Tinder Offers $500-a-Month Subscription to Its Most Active Users | Hacker News Reader

Tinder Offers $500-a-Month Subscription to Its Most Active Users

bloomberg.com

39 pointsthunderbong61 comments

I didn’t really read the whole thing, but maybe this is a sneaky way to get more money from all the prostitutes that use tinder? Surely they are the “most active” users. Maybe those filters can help them find clients more frequently.

I guess this is the closest to having a "business account" on Tinder...

Could Tinder be considered a prostitute representative which is illegal?

The article is trying to draw a parallel that doesn't make any sense to me:

> Tinder parent company Match Group Inc. has experience with high-priced subscriptions for some users. In 2022, it bought The League, an invite-only dating app that targets “ambitious, career-oriented singles.” The League has a VIP plan that costs $1,000 per week. The company previously said the success of The League’s high-price subscription made Match Group rethink how it could address “high-intent users” on its other apps like Tinder.

OK, that makes sense. High-income people can advertise their income to potential mates who are looking for that. The high price signals that you are ambitious and career oriented, or at least that if you aren't, someone who is might be interested in marrying you anyway.

> The new plan announced Friday, called Tinder Select, was only offered to less than 1% of Tinder users who are among the app’s most active, the company said.

What's the point of that? Here the high price signals that... you have a lot of sex? Why are we segmenting on activity?

Tinder claims to have 75m users, so even if 0.1% of users take this up its an extra 50m-ish. I'd say thats the main point. Monetize the people that are potentially addicted somehow.

But this is only offered to highly active users. Your argument suggests it should be offered to everyone. What's the restriction for?

Consider what it is that makes each of your brands special and foster that. Isn't what every caring patent company would do?

> Why are we segmenting on activity?

Opening the app once a week will probably put you in the top 1%: https://www.nngroup.com/articles/participation-inequality/

1% of the entire user base is a massive percentage of people who use the app at all anymore: the real filter is the $500 but saying that only the "1%" qualify will help sell it to buyers.

For sure no one who's already successful on Tinder is going to pay for this

if you have a lot ctivity on tinder why would you pay 500€ ?

https://archive.ph/e99Ol

pimping as a service

there has to be some underlying economics that motivates people to pay that amount beyond casual dating or looking for a partner.

#1 Better to take one shot at $500 before paying a pick-up artist $5000-10,000 from training/conferences

#2 Imagine you make $100k USD and haven't scored a date in a decade. Wouldn't taking a gamble of $500 seem appealing just in case it finally gave you a shot?

I dunno, to me not hard to understand at all. USA is not Europe, escort prices there start $300+/hr these days, a lot more in NY/LA etc. also making $500 sound like less

When you sign up, you get quite a lot of exposure for some days to reel you in.

Due to the platform’s asymmetric ratio between men and women, your exposure drops and the women are cycled elsewhere.

You can pay a premium to maintain your exposure, so when a woman is sweeping, your face is shown at a factor 10 or 100.

It’s algorithmic pimping.

They mention 3 quarters of declining members, where are folks dating and finding people these days instead then?

they don't

Hinge and Bumble.

For me Hinge proved most successful out of everything I tried, it gave me the most matches that actually resulted in real world dates and eventually to finding my current partner of almost 3 years now.

N.B. I only ever use free versions as I do not believe in paying for these apps so cannot speak to paid versions.

In the real world maybe? I never understood the point of hookup apps like Tinder.

Tinder isn’t a hookup app for the majority of users. I met my wife on there a few years ago

> I never understood the point of hookup apps like Tinder.

Access to hundreds+ of interesting people from the comfort of your couch? I've met many interesting women on tinder, that I'd never have met "in real life", including my fiancé.

From what I understand...they don't. Everyone that I know who participated in online dating mostly just gave up on it.

That's strange, from my point of view it seems that nobody meets in real life any more, almost everyone seems to have met on Hinge

Facebook Dating worked best for me as a 48 year old, and that was after 4 years bouncing between different apps having roughly a couple of dates per month. It gets pricey, and just so time consuming.

I don't really get it, either you currently have success on tinder and don't need it or you don't and are throwing away money

depends what you are looking for. if you just want to continually hook up with new people, a better subscription might be good for you. I also didn't read the article, so I have no idea what the subscription is about

https://archive.ph/e99Ol

This makes sense. It provides a signal of seriousness by cost.

Coincidentally, my neighbor is working on a dating app that instead verifies income sheet and/or balance sheet as a proxy filter for people who want to date similar HNWIs. (It's anti-sugar*.)

