BOSTINNO – July 3 – Although no one can deny Tinder’s success with millennials, Huffington Post’s claim that one Tufts student was solely responsible for starting the fad—and then hosting parties the company paid for—was wrong. “It wasn’t accurate at all,” said Justin Mateen, Tinder co-founder and CMO, referencing the piece published Tuesday. “We did have college reps, but it was very casual. It was a three-day thing, and it’s kind of secret what we did.” The site has since substantially edited their article, now titled: “Here’s One of the College Kids Helping Tinder Take Over Campuses.”
“We believe in top-down marketing,” Mateen said, claiming the goal was to get “the right people” on board. Or, in more “politically correct” words, “Target the group that has the most influence over their peers."
“We tried to create an experience that emulates how the real world works,” Mateen said. “What lights up a conversation is physical appearance. If someone you don’t want approaches you, you can just ignore them and move out of the way.”
Mateen reports Tinder is now being used on every campus in the country, and is beginning to grow internationally. Now that students have adopted the app, however, a broader audience has started logging on. Upon launching, 75 percent of Tinder’s user base was between the ages of 18-24, according to Mateen. That number has since dropped to 67, with 25 percent of users now between the ages of 25-34.
Tinder has facilitated more than 80 million matches since launching in October. In the last few days alone, 1.25 million matches have been made daily, with more than 6.1 billion profiles having been created.
