How to Monetize Tinder for Good or Evil
An Open Source Product Strategy Reconstructive Surgeons and Club Promoters
Everyone encounters times in their lives when they must make a choice between good and evil:
- Do I become a doctor or an investment banker?
- Do I eat a salad or a box of Oreos?
- Do I stay in and be productive or go out and drink myself into a coma?
- Do I take the offer from Google or Microsoft?
- Do I turn to the dark side of the force with my absent power-hungry father or join the rebels and fight for peace in the universe?
In tech we often make such decisions when building products and even more so when monetizing them. Facebook, for example, has received much criticism for the way it charges users who want to ensure their posts reach their friends on the platform.
Tinder has millions of highly-engaged users who have made billions of ratings, but it has yet to develop a serious monetization strategy. With this treasure trove of users and data, Tinder could truly ignite if it finds an effective way to monetize it. But along the way, Tinder will inevitably have to consider the ethical implications of their decision.
To make this decision harder, I've decided to open source two product strategies that Tinder (or anyone using their still nonexistent API) could implement to start making money on their product.
One is good, one is evil… Which would you choose?
Good
First impressions are powerful. And more than anything else, the human face can shape these impressions. However, for countless people born with facial anomalies or those disfigured by trauma or cancer, first impressions are a source of anxiety and embarrassment, which can significantly diminish their quality of life.
When reconstructive surgeons treat such patients, they often turn to the Bolton Standards, which is a database of facial measurements in different people at different ages. Unfortunately this database is limited (e.g. the data was only gathered from Scandanavians), and surgeons must make aesthetic judgments which are still more art than science.
Tinder has an incredible dataset of faces in the pictures users upload. Additionally, each of these faces could be given an aesthetic score based on the number of positive ratings the user has. After doing some image processing using one of the many facial analysis APIs, you wind up with a dataset of the dimensions of the average human with differing aesthetic score, ages, ethnicities, etc. This information would be invaluable to reconstructive surgeons and the field of medicine as a whole.
Evil
Its really hard not to have fun in Las Vegas. But for attractive women, who can expect free drinks, food, club entry, etc. in exchange for their mere presence, it is near impossible.
This is because it is the club promoters job to create a scene that people want to pay a lot of money to be a part of. Having beautiful women frequenting your club is an easy way to attract a financially reckless population of males. Translation: $$$.
But sourcing attractive people who are nearby to come to club events is difficult and disorganized. Promoters resort to Facebook and Instagram stalking — clever Vegas promoters have even started messaging women who post pictures using particular hashtags like #whathappensinVegas.
Tinder has the geolocation and total number of likes for every user, which can be easily used to calculate who the most attractive people nearby are. Couple that with the chat functionality that already exists, and all Tinder would have to do is build a backend platform to allow promoters to pay a fee to send messages to the hottest users nearby.
Introducing Tinder Pyro*
Adapted Tinder design by the Brett Goldstein.
There you have it: two opportunities for Tinder transform itself from a hookup app into a lucrative and world-changing business laid out in the open.
One opportunity could change the world for the better, one for the worse.
Which would you choose?
