Tinder hoping users will subscribe to premium service, coming November

21 Oct 2014

Tinder’s CEO Sean Rad has revealed that as of this November, users who can’t get enough of swiping left or right will now be able to pay for the service to gain as yet unconfirmed additional features.

While only two years old and one of the most well-known, for better or worse, apps available, Tinder continues to have no revenue stream offering a free app with no in-app purchases.

However, this is all to change, according to Rad who, speaking at Forbes’ recent Under 30 Summit, confirmed that they will now be exploring paid plans for hardcore Tinder users.

Currently, the app sees its users swipe through approximately 1.2bn profiles every single day yet only 15m of these will actually create matches.

Now, Rad says that while he is not going to reveal all the details of what should be coming with a premium version, he did admit that one of the potential upgrades could allow users to check out another city if they are to be visiting it in the near future.

As Rad has reassured current Tinder users that there won’t be any changes to those using the free service, it will now be interesting to see from the perspective of Tinder’s investors, whether there will be a significant uptake in the premium version.

As things stand, current estimates put Tinder’s yearly revenue as approximately US$75m come the end of 2015.

Colm Gorey was a senior journalist with Silicon Republic

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