Casual Conversation: The Evolution of the Dating App
By: Omar Zahran
Tags: Networking, Dating, Social Media, Lifestyle, Technology

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There are days in our adult lives that just have more meaning than others. Days that we look back on and think fondly of. These days could be for personal advancement or where a good time was had. For me, a day that will always resonate with me is June 29, 2019. This was the day where one of my best friends got married and I had the privilege to be one of his groomsmen. This was one of the greatest experiences in my adult life, one filled with so much happiness and joy. Yet it was not a feeling that I ever thought I would experience in my life.

Throughout my life, I have been to many weddings. Weddings here in the United States and some overseas when I lived in Jordan. As I am not much of a dancer, as my friends have constantly pointed out to me, they never really seemed like my cup of tea. Every time I would receive a wedding invitation I would dread having to respond to it, but when I was asked to be a groomsman I thought that this will be a different experience. And it was a great one at that. As a year has passed since that date, I think about my friend’s relationship and marriage. He met his wife like a lot of people met their spouses these days: through a dating app. Their success story got me to thinking about how the landscape of dating apps has changed over the last decade from a shameful way to meet people to a new way to connect with people. The transformation of a service like Tinder is quite fascinating.

The How We Met Lie

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Back in the late 2000s, there was an indication that the world was going more and more digital. Social media websites and apps were all the rage and quickly becoming people’s preferred method of communicating and connecting with people. The rise of services like Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, and Instagram was so meteoric that it has permanently shifted the way we handle online media in the years to follow. This rise of a digitally connected life would soon seep into the way that we date, though the acceptance of it would be slow and gradual.

There were services such as eHarmony that were founded early on in the 2000s that saw this coming before others. But at the time, smartphones were not ubiquitous and the subscription structure of the service painted it as a service for older single people looking for “the one” as opposed to a younger generation that was focused on more casual dating. Services like Zoosk, OkCupid, and Grindr are eventually released and there is finally an answer for those looking for a casual connection that could turn into more. Best of all these services were free, meaning that the cost of entry was merely the time needed to fill out a profile.

These services have been very successful in gaining users and eventually offering a paid tier for those looking for advanced features. Yet there was one critical issue with all of these free dating services: online shame. Not many were happy to admit that they met online (here is a great article that details the psychology behind this shame). A sitcom in that era, How I Met Your Mother, had an episode that addressed this very idea. The protagonist Ted meets a woman while playing World of Warcraft and is urged by this woman not to mention the true nature of their meeting but instead to fabricate a romantic story about meeting in a cooking class.

This slice of pop culture was very indicative of the way that many people felt in the late 2000s and early 2010s about meeting someone online. At the time, the prevailing notion was that online dating was for those people that could not have any success meeting people in more conventional ways like at a bar or a park as the movies described to us. A person was borderline pathetic if they met someone this way, and the only solution that made any sense was to lie about where the relationship started. This all was set to change in 2012 as an app called Tinder hit the app stores of smartphones.

Swipe Culture

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2012 was a big year for online dating. Two of the giants of the industry today were founded in this year: Hinge and Tinder. It is Tinder, however, that is mostly attributed to the shift in perception about dating apps. The foundation of this shift is ana addictive mobile-only idea: swiping. The concept of Tinder is very simple, swipe left if uninterested and swipe right if interested. This created a bit of a mobile game in a sense. To the point that some people went as far as to call Tinder the “swiping game”. In the years that would follow, almost all dating apps adopted some sort of swipe mechanism to match two people.

This game-like swiping set the stage for when a match happened (when two people swiped right on one another). Since the matching process was so simple and largely superficial as Tinder did not require a detailed profile to be filled out like eHarmony, Match, or OkCupid, the interactions were very casual. So much so, that Tinder became associated as a “hooking up” app more than a dating app. People were matching, messaging, and then meeting for a casual night that may lead to sex. This happened at such a high rate that it became normalized. Tinder wasn’t like all of those other dating apps that tried to promise a lifetime of happiness and finding your soulmate. Tinder helped you find people, and what became of the encounter was up to the user.

