recorded significant increases in membership.

The flirting and dating application has since blossomed from an innocent flirting and dating app into a real pick-up app. The whole world is talking about it, people now use Tinder to quickly find a hookup (or a quick one-night stand) while on the go or on vacation.

How does the app work?

The flirt app is based on the “Hot or Not” principle : After starting, members from the surrounding area are searched for and then these profiles and their photos are displayed one after the other.

In order to optimize these person suggestions and tailor them to the user's personal preferences, Tinder accesses the user's Facebook profile and thus obtains basic information about the user and analyzes their information. The geographical location, the number of mutual friends and common interests play a special role here.

By clicking on the corresponding buttons (a green heart or a red X) or by simply swiping to the left or right, you can now show that you are interested in the other person - or not.

Only those users who have rated each other positively in this way can exchange messages. This is intended to avoid overflowing inboxes with messages from people you don't find attractive at all.

Attention: Once you have declared someone else's profile as “not attractive”, it will never be shown to you again. There is no second chance, so the selection needs to be carefully considered.

The photos that are displayed in your own profile are imported directly from Facebook. Only photos that are uploaded to your personal Facebook profile can be used - there is currently no option to upload photos within the app.

Target group and membership structure

Tinder's target group is particularly - but not exclusively - women and men between the ages of 18 and 35.

According to a 2013 study by the US market research company Paragon Poll, around 20 percent of Tinder users in the USA have met a person who they became aware of through Tinder.

Setting options and user interface

Within the flirting app you have various, fairly self-explanatory menu items to choose from, which include:

• Profile (edit your own profile)
• Home page (show new people)
• Messaging (chatting and flirting with other people)
• Settings (options menu)
• Invite (invite friends to use the app too)

The interface is very simple and elegant, yet very easy to use and easy to understand.

In the settings menu you can specify your own gender, the gender you are looking for, the radius within which you want to search for other people (1 to 100 km, distance can also be displayed in miles if desired) and the approximate age group.

You can also select a notification type (sound or vibration). Finally, in the “Settings” menu item you will also find the button to delete your own profile.

Your own profile on Tinder

As already mentioned, pictures can be selected from Facebook, which are then displayed within the dating app. However, you are limited to 6 photos. All photos can be subsequently exchanged with others as desired.

It is also possible (or in some cases mandatory) to crop photos using an in-app tool so that they can be better displayed on small cell phone displays.

In addition to the photos, you also have the option of writing a short text (up to 500 characters) about yourself, which will then be displayed to other members under your own photos.

However, no further setting options, personality tests or similar functions known from online dating are offered here.

Tinder Plus with undo button

As already mentioned in the section on how it works, suggested candidates can be sent to nirvana with a left swipe so that they are no longer displayed.

However, that also means: once you mix up the right and the left, your potential dream partner may accidentally disappear, never to be seen again. So far nothing has been possible to change this and we have had to live with the “What if…” thoughts.

This situation is now changing with the introduction of the paid premium version Tinder Plus . Among other innovations, the so-called undo button introduced here. An unwanted decision can be easily reversed with just one click.

In addition, the new “Passport” function to search for contacts around the world and not just where you are. The Plus version was recently released as an in-app purchase. If you would like to find out more about it, you can watch a short video about it on the Tinder homepage.

It is not yet known exactly how much the premium version of Tinder will cost. Initially, a test run will take place from November 5th in a few selected countries, including Great Britain, Brazil and Germany. The monthly price ranges therefore initially vary significantly depending on the country.

Monthly prices ranging from $0.99 to $19.99 are being tested. As part of the test run, only 40 percent of users should have the opportunity to try out Tinder Plus. So don't be surprised if this option isn't available to you at first.

Tinder and cheating

It is undisputed that not only singles use this dating app, but also people looking for affairs or erotic contacts outside of their own relationship.

Now here comes a little problem for people who want to hide their activities on Tinder from their own partner. Tinder is a mobile app that, like any other, appears an icon on your smartphone screen This is of course very telltale if your partner takes a quick look at your cell phone and will most likely lead to a need for explanation.

The only option available to Tinder users who want to hide their Tinder membership from their partner or friends is to move the icon to a separate folder with as many other apps as possible. This will at least make finding the icon more difficult.

