3 things to know about Tinder’s new group feature

The dating app is trying to keep more of its customers

Tinder launched a group feature in an effort to help retain users who get into relationships. Here are a few things to know:

1. ‘You tend to lose your best customers’ when you’re a dating app

According to this article on Forbes:

The trouble with Tinder, and every other dating app, is that you tend to lose your best customers. Once someone finds a long-term mate via the service, they stop using the service. Tinder CEO Sean Rad has been working on ways to push Tinder’s utility beyond dates without hurting its core matchmaking feature. ‘We want to expand our membership and use case–create another way to use Tinder even if you’re in a relationship.’

Tinder Social is Rad’s first big push toward that mission. ‘Tinder has changed how people meet one-on-one. But we also meet new people by going out with our friends—the best nights with our friends are the ones when you stumble upon another group and make new connections,’ says Tinder founder Sean Rad. ‘With Tinder Social, I can say that I’m going out, what I’m looking to do and who I’m going out with. It lets you know what cool things people are doing and makes the evening much more interesting.’

2. Tinder doesn’t want to be known as a group sex app

According to this article from BBC:

But one expert said Tinder Social might be seen as a group sex feature.

‘Tinder is seen by many as being a hook-up site,’ commented Ben Wood from the CCS Insight consultancy.
‘So, it needs to be careful. By expanding in this direction, rather than becoming a more interesting social meeting service, it could be perceived as an orgy app.’

Tinder’s chief executive Sean Rad, however, stressed that it was not about targeting this ‘niche’ activity.
‘It definitely allows you to make connections beyond just romantic ones,’ he explained.

‘We look at Tinder as not just being a dating app, but capturing your entire social life. And your social life has so many different aspects to it.’

3. Other apps have tried this strategy

According to this article in Daily Dot:

It’s not the first app to try and match groups of friends together to make plans via app. Grouper, the invite-only app available in New York, matches two groups of three, and Squad is a group date swiping app. But because of Tinder’s existing popularity as a matchmaking app, this particular group-matching feature will likely be much more popular than standalone apps on the market.