Swipe your interests:The mechanics of Tinder and SuperOne

Here at SuperOne, we know a little bit about how dating apps work. How the best ones have risen to the top like the cream in one of those old-fashioned bottles of milk your grandma once had delivered to her door. And where else to start but Tinder? It’s incredible to think this app launched as recently as 2012, more than a decade after the first internet bubble was forming.

And by golly did it enjoy some sparkling early success: within two years it was registering an average of one billion of its famous “swipes” a day. For those of you unfamiliar with the kingpin of online dating, Tinder shares none of the details of a particular account-holder with any of its other registered users except for one key thing. A profile picture.

And that’s it. However, there is a way of gaining more details about a user — and that’s where the swipes come in. If you like another user, you swipe right. If you don’t you swipe left. It’s a fairly crude, binary algorithm but the key lies in that overt simplicity. Rather than bewilder prospective dates with biographical details, personal interests, career details, and so on, Tinder is the ultimate speed-dating mechanism.

Subtle it is not; effective it most certainly is. But you can’t simply connect with another user because YOU like THEM. Crucially, there has to be a mutual attraction. You both swiped right on each other’s photo? Bingo: that’s the moment when you can start planning a three-course meal at a swanky restaurant, a riverside cruise, or a trip to Paris.

Whatever you fancy really (coronavirus restrictions pending). The primary aim of SuperOne is — as we expect you know by now — to create a hub of excitement for mobile gamers who want to test their knowledge in a range of key chosen subjects. But there is more on offer, some supplementary candy if you want. SuperOne could also serve as a meeting point for prospective friends, or even a catalyst for a romantic liaison.

Although Tinder makes use of some of the details from your social profile — geolocation and personal interests among them — remember this is never shared with prospective matches. It is simply used to determine which potential users you see first. SuperOne works in a different way. It can suggest potential duels between you and someone with a similar SuperOne profile to you.

There might be someone out there who plays the same type of quiz games as you, who scores similarly, and who might even support the same football club as you. There is, of course, absolutely no obligation to regard SuperOne as a dating site! But you may be able to find online buddies through the platform, and if you have no interest in the social side of things then that is of course fine with us.

Perhaps, though, you have already “done” Tinder, reckon that it’s all gone a bit too far, and may end up finding that SuperOne neatly and unexpectedly covers two of your digital requirements. Yet the most obvious link between Tinder and SuperOne isn’t even the social linking aspect: it’s all in the swiping.

Because in exactly the same way a Tinder user swipes right or left on a picture, a SuperOne player swipes right or left when answering a question. Most things in life take elements of their constructions from previous successful models. SuperOne’s binary swiping interface is a clear nod to the incredibly simple yet brilliantly effective operational concept that allowed Tinder to launch stratospherically from its genesis.

So, where has Tinder got to now? There is a suggestion that the data it carries is far too intrusive. Certainly, the option that now allows people to create a profile from a simple phone number as opposed to demanding you share details from your Facebook account was a welcome development.

Tinder has been at the forefront of transforming the way young singletons view relationships. Whereas previously online dating was conducted in unmoderated internet chatrooms or desktop subscription-based websites like match.com, Tinder simplified and focused the process to its nth degree. Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic, a professor of business psychology at University College London has examined five psychological “lessons” from the Tinder effect.

Perhaps the most telling was that hook-up apps are more arousing than actual hook-ups. He felt Tinder “gamifies and sexualizes” the dating process. In other words, it is not just a way to get a date with someone, but it is an end in itself. Meanwhile, there is no evidence that Tinder has hit its growth ceiling.

In late March 2020, three billion swipes were recorded in a single day for the first time with much of the world beginning to face the unfamiliar restrictions of coronavirus lockdown for the first time.

So if hook-up apps are more arousing than actual hook-ups as per the Chamorro-Premuzic study, does it follow that gaming apps based partially on the Tinder model could hold more appeal than anything that has previously occupied the space SuperOne is moving into? We feel certain that SuperOne has massive scope for growth.

Growth as big as Tinder itself? Why not?