Tinder Plus: would you pay for emoticon removal or a drunk lockout?
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Version 0 of 1. You may have wondered, as you’ve idly browsed through hundreds of your fellow human beings as if they were Amazon boxsets, how Tinder is ever going to make money. No ads, no charge for the app: are they just doing this out of kindness? Well, no, of course they’re not. And now the process of getting rich is under way. Since late last year, some users in Britain, Brazil and Germany have had access to a premium version called Tinder Plus; now, says Techcrunch, the same service is nearly ready for the US. The price point is still up for grabs, but a leak has suggested that it might be $6.99 a month where it’s available. For the rest of us, the bog-standard version will have to do for now. It’s not that much of a loss, though: Tinder’s deluxe edition isn’t all that exciting. You can search for people in other locations, and undo accidental swipes in the wrong direction, and that’s about it. Here, though, are some features we’d definitely pay for. Tiger tamer For a small upfront payment, users whose pictures feature them in the company of any big cat are automatically removed from your feed. The same system will be rolled out to any person posing serenely with poverty-stricken children from an unidentified country in the developing world. ERS The Emoticon Removal System will immediately disappear anyone who types ;) after jokes. Tolerance levels will be at users’ discretion, since :D and :( and <3 can actually be quite funny in the right hands, and if you don’t get that then you’re not doing it right. Group discount Rearranges users’ pictures so that solo shots always appear first, negating the embarrassing possibility of swiping right on someone because you fancy their friend. Enforced self-awareness :D Tinder’s crack squad of face-assessors do the depressing work so you don’t have to, removing anyone obviously out of your league so that you don’t have to confront the grim reality of where you stand for yourself. Automated bar raiser When they’ve finished picking out the people who definitely wouldn’t want to get off with you, the team at HQ will do the same in the other direction, thus sparing you the awful gloom that descends when your first match in ages turns out to be someone you’re not keen on, now that you look a bit closer. Particularly effective when used in concert with the group discount. Drunk lockout Requires you to complete three sets of long division before allowing access after 11pm on a Saturday night. Reality check Randomly drops people from your Facebook friend list into Tinder, as a helpful reminder that there may be real, live people you’ve already met who you might actually like more than a bunch of strangers who are as desperate as you are. Probably not though! Would you pay for these suggested features? And do you have any of your own to add? |