Tinder is rolling out more features today to help people find the right relationships for them, while also being more authentic on their dating profiles. Borrowing a feature from Hinge, another app owned by Tinder parent Match Group, Tinder users can now indicate on their profile what type of relationship they’re looking for — which can encompass various concepts around non-monogamy these days. Members can now also display their pronouns on their profile.
Tinder and Hinge are starting to look more and more like the same app as Match has set its sights on attracting Gen Z users to fuel its growth. While each app is marketed to slightly different segments of the online dating market, their feature sets are starting to align. We saw this before with the December launch of Tinder’s Relationship Goals feature – a feature it borrowed from Hinge – which allows people to clarify what they’re looking for in terms of long-term or short-term commitment.
Now Tinder is stealing another hinge feature with the addition of relationship types, which hinge had introduced in November.
With Tinder’s update, members can choose from a variety of terms they prefer to use to describe their desired relationship type, such as monogamy, ethical non-monogamy, open relationship, polyamory, or even “open to investigation.” Tinder says it’s going through this shift as it found that 41% of Gen Z users are open to or actively seeking non-monogamous relationships.
Tinder also found open relationships (36%) and hierarchical polyamory (26%) to be the most popular forms of non-monogamous relationships among 18- to 25-year-olds, according to a survey of 4,000 singles earlier this year. old active dating singles in the US, UK, Australia and Canada.
Of course, consumer interest may not be the only thing driving Tinder to use the feature.
The 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. That has led to a growing number of niche dating apps dedicated to non-monogamy, such as Feeld, #Open, MoreThanOne and PolyFinda, because no one liked being matched with someone whose relationship ideas and goals are so completely different than their own.
The addition of the feature also aligns with Tinder’s newly added relationship goals, which focus on what people look for in a relationship beyond “type.” This addition allows users to specify whether they are looking for a ‘life partner’ or a ‘long term’, ‘long term, open to short term’, ‘short term, open to long term’ or ‘short term’ relationship. Users can also say they’re “figuring out my dating goals,” if they don’t know.
Another new feature now allows 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 has been available for years. Again, Tinder cites Gen Z survey data as driving this change, noting that among singles aged 18-25, 33% agreed their sexuality is more fluid, and 29% said their gender identity had changed over the past three years has become smoother. The company also said the LGBTQIA+ community is the fastest growing group on Tinder.
Combined, the new features could help drive better results for Tinder members as they can more easily research potential matches and express themselves on the app. But the features also serve another purpose: to lure Gen Z users back to Tinder.
As the Financial Times reported last year, Tinder struggled to attract new users following the lifting of COVID lockdowns. The report noted that the app’s downloads dropped by 5% in 2021 even as the rivals increased, indicating that users are interested in exploring alternatives. More recently, Match Group forecast Q1 2023 revenue below expectations, after Tinder dropped the company’s first-ever quarterly revenue.
To address the Gen Z problem, Tinder recently unveiled a new marketing campaign, “It Starts with a Swipe.” The new ads aim to directly address this younger audience, who often think differently about love and romance than older generations. Inspired by Gen Z, the campaign “celebrates not only a diversity of possibilities, but also genders, orientations and multiculturalism,” according to the company.
The new features are now rolling out to the Tinder mobile app.
Relationship type will be available in US, Canada, Australia, UK, Brazil, France, Netherlands, Indonesia, Taiwan, Italy, Spain, Thailand, Sweden, Germany and Mexico. However, the pronouns feature is US-only at the moment, Tinder notes.