Item: Tinder
Rating: 4.0
Author: The Big Fling

Last Update: April 23, 2020

What’s Great

Registration is Quick and Easy – You can login to Tinder using your Facebook account, which pre-fills information like your name, age, location and interests as well as showing you if you and your matches share any mutual friends.
Easy to Use – One of the best things about Tinder is that it’s designed to be used in short bursts, on the go. You can meet somebody on the app during your morning or after-work commute or even while waiting in line at the supermarket!
No Messages Unless You Match – Unlike other dating apps, you won’t be bombarded with messages from members you have zero interest in. With Tinder, you’ll only be able to message each other if you have both swiped right, which means you ‘like’ each other.

What’s Not-So-Great

No Messages Unless You Match – Tinder’s best feature is also one of its worst. When you swipe right to ‘like’ somebody, you then have to wait for them to also ‘like’ you before you can send them a message. If they never swipe right on you, it just wasn’t meant to be!
No Rewind Unless You Upgrade - Upgrading to paid membership lets you rewind if you accidentally swipe left. If you have free membership and you accidentally swipe left to dismiss somebody, there’s not a lot you can do other than hope they reappear in your list again at some point.
Can Be Superficial – Tinder has received a lot of bad press for the superficial ‘game’ like nature of the app. It can be addictive swiping left and right, and when you finally get a match, the app asks if you want to ‘keep on playing.’

Registration is Quick and Easy – You can login to Tinder using your Facebook account, which pre-fills information like your name, age, location and interests as well as showing you if you and your matches share any mutual friends.
Easy to Use – One of the best things about Tinder is that it’s designed to be used in short bursts, on the go. You can meet somebody on the app during your morning or after-work commute or even while waiting in line at the supermarket!
No Messages Unless You Match – Unlike other dating apps, you won’t be bombarded with messages from members you have zero interest in. With Tinder, you’ll only be able to message each other if you have both swiped right, which means you ‘like’ each other.

No Messages Unless You Match – Tinder’s best feature is also one of its worst. When you swipe right to ‘like’ somebody, you then have to wait for them to also ‘like’ you before you can send them a message. If they never swipe right on you, it just wasn’t meant to be!
No Rewind Unless You Upgrade - Upgrading to paid membership lets you rewind if you accidentally swipe left. If you have free membership and you accidentally swipe left to dismiss somebody, there’s not a lot you can do other than hope they reappear in your list again at some point.
Can Be Superficial – Tinder has received a lot of bad press for the superficial ‘game’ like nature of the app. It can be addictive swiping left and right, and when you finally get a match, the app asks if you want to ‘keep on playing.’

Review

Tinder is one of, if not the most, popular dating apps on the planet. Although it’s gained a bit of a reputation for hookup culture, the app today has over 50 million users and has been the cause of countless long relationships too!

The Tinder Brand

Tinder is the brainchild of Justin Mateen, Sean Rad and Jonathan Badeen. After meeting at high school, the first two co-founded the app at just 27 years old, quickly earning places on the Forbes 2013 ‘30 Under 30’ list. Jonathan Badeen came on board after meeting Rad and Mateen at a tech incubator and today the app is owned by IAC.

Everybody knows about Tinder and when it comes to dating, it’s the app that’s most talked about, so the founders are clearly doing something right when it comes to marketing their brand! The iconic ‘swipe’ feature has been imitated by many other apps across many different industries.

Registration

Signing up to Tinder is pretty simple and designed to be quick and easy to do on-the-go. You can register with your email address (which sends you a verification email) or sign in with your Facebook account. One of the benefits of registering your Facebook account with Tinder is that your profile is then pre-filled with information like your name, interests, age and location.

The app will then also show you if you and your matches have any mutual friends in common. Tinder is location based, so you’ll need to grant the app access to your location in order for it to work.

Desktop/Mobile Capability

Tinder is a mobile app that’s available for iOS and Android devices. There’s no desktop or mobile version of the site as it’s designed for use on the go, to help you find a date or a hookup when you’re out and about.

User Experience

Tinder is a bright, colorfully designed app with a clean interface. It’s well laid out and really simple to navigate, so once you’ve swiped through a few photos, you’ll soon get the hang of it. You can input search criteria such as gender and age range and the app automatically detects your location, giving you the option to search for matches within a specific distance. It then presents you with photos of users matching your search criteria, and you can swipe left to dismiss them or right to ‘like’ them.

One of Tinder’s main benefits is that nobody will know you’ve ‘liked’ them unless they also swipe right on you. This means you won’t ever get hundreds of messages clogging up your inbox from members you’re not interested in.

Unfortunately, not everybody you match with will message you back or reply to your messages and many people treat Tinder like a game, swiping right on everyone they see to maximize their potential matches. Swiping can get addictive! The app is generally pretty reliable but there are sometimes login issues, particularly if you’ve connected the app to your Facebook account. Messages sometimes disappear and later reappear too.

Safety and Security

Tinder is linked to your Facebook account (if you choose this option), so anybody matching with you will see your personal information like your name, age, gender and location. The app is password protected if you’re registering with your email address, otherwise it will log you in automatically if you’ve linked it to Facebook.

Tinder’s lack of encryption has come under fire in the past for enabling people to ‘spy’ on your swipes. There has been concern over this security flaw but the app developers are constantly working to make Tinder safer to use.

Customer Service

If you experience any issues with the app, you might find it tricky to get through to Tinder support. On the help page of their website, Tinder has created a comprehensive FAQ list, including ‘A Guide to Tinder’, ‘Something’s Not Working’ and ‘Safety, Security and Legal’. In combination these three knowledge bases should provide answers to most queries and issues you’ll have.

However, it isn’t immediately obvious how to get in touch with the support team if you need more help as there’s no email address listed and most of the FAQs simply provide you with a step-by-step solution.

Conclusion

There’s a reason why Tinder is the most popular dating app around – it’s fun! The swiping feature lets you meet matches while you’re on the go and it can be pretty addictive. Although it’s not the ideal place to meet people if you’re looking for a long-term relationship, for hook-ups or casual dating, Tinder is a good bet.

The lack of customer support and a contact email for the support team may be of concern, particularly if you can’t use the app or are locked out of your account, and the security flaws that have popped up in the past might put some people off too. Still though, with 50 million users, Tinder is one of the most popular brands in the world at the minute, so we give it an 8!

Try Tinder

Tinder

What’s Great

What’s Not-So-Great

Review

Quick Link

More

Contact