If you’re at all versed in today’s dating apps, there’s a good chance you’ve heard about Tinder. Tinder is a free, location-based dating app that allows people to see other users looking for a date or hook-up in their geographic vicinity. One of the most popular features of Tinder is that it allows users to swipe another user’s photo to the right if they’re interested in that user, or to the left if they’re not interested. Users can only contact one another if they both swipe right, indicating they both want to proceed. Tinder’s formula has worked, and the app has soared in popularity; by the end of 2015, it had more than 9.6 million active daily users and 25 million registered users.
Recently, the experts behind Tinder announced a new creation using the same recipe that has worked so well for their dating app. That new creation is called Tinder Stacks, and it is a social polling program that uses the idea of “swiping left” or “swiping right,” and it is intended to make it easier for groups or individuals to make decisions.
What Is Tinder Stacks?
Tinder Stacks is an app that is created exclusively for iMessage, Apple’s mobile messaging platform. It allows people to send groups or “stacks” of photos to other people, who can then swipe left or swipe right on the photos, indicating their acceptance or disapproval. Tinder Stacks can be useful for people who are looking for advice in making a decision. For example, users can poll friends via stacks of photos to see things like which profile picture they should use or which outfit they should wear to a party. Tinder Stacks is essentially a polling program that uses Tinder’s “swiping” feature in order to collect responses.
How to Get Tinder Stacks
As of now, because Tinder Stacks is an iMessage app, it is only available to users of Apple mobile devices. In order to access Tinder Stacks, Apple users must first download the Tinder app to their device, then enable the “Automatically Add Apps” feature in the iMessage App Store settings menu. Then, the app will automatically appear when users access the iMessage app.
Tinder Beyond the Dating App
Tinder Stacks is not the first time the company has branched out beyond dating. In fact, in July of 2016, they launched
Tinder Social — a feature within the app that allows groups of friends to meet up with each other. The point of Tinder Social is to facilitate fun nights out with larger gatherings of friends, without the pressure of anything romantic. Groups of four friends on Tinder social can see other groups in the vicinity that are interested in hanging out; they can then swipe left or right, depending on whether they are interested in convening.
Tinder also branched out from dating when they partnered with music streaming app
Spotify in September of 2016. The new partnership lets users of Tinder and Spotify select their favorite songs and artists from the streaming platform, then display those choices on their dating profile in order to meet a partner who shares their taste in music. Spotify also allows users to pick their “anthem,” or a song that defines them, then display that on their Tinder profile in order to give users a better sense of who they are.
Communicating from the Gutter by Michael Coghlan is licensed under Attribution-ShareAlike License