Tinder has taken the dating world by storm. Making it easier to meet someone you’re interested in while packaging it up in a trendy smartphone app has greatly paid off for the matchmaking company. While the idea itself is pretty simple, that hasn’t kept Tinder from innovating with a new feature. A new Tinder feed feature allows you to see what people who you’ve swiped right on have been up to on Instagram and Spotify.
New Tinder Feed
In an effort to bring users closer together, a new Tinder feed feature is currently in testing. While currently not fully integrated into the app, soon everyone will be able to see the activity of their matches on their favorite apps. Learning more about your potential dates such as music tastes and who they follow and like on Instagram may give you a better sense of whether or not your tastes jive with that of your potential mate. At the very least, it should give you an icebreaker or something to talk about.
Like a regular social media app, people can comment on updates from you that appear on their tinder feed, however, the comments are visible only to you and the person that commented. This new feature does mean that tinder dates that currently aren’t following you on Instagram will still be able to see your posts, but there’s an option to manage what you share with matches by going to the settings page and managing privacy settings from there.
Of course, for all of this to work, you’ll need to have your respective accounts linked to the device. So if you’d like to avoid sharing more than you are currently on your favorite dating app, you can simply not link your accounts and opt out of this new feature.
Do We Really Need It?
This new Tinder feed feature is intended to bring the app “beyond the swipe,” according to the company. However, is this sort of functionality really needed? As Tinder strives to become more of a social network rather than a dating app, will it lose sight of its original goal?
There’s also the question of how much demand there is for this feature. As an app that has garnered a reputation as a “hookup” app, are there a lot of people who look beyond casual encounters to learn much more about their potential dates? It’s true that many people are starting to look more towards relationships through the app, but that doesn’t seem to be the original intention.
The Tinder feed feature is being tested in Australia, New Zealand, and Canada. A worldwide rollout will occur next year, and we’ll have to see whether this new option to view activity on Instagram and Spotify is a hit or a miss. It may give more insight into the activities and interests of your matches, but it also may threaten the privacy of users who would prefer to keep that part of their life separate from a dating app. We’ll have to wait until the new year to really get a sense of whether the Tinder feed feature is here to stay.
