Day 3 - The Platform Politics of Tinder
Authors: Juliana Guyt, Mariam Rija, and Maria Corbett
Background & History
The Tinder app was created by Sean Rad and Justin Mateen (Stampler, 2014). The two had gone to the same high school, but did not collaborate until they attended the same college, University of Southern California, in 2004. In 2011, the idea for Tinder was sparked by the two and by September 12, 2012 the iPhone app was officially released and available for download in the app store. The app began its claim to fame when the inventors introduced it to the Greek Life on their campus (Stampler, 2014). It’s popularity quickly spread across campus and proceeded to expand to other colleges. By May of 2013, Tinder had exploded in popularity and became one of the top 25 social networking apps available on the web based on frequency of use and number of users. By the summer of 2013, an Android app was released and even more people were able to contribute to the social media platform. Until 2014, Sean was the CEO of the company, Justin was the marketing director, and the number of employees was about 30. In 2014, accusations were made against Justin and he left the company. In response to this, by 2015 Sean resigned as CEO and instead took the role of president of the company and remained a member of the Board of Directors. Chris Payne became the new Tinder CEO and hired more staff, increasing the number of employees to about 65. In March of the same year, the free app began to gain profit when Tinder Plus was introduced (AppMess, 2015). This addition made it possible to make in app purchases to eliminate the limit on how many people one could “like” in a given amount of time. Today, it is estimated that there are 800 million swipes on the app daily and 10 million of those swipes are matches (news.com.au).
Profile
Profiles are first linked with individual’s Facebook accounts. Then to ensure identity, a confirmation code is sent to a cell phone number you provide via text. After verification, you can upload pictures of yourself and add a description of yourself to be publicly viewed. It is unclear if you can chose to limit who sees your profile, but one can chose what accounts you view by filtering through customizing your settings for what age, distance, and gender you want to see and rate (Newall, 2016).
Matches
Based on those in app settings and the information your Facebook provides, the app then gives you people to rate by either swiping left to reject someone or swipe right to potentially make a match. If the other person swipes right for you as well, it is then said to be a match and the two individuals then are encouraged to begin talking over the chat system. Chat messages cannot be sent unless it is a mutual swipe right, or match. The audience for this app is mainly single college students between the ages of 18-24 (Newall, 2016).
Communication and Broadcasting
As mentioned before, there is a limited amount of information that anyone is able to view on an individual’s profile. The required fields that anyone can view include your name and age. The user can choose to include pictures or choose not to. Your location in relation to the user is also viewable, but only through the number of miles away and not a precise location. Once a match is made and messaging is enabled, there is no limit to what individuals chose to share.
Feed
One’s feed is a stream of profiles the app deems to be fitting for you based on what information you allow the app to analyze. The types of profiles can be narrowed by specifying settings. People’s profile usually has a picture, name, age, and description. A picture of a person usually shows up and based on what their profile looks like you make a snap decision, almost like a game, and either swipe right or left. You also can press a green or red button instead of swiping, which has the same effect.
Interesting Info
The app originally was created as a "social discovery platform" made for “friends, dates, relationships, and everything in between”. However, today the app is most known for it’s reputation in facilitating sexting. Some of the related tags on the app store include “hook-up”, “dating chat”, and even “lesbian dating”. However, not everyone on the site is looking for a date. In fact 42% of the users are reportedly in relationship, and of those 42%, 30% are married! (Rankin, 2015).
Performative infrastructures
Tinder utilizes a matching algorithm that analyzes data related to users swiping left or right as they come across other users. Ryan Ogle, the CTO of Tinder, explained the algorithm as being “machine learning technology” that “assesses and interprets the signals sent by our millions of users” with the purpose of their algorithm being to “provide users with the most relevant potential matches to result in more meaningful connections” (Crook, 2015). The algorithm includes technical data points, which involves information like how long a user views a profile or if they are using profile information to find the person on other forms of social media like facebook or instagram. Informational data points are also part of the algorithm, and this ranges from profile points on education and employment to a user’s propensity to swipe right when they see emojis in the description.
Structural Affordances
“Networked publics’ affordances do not dictate participants’ behavior, but they do configure the environment in a way that shapes participants’ engagement” according to danah boyd (boyd, 2010). Tinder does not broadcast content and is therefore not scalable, as the purpose is to only connect people together and not to share ideas and information as with facebook. The goal is not to achieve virility or a “microcelebrity status” as anonymity is preferred, which is potentially linked to the stigma of being involved with online dating, particularly a site with a “hook up” reputation like Tinder. However, part of tinder and tinder culture is the use of pickup lines, often by men and directed towards women, and screenshots of hilarious or particularly bad pickup lines are shared and can become viral. There is a difference though in that the poster still remains unknown for the most part. Descriptions in the profile or unusual profile pictures may also be spread around but achieving “microcelebrity status” is rare. Because content is not generated through tinder, hashtags are not used on the site. This limits searchability. These structural affordances are both shaped by these features and performative infrastructures and in turn influence and create Tinder’s unique culture.
