

Tinder Cuddles Up to Instagram in Latest Update - simas
http://techcrunch.com/2015/04/15/tinder-cuddles-up-to-instagram-in-latest-update/

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jplahn
As somebody who flirted around with Tinder for a little while (ha ha), I think
this is a pretty good idea. But at the same time, I think I'd prefer to be
able to select which Instagram photos I would like to remain hidden, in case
they're of a more personal nature. But beyond this, I can't help but feel the
entire Tinder experience is slowly deteriorating. The beautiful simplicity of
what it used to be is slowly starting to be replaced, which I suppose is to be
expected, but disappointing nonetheless. I can't help but feel they'll quickly
monetize the amount of swipes you get, so they can quickly squeeze users down
to a couple a day.

As sort of a mini experiment, I downloaded some of the other apps out there
that are in the same sphere and I've found Hinge to be particularly
interesting (assuming you're in a large city). I'm kind of fascinated by all
of these relationship apps and I'd love to see data on which are most
effective (not for personal gain, mind you).

~~~
toomuchtodo
Want to replace Tinder? I'm not a mobile app guy, but I do big infrastructure
and know enough Python to be dangerous.

I'm not saying "How hard can it be?" I know that road to hell. But seriously,
storing a couple million photos? Storing profile data? There is literally zero
barrier to entry. S3, Elastic Search, EC2, and a bit of ELBs or Haproxy for
that HA magic.

Let's call it "Blaze". (Seriously, check my profile for contact info)

~~~
untog
The tech portion of a dating app is trivial. The marketing and business side?
Less so. Even UI - Tinder wouldn't be Tinder without swiping.

~~~
toomuchtodo
You can't patent swiping, and now that Tinder is charging there exists a
vacuum in the market for someone who doesn't charge (or monetizes
differently).

~~~
untog
But literally all you are doing is copying an existing concept. That never
works. You need to have something that makes you unique. Slightly more
granular privacy controls or faster response times will not do it.

~~~
toomuchtodo
I got a good chuckle. But seriously, copying concepts works as long as you can
execute better in some way. Stripe wasn't the first payment processor. Google
wasn't the first search provider. Okcupid wasn't the first matchmaking site.

[http://www.paulgraham.com/ideas.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/ideas.html)

"Actually, startup ideas are not million dollar ideas, and here's an
experiment you can try to prove it: just try to sell one. Nothing evolves
faster than markets. The fact that there's no market for startup ideas
suggests there's no demand. Which means, in the narrow sense of the word, that
startup ideas are worthless."

~~~
untog
You're talking about business concepts (a dating site) I'm talking about more
fine-grained concepts (swiping between potential dates).

If you cloned Tinder, pixel for pixel, and added a couple of extra controls,
your app would fail. Tinder already has a huge userbase and you have a
userbase of zero, and the minute benefit provided by your app would be
outweighed by having no users on it.

~~~
toomuchtodo
> Tinder already has a huge userbase and you have a userbase of zero, and the
> minute benefit provided by your app would be outweighed by having no users
> on it.

[http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/tinder-may-
have-...](http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/tinder-may-have-
inadvertently-hit-its-selfdestruct-button-by-charging-older-users-
more-10082851.html)

Heh, you're free to your opinion though.

~~~
untog
You're countering that with the fact that Tinder has enough users that it can
afford to introduce pricing to some of them without losing its place in the
market?

Look, by all means, clone Tinder and see how it goes. I'll be interested to
watch, while also not investing a second of time or effort on such a concept.

~~~
toomuchtodo
> You're countering that with the fact that Tinder has enough users that it
> can afford to introduce pricing to some of them without losing its place in
> the market?

I'm countering with the assertion that no one knows if they have enough users
that they can afford to introduce pricing.

Suddenly charging for something does not mean its sustainable, no more than
users would pay for Twitter or Facebook.

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downandout
I think this is bad. Tinder was built on anonymity, but many people have
identifying information (knowingly or unknowingly) in their Instagram
profiles. The two services were built for entirely different purposes. By
allowing people access to the Instagram profile of a Tinder user, there could
be some bad consequences.

I have personally written an app that can take an Instagram feed and group
pics by the physical address from which they were taken, if they have GPS
enabled for Instagram [1] (I purposely limited it to the first 20 pics in this
instance, but that limit is arbitrary). So Tinder users can now unwittingly go
from basically anonymous to giving out their home address to people looking to
sleep with them. Not awesome.

[1] [http://guiyui.com/username_geo.php](http://guiyui.com/username_geo.php)

~~~
nanidin
Linking Instagram is not required, and most people I've seen while using
Tinder have their Instagram handle in their profile text.

This is just Tinder enabling their users to share what they're already sharing
in a more convenient way.

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thomasfoster96
I'm not sure Tinder got the nth-degree thing quite right - first degree is
someone I know, not someone who I have a mutual connection with.

~~~
screwedup
Goddamn engineers, always counting from 0...

~~~
JamesSwift
I would love to hear this end up being a feature not a bug, where the
programmer, in fact, began his counting from 0.

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tinderella
This is sort of interesting, and I think that this is a good time to comment
on a problem I've been having with apps, tinder included.

Updates break perfectly good apps. Due to permissions changes, I haven't
updated to Tinder's older update which introduced swipe-undoing and travel.
Why? Because besides the fact that I use a version of the app which doesn't
seem to adhere to swipe limits, I have no interest in granting tinder more
permissions. Also, the plus-feature of visiting different locales can be
achieved by using a GPS mock (which I suspect you can't do in the newer
versions).

I've seen it too often that apps on phones get _worse_ with each update due to
trying to bandage up haemorrhaging losses. While this is a good addition to
tinder I think, it's not compelling enough to get me to update.

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kmfrk
Maybe they should include LinkedIn integration to avoid awkward encounters.

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phragg
And this is where Facebook buys Tinder.

~~~
josephpmay
They can't. Tinder is already owned by IAC (Match.com, College Humor, etc.)

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bjones6
The app doesn't work on android.. SGSIII, 4.2.1 I believe. Looks to be a
problem with Facebook permissions AND image cropping, both on Tinder's side..

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lenova
I think this update actually makes sense. A great deal of Tinder users list
their Instagram username in their Tinder profiles (Usually as "IG:
<username>"... it took me forever to realize what IG stood for).

I think this is a case of Tinder observing how their users behave, and giving
them functionality that they'll actually want.

~~~
grrowl
I agree, it's a feature which their core demo will take to like a duck to
water, while those who don't "get it" will fail to figure out.

Tinder Plus, on the other hand, doesn't help anyone.

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jkrejci
This is way better than Facebook integration, cause let's be real, who really
uploads pics there regularly anymore? Ha.

~~~
Touche
The entire world.

~~~
bramgg
* Over the age of 30.

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untog
Well, there goes Glimpse: [http://mashable.com/2014/02/11/glimpse-app-
instagram/](http://mashable.com/2014/02/11/glimpse-app-instagram/)

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noobermin
As long as the relationship doesn't go the other way, this doesn't upset me as
an instagrammer.

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pmcpinto
This is a really interesting integration.

