With the lite version of the app, millions of people who own basic smartphones or have limited access to data will get access to the dating service. The plans of getting such an app were announced in the earnings call by Match Group’s CEO Mandy Ginsberg. According to a report in the Engadget, she said that Tinder Lite will be an app that is better suited for areas where cellular data “comes at a premium.” However, she did not say anything about the features of the upcoming Tinder Lite app or its release date. She only said that it will be launched “soon.” Ginsberg also said that Southeast Asia is a high priority for the company as it has scores of potential Tinder users. We should also mention that India is also a targeted market for Tinder Lite as it has the largest population of millennials in the world. Tinder is reported to have almost 50 million users worldwide and Match Group announced that its paid subscribers have gone up by 38% year-over-year in early 2019. Recently, in order to get more transparency about how its platform ranks and shows people their potential matches, Tinder published a blog post that talks about the subject. However, the dating app still kept everything fairly vague.
According to the blog post, the company’s Elo score was a ‘hot topic’ till a few years back, however, now the ranking feature has been depreciated. Tinder’s Elo score used to rank people on the basis of attractiveness. We should mention that in the real world, Elo scores are actually used to rank chess players, but in Tinder, it goes up as more and more number of people swipe right on a person’s profile. And then, their profile is shown to other people who have similar scores. It is Tinder’s way of making the most desirable people interact with one another. We should mention that since profiles are limited in scope, a person’s looks and attractiveness play a key role in matches getting made. But then, people also started speculating that with Elo scores on, only the attractive lot kept talking to one another, while the ‘undesirable’ people were left with a low ranking.
