Tinder has become one of the bywords in modern dating over the past few years, and is especially popular with younger singles – the 16-24 age range accounts for 38% of its users, and the lion’s share at 45% belongs to the older millennial set in the 25-34 age bracket.
While even those who have never used the notorious app tend to be aware of the concept around it and the whole ‘swipe left or right’ method of establishing whether you are interested in someone based on their picture and a brief profile, what non-users may not have known is how much of a hassle it used to be when it came to how to upload photos to Tinder.
Too Tied to Facebook
The reason users found putting their pictures on Tinder to be a pain was that it originally only allowed you to use pictures that existed already on your Facebook page. While this would of course make it harder for people to create fake identities on the dating app, it also made things inconvenient for sincere users.
Problems with the Old Method
For one thing, some people simply don’t use Facebook, particularly in the younger sector where its popularity has been dropping off for years now. For another, the way people may want to sell themselves on Tinder to potential dates may not be the same way they want people on their Facebook page to see them. While a woman may want to put a bikini shot on her Tinder profile, she may not want to put this on Facebook and seem vain or attention seeking. A man may want to put that shirtless shot that shows off his abs on his dating profile, but may know his friends will make fun of him mercilessly if he uses it as his Facebook profile.
Users could get around this by adding pictures to Facebook and setting the security on them so that only they could see them, but this obviously wasn’t ideal when all they really wanted to do was take a picture already stored on their phone and use it on Tinder – also on their phone. This was the most highly requested change for Tinder from its user community, and one which has now been implemented.
Gifs
Using gifs from the Giphy library in chats is another change Tinder implemented in response to demand. While not as serious a bugbear for users as the photo thing, using gifs in IM conversations is something people are used to being able to do, and they have become a fairly well accepted way of reacting in a humorous way that says more than an emoji. Facebook, too came under pressure to add gifs to comments a while back, and this is now a standard part of their interface.
On social and dating sites, images are very important to people, and gifs allow for a communication method ideal for flirting or casual chats due to their light-hearted nature. If you are looking to build a business around anything socially related, giving people freedom when it comes to the pictures they can use to represent themselves can be a big key to success.
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