Tinder is now rolling out more features aimed at helping people find the right relationships for them, while being more authentic on their dating profiles. Borrowing functionality from Hinge, another app owned by Tinder’s parent Match Group, Tinder users will now be able to indicate on their profile what type of relationship they’re looking for – which today can involve various concepts around non- monogamy. It will also now allow members to display their pronouns on their profile.
Tinder and Hinge are starting to look more and more like the same app as Match aims to attract Gen Z users to fuel its growth. Although each app is marketed to slightly different segments of the online dating market, their feature sets are starting to align. We saw this earlier with the December launch of Tinder’s Relationship Goals feature – a feature borrowed from Hinge – which allows people to clarify what they’re looking for in terms of long-term or short-term engagement.
Now Tinder is stealing another feature from Hinge with the addition of relationship types, which Hinge introduced in November.
With the Tinder update, members will be able to choose from a variety of terms they prefer to describe their desired type of relationship, such as monogamy, ethical non-monogamy, open relationship, polyamory or even “open to exploration”. Tinder says it’s making this change because it’s found that 41% of Gen Z users are open to or actively seeking non-monogamous relationships.
According to a survey of 4,000 singles conducted on its behalf earlier this year, Tinder also found that open relationships (36%) and hierarchical polyamory (26%) were the most popular non-monogamous relationship types among 18-year-olds. At 25 years. old actively dating singles in the US, UK, Australia and Canada.
Of course, consumer interest might not be the only thing driving Tinder to adopt this feature.
Its lack of more direct support for non-monogamous relationships in its product has frustrated both those seeking non-monogamy and those seeking to avoid it. This led to a growing number of niche dating apps dedicated to non-monogamy, like Feeld, #Open, MoreThanOne, and PolyFinda, because no one liked being matched with someone whose ideas and goals of relationship are so completely different from theirs.
The addition of the feature also aligns with Tinder’s newly added relationship goals, which focus on what people are looking for in a relationship outside of “type”. This addition allowed users to specify whether they are looking for a “life partner” or a “long term”, “long term, open to the short term”, “short term, open to the long term “. or “short-term” relationship. Users can also say they’re just “finding out my dating goals,” if they don’t know.
Another new feature will now allow Tinder members to display up to four pronouns on their profile from a list of over 15 options, in addition to their sexual orientation and gender, which have been available for years. Again, Tinder cites data from the Gen Z survey as driving the shift, noting that among singles aged 18-25, 33% agreed their sexuality was more fluid and 29% agreed. said their gender identity has become more fluid over the past three years. The company also said that the LGBTQIA+ community is the fastest growing group on Tinder.
Combined, the new features could help deliver better results for Tinder members, as they could more easily check out potential matches and express themselves on the app. But the features also serve another purpose: to attract Gen Z users to Tinder.
As the Financial Times reported last year, Tinder had struggled to attract new users after COVID lockdowns were lifted. The report noted that app downloads fell 5% in 2021 even as rivals surged, signaling user interest in exploring alternatives. More recently, Match Group forecast Q1 2023 revenue below expectations after Tinder caused the company’s first-ever quarterly revenue decline.
To address the Gen Z problem, Tinder recently unveiled a new marketing campaign, “It Starts With A Swipe.” The new ads aim to speak directly to this younger demographic, who often think of love and romance differently than older generations. Inspired by Generation Z, the campaign “celebrates not only a diversity of possibilities, but also genders, orientations and multiculturalism,” the company said.
The new features are now rolling out to the Tinder mobile app.
Relationship type will be available in USA, Canada, Australia, UK, Brazil, France, Netherlands, Indonesia, Taiwan, Italy, Spain, Thailand, Sweden , Germany and Mexico. However, the pronouns feature is US-only at this time, Tinder notes.
