Welcome to the ‘how does tinder work article’, for all; the newbies, those who want to get more matches and those who are just curious how they make money from your swiping. Scroll down the page to find the answer.
How do you literally use and operate Tinder
- You download Tinder on your smartphone
- You open Tinder app and it will ask you to sign in using your Facebook account, this gives Tinder access to your Facebook photos, name, age and gender as well as some other info. From this it will create a default profile using 6 of your profile pics and display your name and age.
- You can change the images to other images from Facebook or from the photos on your smartphones memory.
Write something in the ‘bio’ or ‘personal description’ section. Profiles with bios get more matches, especially for men. - There are only a few sections on tinder to familiarise yourself with;
- Edit profile (where you choose your pics and write your bio)
- Swiping or matching (how you get your matches)
- Settings (choose to delete, log out, change your distance proximity and age preferences etc)
- Chat (where you chat and have conversations with your matches)
- When you are on the Tindermatching or swiping section, this is where you check out the other active tinder members within your chosen distance proximity. The functions are as follows:
- Swipe right for yes you like them
- Swipe left for no you don’t like them
- The star for superlike (the person will be notified about this before they even see your profile)
- Press on the image of the person to swipe through their photos.
You will be notified that you have a match as it happens, so that means if they have already swiped yes to you then you swipe yes to them, you will know about it right there and then.
Then have a chat with them on the ‘chat’ section.
Easy peasy, from zero to hero, if your pics are good and your bio is charming then you will be matching in no time. If your pics are rubbish have a read of the following link on improving your pics.
Click here to improve your profile
How does the the Tinder Algorithm work?
Your desired match
When swiping for matches, you will be presented with people who fit your age, gender and distance proximity range preferences of your desired match. For example, I search for women between the ages 20 and 35 at a distance of 10 km(It may be higher if I was in a rural area with no-one around).
Their desired match
Other people are presented with people within their desired match criteria; age, gender and proximity.
Matching
You both need to be within each others criteria to match, however distance can be played with. If you have set a distance of 40 miles and they have set 20 miles, then you will not be visible to them until you visit a shop in their area for example, you can then match that way.
There is more…
Popularity
Depending on how popular you are (percentage of people that want to match you), you will be presented with people within your reach(if Tinder thinks they may actually swipe yes to you), I can’t prove it, but if I use a bad pic for a while then I get presented with less attractive people and when I have a good pic then I don’t get as many very attractive to choose from.
Hot people everywhere
There is one exception, when you log in for the first time, you will see so many attractive people, I think Tinder does that to get you excited about playing more, depending on your popularity you may have different people to choose from later.
Also if you have some people who have swiped yes to you, assuming you haven’t swiped them yet, then they will be near the front of the pile of profiles that you will be presented with.
Changing your Tinder age or name
So, slightly unethical, but you could create a fake Facebook account and set a different age and name. Then you would have to log into that Facebook account on your phone, then log into tinder using that FB account. Then you could be Lyndsey 36 today and Sarah 29 tomorrow.
Warning: remember that other people can do this too, as a precaution check out their Facebooks to see if in-fact they are real before meeting.
Is it dangerous?
No more than many other activities. I personally have not had any bad experiences, you should be able to spot warning signs. Just keep your wits about you under a blanket of realism:
If a crazy attractive person all of a sudden is really interested in you when you haven’t demonstrated anything special yet, that is a red flag!
Guys – if a girl just wants to meet after 4 message exchanges, that is a red flag!
Can you hide your age on Tinder?
Yes you can hide your age, check the settings, they will only know that you are within their Tinder desired match criteria.
Getting zero matches on Tinder
Ok, this is definitely one for the guys, because women rarely get zero matches, their photo could be of their dog and still get matches.
Getting zero matches, or next to zero matches on Tinder is actually quite common for guys, guys that are not used to dating, and if you are in an area with not many people that could also be an issue. If you are older and are likely to have less people in your age range, or more to the point,
Matching likelyhood
Imaging that there was a girl sitting at a bar, now imagine she could look around and see a snapshot of all the guys in the bar and decide was going what guys she liked, purely based on that snapshot. Now imagine that there were 1000s of guys to choose from in that bar, how about now??
Because that is Tinder for guys, you need to stand out, if you are getting zero matches then you are not standing out from the crowd. So how do we get more matches?
There are a couple ways to go about getting more matches, this is more of a general FAQs page, you should definitely check the Tinder Hacks link below to learn more.