What sorts of dynamics and social practices emerge?
According to www.askmen.com, the whole purpose of Tinder is to provide an easy, not to mention online, method of ‘hooking up with other individuals, specifically those who meet your personal preferences in a mate (Holden, n.d.).
Here is how this specific dating site works - Tinder goes through and generates people that meet some of the partner preferences that you indicated on your own personal profile, these people show up on your screen, and then, based off of your personal preferences, you swipe right if you find them attractive, and you swipe left if you do not find them to be attractive. If two of the people swipe right on each other, then Tinder deems them a match for each other.
When users are matched, they are then able to converse through chat with each other. Participation is increased by this feature through this way. However, it is through the new addition of “Moments” that Tinder has become a much more ideal of communication. This additional feature is the trademark of Tinder because it allows the matches to initiate communication with each other in a way that is different and much more comfortable than face to face conversation often is (Holden, n.d.).
However, if people choose to engage in face to face conversation or other romantic communication with each other, Tinder can be thought of as the instigator of this kind of conversation in the sense that while it does not directly produce this kind of conversation and interaction itself, it can oftentimes lead to stronger relationships that end up being very intimate, with the partners being in close contact and a close relationship with each other. In other words, Tinder can be thought as the gateway into more serious and committed relationships (Holden, n.d.).
Tinder is what you make it. This social media website can be used solely to talk to people on the internet, and nothing beyond that OR it can be used to form relationships, and then expand on these relationships made online by advancing on to making arrangements with the person that you met with online to meet in person. Both of these outcomes have frequently occurred among people. It just depends on the consensus and commitment to meeting the other individual that both individuals have.
This platform fulfills the purpose of spurring (instigating) relationships. Additionally, the establishment of the new feature, “Moments” can be thought as the baseline for establishing new relationships.
The unspoken rules of engagement here on this specific social networking site is that “if you swipe right, you think I’m hot and find me attractive. If you swipe left, you don’t consider me to be attractive and you don’t find in me what you are looking for in your vision of the ideal partner.
In a polymedia environment, what sorts of communication or interactions does this platform enable/constrain? Why is it used? What possibilities lie in its functionality?
The different possibilities that lie within this functionality is 1) an intimate relationship can be made through the people that Tinder users find and connect with on this website 2) an intimate relationship is made and shortly after, broken because of the advancement made on Tinder.
This specific platform is used as the initial stage of finding potential partners, some of which follow through and actually do become intimate partners, others of which remain as friendships, and even still, others in which no further interaction takes place.
References
Anon. 2015. “Tinder: Brief History and Milestones - AppMess.” AppMess. Retrieved January 13, 2016 (http://appmess.com/news/25144-tinder-history-and-milestones).
Anon. n.d. “The Real Story behind Hugely Successful Dating App Tinder.”NewsComAu. Retrieved January 13, 2016 (http://www.news.com.au/finance/business/the-real-story-behind-hugely-successful-dating-app-tinder/story-fn5lic6c-1226856885645).
boyd, danah. 2010. “Social Network Sites As Networked Publics: Affordances, Dynamics, and Implications” edited by Z. Papacharissi.Networked Self: Identity, Community, and Culture on Social Network Sites 39–58. Retrieved January 27, 2016 (http://www.danah.org/papers/2010/snsasnetworkedpublics.pdf).
Crook, Jordan. 2015. “Tinder Introduces A New Matching Algorithm.” Tech Crunch. Retrieved January 13, 2016 (http://techcrunch.com/2015/11/11/tinder-matching-algorithm/#.9ecvkdn:g5fz).
Holden, Madeleine. n.d. “Dating With Tinder: The Definitive Guide To Doing Tinder Right.” AskMen. Retrieved January 27, 2016 (http://www.askmen.com/dating/curtsmith/dating-with-tinder.html).
Newall, Sally. 2016. “Tinder: The Online Dating App Everyone's STILL Talking About.” Marie Claire. Retrieved January 27, 2016 (http://www.marieclaire.co.uk/blogs/543941/tinder-the-online-dating-app-that-everyone-s-talking-about.html).
Rankin, Seija. 2015. “Uh-Oh! Almost Half Of Tinder Users Aren't Actually Single.” E Online . Retrieved January 13, 2016 (http://www.eonline.com/news/654608/uh-oh-almost-half-of-tinder-users-aren-t-actually-single).
Stampler , Laura. 2014. “Inside Tinder: Meet The Guys Who Turned Dating Into an Addiction.” Time. Retrieved January 13, 2016 (http://time.com/4837/tinder-meet-the-guys-who-turned-dating-into-an-addiction/).