If you get a message from someone you never matched with on Tinder, it’s not a glitch — it’s part of the app’s expensive new subscription plan that it teased earlier this year, which allows “power users” to send unsolicited messages to non-matches for the small fee of $499 per month.

That landscape, in fact, is largely populated by apps owned by Tinder’s parent company: as Bloomberg notes, Match Group Inc. not only owns the popular swiping app, but also Match.com, OKCupid, Hinge, and The League.

Match Group CEO Bernard Kim referred to Tinder’s subscriptions as “low-hanging fruit” meant to compete with other, pricier services, though that was before this $6,000-per-year tier dropped.

    • jonne@infosec.pub
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      9 months ago

      It was good for a while, but yeah, they need to make money somehow and I guess that’s how they decided to do it. This one will definitely backfire. The last thing anyone wants is getting dick pics from a sad sack who pays $500/Mo for that privilege. Women are going to leave in droves.

    • realChem@beehaw.org
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      9 months ago

      why would I want to use it?

      You wouldn’t, but that’s fine with Match Group: JP Morgan[1] are loving this new monetization strategy. If they think they can get more money out of their users they will, the experience and usefulness of their app be damned. Very similar to aggressively monetized mobile games, but extra icky since they’re monetizing human relationships.


      1. I’m sure other investment firms are pleased as well, but JP Morgan was the firm mentioned in the article ↩︎

    • TrustingZebra@lemmy.one
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      9 months ago

      It’s the most used dating app. Logically people think that if a dating app has a lot of users, their chances of finding matches are higher. But it’s rigged.