Tinder CEO Elie Seidman: if you behave badly we want you out
- The dating app has been downloaded more than 300 million times and is the most used in the US and the UK
- CEO Elie Seidman talks about how the app has changed the dynamics of relationships
Swipe right for “would like to meet”, left for “wouldn’t”. Seven years after Tinder made choosing a date as simple as flicking your thumb across a smartphone screen, it is by far the most used dating app in the UK and the US. Downloaded 300 million times and with more than five million paying subscribers, it is the highest-grossing app of any kind in the world, according to the analysts App Annie.
For Americans, apps and online dating are the most common way to meet a partner. “It’s an amazing responsibility, and an amazing privilege,” says Elie Seidman, Tinder’s 45-year-old chief executive. If he finds it less daunting than others might, that’s because, before he took over Tinder in 2018, he was in charge of OkCupid, the Tinder of the 2000s. He has spent much of his working life helping people to find love.
“The vast majority of our employees are energised by that very mission,” he says. “We’re not selling plumbing supplies, right? Obviously, plumbing is really important, but ours is a really noble and exciting mission. So, when we’re taking new risks – new challenges, new chances – we know that, if we’re successful, it’s about helping members connect.”
At times, though, it has felt as if Tinder has chased that goal with too much passion. Launching on college campuses, before expanding to New York, London and then everywhere, Tinder rapidly gained a reputation as less of a dating app and more of a “hook-up” app: laser-focused at finding users a match as quickly as possible, with minimal fuss between opening the app and getting lucky.
In its early days, Tinder leaned into this reputation. Perhaps the most notorious feature was the introduction of a secret “Elo ranking”, a term borrowed from the chess world to describe a way to score people based on their previous matches. With the Tinder version, your score went up a lot if hot people swiped right on you; if ugly people swiped left on you, it went down just as much. Whether your matches were hot was based on their own Elo ranking, and so on.