Perhaps one day there will be a dating app that pairs people by appearance, stats, and interactive personality match by machine learning and does a real background check while blinding the biases of visual and profile particulars before in-person meeting so the focus is on real communication, not who's the most attractive or the best comedian. Failing that, it's easier, simpler, and cheaper to talk to people in the real world.

Makes sense business wise. I dislike that is so but probably every app should have a whale tier like this, especially high upside apps like tinder.

Active, desperate, or gullible? In my opinion, dating apps play a shell game with their customers, very much like slot machines.

When I used Tinder for like 8 years ago when it still was the hot new thing paying was a no brainer, or you drown in dudes.

I guess this is just the same thing but that there are fewer real girls nowadays so you need to pay even more to reach them.

It is a zero sum game. Like ads.

business idea. spend $500 on a profile, make yourself look handsome and you are guaranteed to find people who have lots and lots of money so you dont have to sift through crap people and suddenly you are set for life.

i suppose a lot of people would be going this route, aka golddigging

> make yourself look handsome

Plastic surgery is a lot more than $500 though.

Photoshop is probably under $20 per month if I'm not mistaken.

gimp is free

Tictoc filters take less work https://www.tiktok.com/@kellystrackofficial/video/7204177583...

Not so clever marketing ploy based on the 500 euro bank note.

Does the 500 include guaranteed visits from vetted beauties?

at such price point I bet they can hire a "professinonal" and offer them to someone who's desperate/frustrated, like natural perfect match once a few months. with extensive telemetry they can detect who is actually frustrated to the point of leaving 500$/m subscription. probably illegal

Yea that doesn't make much sense

what a dystopian world that would be

I guess we've been living in this dystopian world for 10,000 years, since that's the oldest known profession...

Define "pimp."

How's this going to work in areas where there are few users? Do matches which might've been kind of marginal to begin with get put behind an even bigger paywall?

why isnt there any open source dating apps out there with genuine interest in humanity

capitalism baby... but feel free to do it yourself

It's not a technical problem to solve.

Men outnumber women on Tinder by 9 to 1 [0], how does being open source help with that?

0, https://www.netimperative.com/2019/04/05/online-dating-trend...

With an open source solution, I bet we can improve that, maybe even doubling it to 20 to 1.

The numbers don't make a lot of sense to me. Are all these men cheating on their wives? Where are the 8 other women getting their needs met? Are they meeting men in regular life or something? So why aren't all the men on tinder doing the same thing?

I think the thing is women don’t need apps. They get hit on all the time, throughout their daily lives. Dating as a woman is not about trying to find opportunities; it’s more about wading through the morass to find a man you deem worthy.

Yeah, but those dudes hitting on them in real life, they're on tinder, no? The world is about 50/50 men and women. If it's 9 to 1 on tinder, that means most of those men have girlfriends or wives, or these women that aren't on tinder are all hooking up with the same 5 dudes. The math just doesn't add up otherwise.

Because the open source dating app is outside. Go meet people. Introduce yourself.

Remember?

Interesting. A lightly used, high-class call girl is $280-$380 which is obviously much less than the Tinder subscription and you're actually guaranteed sex each month.

Not sure where you live, but I would probably double that range.

$500-800 is where I would roughly place it for "high class".

That's illegal in many countries. In the US, where it is illegal, the cost would be $2000 USD. Plus, there are people interested in real love on Tinder and that can't be bought directly for any amount.

The pricing isn't even that bad if it helps someone find the right person in a short amount of time.

The market for this would be people who don't actively want to use tinder, but just get in and out and in a good relationship.

Trying to push this into the hands of the "most active" users is only going to end with the people that shouldn't have these features abusing them to try and control their next victims.

Meeting someone thru a 500/mo subscription service seems akin to meeting someone at a rich-potential-spouse convention. It’s possible to find the right person , whatever that means, but probably you’re selecting for gold diggers of both sexes.

This makes me realize that at least some of the users who will pay $500/mo. will not be naturally rich but view it, at least in part, as an investment to get access to rich mates.

>The pricing isn't even that bad if it helps someone find the right person in a short amount of time.

There's no guarantee of that. It's like paying 500/month for a fortune teller to.

You're better off spending that 500/month on grooming, fitness, nutrition and going out socializing, or even an escort. Paying that much for tinder is a scam.

You're paying them so they can get you off their platform? I doubt that. If they could filter out perfect matches and only show you ones that keep you on the app, they would

This is based on the false assumption that if someone finds a "perfect match" they will stop using tinder.

What if finding the perfect match made you _more addicted_ to the app?

"Perfect" depends on the person, but I meant to say "the one you want to settle with"

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