Tinder and the Attention Economy

This was originally going to be a comment on a related post about Tinder, but I started getting further into it and thought I'd just make a parent post to keep things organized.

Tinder has always favored the top 5-10%

We're all aware that Tinder has always performed better for men that are either top 5-10% attractive or are decently good-looking and have simply manipulated their profile in such a way to showcase themselves as a high-status male.

Tinder also used to work decently well for those that were middle of the road, with some positive tendencies.

It never really performed well for anybody who clearly had undesirable characteristics (ugly, bad angles, communicated neediness in profile, etc).

But here's where Tinder has changed in 2017-now.

I'm going to re-iterate that — it has changed. I was using the damn thing when it was still brand new back in 2013, before "swiping left and right" became part of the cultural vernacular.

The Attention Economy

Hopefully you are familiar with the "attention economy." If you're not, it is worth your investigation. The amount of time you spend on a website or an application is valuable currency in the digital economy. Your attention is what they're after, and the owners in charge of these companies are constantly looking for ways to siphon out as much of your attention in a typical day as possible.

More than likely, just about every app that you use has undergone heavy research by "attention engineers" to figure out how to make it as addictive as possible.

One of these such engineers is Tristan Harris. He's the former head of design at Google who left after some ethical reservations about how tech titans are exploiting peoples' innate weaknesses to better monetize their applications and tech platforms.

Side note on Harris, he's a very intelligent guy with a healthy perspective on how to balance a life with tech. I'd recommend reading some of his work.

How does Tinder make money?

Tinder isn't just an app, it's a company. Glassdoor estimates that Tinder has somewhere between 201-500 employees. A typical formula for annual revenue (at a healthy margin) is $150,000 x the number of employees. With this in mind, it's plausible that Tinder may be worth around 52 million (350 employees times 150k).

I'm not that concerned with how much money they're actually making — I'm trying to illustrate a point that they're a business interested in making money.

Now, Tinder doesn't make much money if you're not...

• A. Spending time using the app
• B. Paying them a monthly subscription fee

Tinder knows that the majority of men will swipe right on just about every girl, even though their ELO score will get burnt out. Women barely have to spend any time in the app at all to get a conversation, date, sex going...men will be spending more time.

It's arguable that men are the real cash cows of Tinder, especially when you consider how many AFC BP folk are looming around out there.

So as a man, if Tinder were to match you up quickly with multiple women and get a conversation, meetup, lay etc. going, that makes it less likely that you're going to be swiping through the feed and seeing ads or hanging onto your subscription. Both of which are the primary ways that Tinder monetizes your attention.

Keeping them hooked

Now, if you were an attention engineer — what kinds of techniques would you use in order to ensure that users spent AS MUCH time as possible in the app?

One obvious way would be to deliberately throttle the amount of matches you're getting. This keeps you fishing longer. This would be easy to do — you don't even need to have users swipe left on you.

Let's say that we have four groups.

• Group of Men A
• Group of Women B
• Group of Men C
• Group of Women D

Let's say that on a typical Monday, Group of Men A are shown Group of Women B. They swipe through the full stack and Swipe Right on most of them.

Later that afternoon, when the women in Group B open the app, they're only shown men from group C.

But the men in Group C had only swiped through the women in group D! So nobody is getting an opportunity to have a mutual "Like" and therefore no match (or just less matches, anyway).

Do you see how it can easily be stacked so that you'll keep on fishing, looking for more matches? That's just one technique of doing so. And sure, your ELO score plays a factor...but how many other factors do you think are in the App at this point? You do realize that they're on version 10 or something...

Tinder will do this to Chads and Billy Betas

Even though the Chads of the world will always likely have an easier time with Tinder, I'd argue that it's just gotten more difficult for everybody as a result of Tinder trying to maintain relevance and keep your attention focused on it.

Sure, a 10/10 washboard abs Chad who is dining at a rooftop bar in NY will get more matches than the uggo who is shooting mopey mirror pictures of himself or taking awkward closeup selfies on a sunny day. The laws of the jungle will always be number one.

But Tinder has an incentive to keep BOTH of these demographics engaged in the app as long as possible, because that translates to higher dollars. So if you're wondering why it seems like things have slowed down a bit, consider a few factors here...

• There are thousands+ more people on Tinder now than there were previously, and you can only see one at a time
• Tinder knows that men will pay for a premium experience, if they think it will produce results
• Tinder can't give you all the goods upfront, because then you'd have no reason to stick around and continue paying for a subscription and being exposed to ads
• You are looking for your sex opportunities on a business that can (and does) carrot-on-a-string them to you
• Every major player in the app market is doing this

Summary #

I don't resent Tinder at all for what they're doing. I had my hayday on there for about 2 years, with plenty of amusing stories, hookups, and a few almost turned into meaningful relationships. I could probably still chip away at the ol' swiping game and come up with something to show for it.

But the landscape of the app has changed now so it's predominately out to hold your attention rather than give you what you want.

Lastly, let's avoid dumb overgeneralizing statements like TINDER IS WASTE OF TIME or TINDER IS BROKEN.

The fact is, the system has been changed to favor Tinder the organization rather than the users themselves. This is true of nearly every application — if you're not at the table, you're what's on the menu.

Just see it all in context; there's a reason why it feels different. And it may not just be that your photos suck (even though they might).