<<Click here for Tinder Hacks page>>
For starters, lets highlight reasons why you may not have matched with someone:
- They haven’t seen your profile yet
- They have a matching proximity less than yours and therefore will never appear on their screen.
- You might be out of their selected age range, you are 35 years old and they have their match age range to 25-34 years old.
- There have not been active for a while.
- They are not swiping at the moment because they are already happily chatting to their matches.
- They swiped you no by accident
These are all common and fair reasons for not matching with someone, there are also big fat excuse and lies you tell yourself instead of creating a better profile. If you are are telling yourself that the above are the reasons for you not getting matches then I propose a challenge.
Challenge: Change your profile pictures to a non famous medium looking model, then wait 1 hour and try again, if you’re in a city then you’ll notice that you’ll have a shit tonne of matches, and that in-fact there are lots of people using Tinder, at least then you would find out if they are in your proximity.
How long does it take to get a match on tinder?
Tindermatching, this is a difficult question because it depends on a few variables;
- How good your profile is
- Who your are swiping ‘yes’ to to
- If you are a guy or a girl
Are you not getting matches?
The ugly truth is that if your profile isn’t good, more specifically if your photographs are are bad, then you probably won’t get as many matches as your want.
If you have a bad profile as a guy then it is so much more difficult to get a match due women being very selective and most men not being picky about who they swipe. This puts the Tinder power balance massively in the favour of women. Either way learn how to improve your profile pics.
How does Tinder work with Facebook?
Facebook shares information such as photos, age, interest(pages you have liked), educational background and who your friends are. You can set whether you want your interests, age and education visible on your profile, however Tinder will use your age and location for their matching algorithm.
How does Tinder know your location
Tinder, like many other smartphone applications requests access to your location settings when you first download the app, this is usually the permissions request section that most people click ‘ok’ and skip through. Tinder uses the GPS signal on your phone to know your location, there is also the additional information co-operation with Facebook they could probably get it from there too.
How Long does it take to update your location
How long does tinder take to update your location? Within 12 hours I’d say. I travel around a lot and when I arrive in a new place I check Tinder and it gives me people from the new country or city, and I get matches on the same day.
Location Accuracy
The location is pretty accurate most of the time, there are many glitches wth tinder sadly, caching may cause an error also if you know what that is. If ever you think there is an issue with it then log out, close the app and log back in again, usually does the trick.
GPS info
Here is some info for the non tech savvy. Its not just Tinder that automatically checks your GPS location, it is the same feature that Google uses for Google maps. Sending you info on the restaurant you were just in. Have you ever wandered how google knows the busy times in bars and restaurants etc? They monitor how many phones with GPS signals go in at different times – cool/scary ?.
How much does Tinder cost
Tinder doesn’t cost anything to set up and use. It’s free for both guys and girls so they are not making money from you signing up. However there are some extra features like Tinder plus and Boost that they make good coin from. When you have 100s of millions of members, if on average each person spends $10 in the year on extras, that is a Billion dollars, not to mention the data that they have on everyones preferences.
Using your information to make money
If you think of the big picture, Tinder has so much information about who you find attractive, the types of people you swipe yes to, and they are in partnership with Facebook, one of the biggest advertising companies in the world.
Once they figure out how to replicate and tailor make each advert and match it with the models you would find the most attractive(based on your tinder preferences), then they are going to be able to attract you to every advert they have, just wait for it, they’ll get that algorithm together soon…!!
Tinder Plus
Tinder Plus is a pay per month system, the cost changes depending on the country where you registered your phone, it is somewhere in the region of $10/month.
It gives you
1. Ulimited likes, you can like as many people as you want, usually this is limited to 100/day.
2. More Superlikes, normally you get one per day.
3. The ability to undo your selection. If you ‘disliked’ someone by accident then you can go back like them, normally you cannot do that.
Tinder Boost
You can put yourself to the top of the pile. After using boost your profile will be one of the first to be seen, increasing your chance of getting more matches, this costs a few dollars to do. I have an article on the best time to use Tinder Boost.
How does smart photos work
Great question! There is a little button under your images. See the profile edit page to allow you to turn on smart photos. Tinder smart photos will cycle through the order of your photos and test your photographs to see what gets the best results.
Smart photos is a little testing algorithm that works great for finding out what photo other people like the most. You’ll get an alert informing you of your best photograph.
I think that covers most of the questions. If you have anything else you want added send me an email to info@whiskyandtinder.com.
In the mean time…
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