It is this difference in approach that led to a different perception of Tinder. Where a traditional dating app was panned by people for trying to recreate the soulmate search, Tinder was embraced for being a tool for fun and living life, an idea that appealed to the younger demographic that Tinder targeted. This helped to normalize the idea of Tinder, so much so that people felt better about admitting that they met someone on the app. The app had cemented itself as part of the popular social consciousness of people in their 20’s and early 30’s.

This success, like in all industries, has led to copycats. Bumble, for example, is in many ways a copy of Tinder with the twist that women must message first on its app. Apps that were around before Tinder have adopted a similar swiping user interface. After all, this is what the people have indicated that they wanted, and these companies are trying to cater to the people above all else.

Staying Power

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Tinder was successful in shifting the market and perception of how we date in the age of the smartphone. This company became a household name with countless people, as my friend mentioned earlier, meeting their spouses through the app. The company had success in reshaping the way that we dated. That meeting someone on the internet was not something to be ashamed of, but rather something incredibly normal.

After all, in recent years, so much of our daily lives have shifted to an online model. We shop, bank, and are entertained through the lens of a screen. So why not the way that we date and find love? Tinder, Hinge, and Bumble have ushered in this new reality and have gained millions of users in the process. The next step for a company like Tinder? Monetization. Much like eHarmony before it, services like Tinder and Hinge have relied on a premium subscription to maintain profitability.

So what does a premium Tinder account give a user? Unlimited swipes to start, and other features such as Passport (that allows matching across the globe) and Super Likes for added visibility on the app. Bumble and Hinge have offered similar subscriptions as a means of gaining revenue from their most loyal subscribers. These companies have also monetized their apps through ads throughout the swiping experience.

What has resulted in a situation where dating apps have become a place of nuance. A place where casual dating encounters can live symbiotically with those that are looking for a dedicated and committed relationship. The idea of a dating app has become so normalized to us as a society that dating in other ways can sometimes feel foreign. Quite often when asking a friend where they met their new significant other, hearing anything other than “on Tinder” or “through a dating app” can feel strange. The way that we date has been digitized and revolutionized, for better or for worse. Which begs the question, is this the peak for a service like Tinder? Or is there another step to take?

Social Media Evolved

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Some might balk at the idea of a dating app taking itself more seriously. After all, the number of internet posts and stories of unsolicited genitalia pics are something of a legend. The Tinder subreddit is littered with these stories more so than any success stories. This has been the double-edged sword of swipe dating apps. While the at-times casual nature is endearing it also opens up the portal of platform abuse. Yet it would seem that Tinder, Bumble, and Hinge look at all things considered as a net positive and are looking for the next evolution.

This next evolution is the idea of a virtual hangout. The idea on the surface is simple and very smart upon deeper analysis. At its most basic level, a dating app is a way for people to find one another. The job of the app is to use its algorithm to help the user find these people. What these people do after this matching point is entirely up to the user. Taking this beyond dating is the next chapter of a dating app. And while this may seem insane on the surface, consider that Bumble has already introduced its swiping feature to find friends and like-minded professionals in addition to finding love. Tinder has introduced Passport for all users to find people to talk to around the world during the COVID-19 pandemic. This feature is less about dating and more about people connecting. That is the endgame of these applications.

Taking the idea a step further, think about the current state of popular social media platforms. Apps like Facebook, Twitter, Tik Tok, Snapchat, and Instagram are filled with toxicity and negative arguments. It seems that daily people are unfollowing or blocking one another at an alarming rate. Dating apps have an opportunity to be the antithesis of this negativity. Like a breath of fresh air, an alternative to what has been accepted as the norm. Will they be successful? Time will tell and they have their reputation issues to overcome.

It would seem then that dating apps are doing a bit of growing up and maturing at this point. Moving beyond romantic relationships to human interaction. A shift that makes a lot of sense in an industry that traffics in human emotion much more than others do. It has become normal to see people getting married that met online. Perhaps sooner rather than later we will say the same about friendships and business partnerships that were started on Tinder or Bumble. The dream of these companies is for the dating app to become the connection app. Time will tell if this dream is realized or laughed off into the atmosphere.