Tinder moves beyond dating with new group feature
Now that Tinder has mastered your dating life, it wants to help you reconnect with old friends and make new ones with a new feature called Tinder Social.
The feature, which users can unlock after they download Tinder's latest update, lets users create groups and plan outings together like pub crawls, softball games and concerts.
"Tinder Social is designed to make it as easy as possible to plan your night, get out into the real world and meet new people. The new feature takes the Tinder experience to a new level, offering our users more ways to expand their social circles and interact with potential matches," Sean Rad, CEO and co-founder of Tinder, said in a statement. "We believe it's the ultimate tool for planning your next adventure."
Anyone can form a group by inviting friends who are also on Tinder Social and then picking an activity from a variety of suggestions like "Watch the Game with Us" or "Going to a Concert Tonight." The group expires at noon the following day or when the creator ends it.
Multiple groups can join together if a member from each group swipes right on the activity.
As CNET points out, Tinder isn't the first app to do this. Squad, launched in 2015, lets groups -- it calls them "squads" -- of up to six people find other groups to hang out with. Grouper (only available in New York City so far), lets two people bring together their two groups of friends. Meetup and Craigslist are also commonly used to share plans for group gatherings.
The new Tinder Social feature is available in the U.S., Canada, the U.K., New Zealand and India.
Tinder, a top social media app for meeting new people, says it makes 26 million matches a day, with more than 11 billion matches since its launch in 2012.