Summary: Just wanted to give a heads up to everyone here about the dating app Hinge, which I recommend, and some of the lessons it has taught me already in my short time on it. I apologize in advance for the formatting, as I haven't posted much on Reddit and I'm sure it will be a bit rough.

I downloaded Hinge about 8 days ago, at the suggestion of a former girl I had dated 6 or 7 years ago. I had just happened to come across her on Tinder around that time and I texted her her profile pic which sparked a conversation where she stated that she occasionally browsed Tinder, but is more fond of Hinge and explained why. I figured what did I have to lose so I downloaded and tried it out.

So, for those that don't know already, Hinge is like Tinder only they give you a select number of profiles to pick from a day. I don't know how many exactly, but it seems to be in the range of about 10-20. This seems a huge drawback for the first few days, but it's not once the matches start rolling in.

So why should you add it to supplement to Tinder and natural approaches? Literally this should provide you with abundance mentality in an instant. In the last 2 days I have 35 matches. Compared to Tinder, where I have 3. I have swiped maybe 24 or so profiles on Hinge in those 2 days, where on Tinder I have swiped somewhere around 80+. I am literally overwhelmed with all the matches and conversations, which is actually giving me better insight as to what girls are dealing with on Tinder across the way (though I have yet to actually figure out anything useful from this).

Positives to Hinge in comparison to Tinder:

  • Enormous match rate - I'd say so far, roughly 90% of my likes have turned into matches. For comparison, I'd estimate a very generous 5% on Tinder. It's probably less than that. And before anyone thinks this is a humble brag, it isn't. I am decent looking, but I am definitely not "hot" like some of my friends.
  • Non-existent unattractive girls - Most of us aren't friends with many unattractive people, hence your Facebook friends will serve as a natural filter that limits the majority of all the 5's and below that plague Tinder.
  • More conversation starters in profiles - You can see where people are from, interests, etc. No blank profiles.
  • Time limits - 24 hours to initiate a conversation is somewhat of a pain, but if you don't message them they just automatically unmatch and are reshuffled back into the deck allowing you to rematch later. Likewise, conversations end 14 days after you begin them. This basically means if you don't have enough time to get there number or meet them and the conversation dies, you can always initiate again at a later date when you match again. At first I hated this, but after consideration I now believe it to be a brilliant idea and one of the strongest points of Hinge.
  • Less deception - More pictures required and only relatively recent pictures are allowed. Girls cannot be deceptive with angled shots or old pictures. If you are unsure, you can look the girl up on Facebook to get more information.

Some of the Negatives:

  • Personal Information - They have access to a lot of your personal information right off the bat and even more once you match via FB. I don't mind this because once I text a girl if she plugs my number into FB she is going to be able to pull my limited profile anyway. But this is obviously a huge drawback and deal breaker for many here, I know.
  • Less "smokeshows" (9-10 girls) - Again, unless you are only friends with dimes you are not going to see the highs you will get on Tinder. Which is why I advocate using both. The majority of girls on Hinge are in 6-8 range. Then again, I very rarely see what I consider 9's and 10's in real life either.
  • Age range - My friends on FB are mostly my age, hence the majority of the profiles coming in are around my age. As many here prefer dating younger, as I do myself, this is a slight drawback. Still, a great/cute girl is a great/cute girl regardless of age and this is not a hangup for me.
  • Dependent on your Facebook network - My understanding is that the more friends you have on FB, and the more people using Hinge you know, the bigger your Hinge network. For those that aren't into Facebook, your options will likely be very limited.

The key take away is this: I am sitting here wondering why I have a 90% match rate on Hinge, but somewhere in the neighborhood of 5% (if that) on Tinder. The answer is that there is less competition. There are a hell of a lot less Chad's popping up daily, and a lot less matches overall, so the girls on Hinge are not carrying around absurdly artificially inflated SMV like they are on Tinder.

One thing I have seemed to notice thus far is that girls on Hinge are far more likely to drop out of conversations when you ask for their number than they are on Tinder. Usually on Tinder if they respond to the initial message, you will get their number and it can be done in 3-5 messages. This has not been effective so far for me on Hinge. I have only been at this a few days now so it remains to be seen if I just need to change my strategy, or if it is just the law of the land that less matches convert to actual numbers on Hinge.

Lessons Learned: Hinge is basically the land of Tinder, but girls have much more appropriate SMV because they are not constantly bombarded by Chad's like they are on Tinder.

I'm relatively new to Hinge so I can only present my initial impressions, but am very interested to hear of other's experiences with it. I will add more as I gain more experience with the platform.

edit: formatting

edit: flair... wasn't sure what this fell under