Data protection and privacy protection

When it comes to protecting the data and privacy of its members, Tinder probably still owes a lot.

Firstly, it has a certain aftertaste that you can only log in via Facebook and the app therefore has access to your Facebook profile and a lot of private data.

You can also have concerns if you read the terms of use of the app provider from West Hollywood. Tinder reserves the right to carry out background checks on users (e.g. comparison with databases on sexual offenders) and to monitor all content (including direct messages).

It is also clear that the company does not handle user data squeamishly. With the first login, these give Tinder and its parent and subsidiary companies the worldwide, perpetual, irrevocable, non-exclusive and royalty-free license right to use their own content (i.e. primarily the photos, but also personal data such as age, name, gender and place of residence) to copy, transmit, distribute, publicly perform and display in future web services and to be permitted to create derivatives of the content.

In principle, Tinder grants itself the same rights for user content as the Facebook subsidiary Instagram, which was sharply criticized for precisely this because users were afraid that the photo app would sell their pictures. Tinder also allows itself to pass on user data to advertising companies and analysis companies (source: netzpiloten.de ).

Furthermore, towards the end of 2013, a New York online security company was able to prove that, due to a Tinder security hole , it was possible to determine the whereabouts of any Tinder user with an accuracy of 30 m using the so-called trilateration process.

According to security experts' advice, Tinder has made great efforts to close this gap. If you believe the reports that keep appearing on the Internet, then with basic programming knowledge it is still possible to determine the position of every Tinder user with an accuracy of one or two kilometers.

criticism

For a few Mondays there have been signs that things are getting quieter around the flirt app and that criticism is increasingly being expressed.

Of the two million people in this country who have downloaded a piece of hope from the App Store with Tinder, according to a study by the portal Online-DatingExperten.de , only 37 percent still enjoy collective flirting with a swipe command.

This could be mainly because the interests, wishes and intentions of the users do not match. 55 percent of users said they were looking for love (almost half of them men), but a symbolic 69 percent were only interested in sex. This is probably also due to the superficial nature of the photo voting on which Tinder is based.

88 percent cited boring or very sexually explicit messages and slow and often annoying dialogues as a general problem. 44 percent complained that they had not received any messages at all.

The dating expert Vera Sophie Stegner undertook an interesting self-experiment over several months on Tinder and reports about it in her blog veraliebt.de.

In the future, advertising that is mixed between the displayed user profiles will also be placed. To what extent this could affect the user experience remains to be seen.

Free services:

• Registration and use is completely free.

Paid services (Premium Version Tinder Plus):

• Undo button – allows you to undo decisions that have already been made
• Passport function – worldwide search for potential candidates (regardless of current location)

TOP:

• Use of the standard version is completely free
• Intuitive and easy to use
• Nice design and good handling
• Fast and easy registration
• Many potential flirt candidates from the surrounding area
• Very suitable for flirting while traveling or on vacation
• Quick search for potential candidates for erotic adventures
• Young and active target group
• usable worldwide

FLOP:

• Questionable data protection
• App accesses and stores extensive Facebook data
• Mandatory registration via Facebook
• The focus is on optics – sometimes very superficially
• You cannot upload your own images
• Little chance of finding real, great love; quick contacts are the priority
• Advertisements

Costs and prices:

• Tinder is completely free in the standard version
• The premium version Tinder Plus currently costs between $0.99 and $19.99 per month in the test phase. Exact pricing has not yet been finalized for Germany.

Conclusion:

This flirting and dating app is definitely a great application for spontaneous partner searches and a quick and easy way to find solo women and men in the local area.

The “Hot or Not” system ensures that only those people who find each other attractive can communicate with each other. This means for women that they don't have to constantly bother with countless uninteresting requests. There are very few fake profiles because every user needs a valid, active Facebook profile.

The design and layout of the application are modern and ensure a pleasant user experience and a high fun factor.

However, the disadvantages are certainly the lack of protection of personal data and the privacy of users as well as the in-depth options for creating profiles and the very superficial evaluation of other people.

Contacts are established quickly, but the probability that these contacts will result in a permanent partnership is not particularly high (but still possible).

Tinder has proven particularly promising for the following things: a quick hookup, an adventure, or a vacation love.