Despite only recently monetising its dating app, Tinder has made its first acquisition with the purchase of Chill, the creator of the photo-messaging app, Tappy.
Tappy offers a service quite similar to other established ephemeral apps such as Snapchat by offering a messaging service that deletes all conversations after 24 hours with the conversations having to start with a message.
Now it seems, that Tinder are looking to get in on the action with Chill’s software as part of a ‘strategic acquihire’, according to TechCrunch.
Speaking of the acquisition, Sean Rad, Tinder’s co-founder, ousted CEO and current president, said, “It’s incredibly difficult to find talented people to join us fast enough to keep up with our roadmap for 2015, which includes some ambitious plans. When I spoke with Brian [Brian Norgard, co-founder of Tappy], we found that our goals for two separate products were such a great match. There are some specific things that they’ve done in the past that we wouldn’t have to figure out on our own moving forward.”
However, questions have been raised over what Tappy’s messaging service can add to the Tinder app given it currently offers Tinder Moments, a very similar service that lets matched users communicate through posted images.
Speaking of how the two apps will be merged, Norgard said, “The chance to work with Sean was too strong of a draw because we knew that if we could couple Tappy DNA with Tinder DNA that we can do awesome stuff. Messaging has gotten very overheated, and this gives us the chance to lead from the front.”
