Inside Tinder’s New Explore Section

When one of the biggest and most popular dating/hookup apps in the world adds a major new feature, you can bet that the world is going to stand up and take notice. That’s exactly what happened last month when Tinder launched their new Explore section.

When Tinder launched, it was an almost exclusively visual form of digital speed dating. Like someone’s photos? Swipe right. Don’t feel attraction? Swipe left. It was that simple.

But slowly Tinder realized there was a desire among users to connect with potential matches on a deeper level. They added enhanced profiles with more ways to share users’ personalities. They expanded interactive dating features. Now, they’ve taken another step forward with the Explore section.

With Explore, you can browse through potential matches based on personality traits and shared interests. This can include everything from ‘foodies’ and ‘gamers’ to ‘animal parents’ and more. Most interestingly, you’ll get customized interests based on where you are, what time of day you’re browsing, and your own personal interest.

Most interestingly, Tinder has specified that this isn’t a way of filtering out people without shared interests. After all, people with completely different personalities and interests end up together all the time. Rather, it’s a great way of browsing interesting people with interests that spark your curiosity.

“Nobody joins Tinder because they’re looking for something,” former CEO Sean Rad said in an interview with Time Magazine. “They join because they want to have fun. It doesn’t even matter if you match because swiping is so fun.”

Kyle Miller, the product lead at Tinder, echoed that sentiment.

“It is a lot more about curiosity than a hard, set filter of ‘I only want to see people that do this or have this,’” said Kyle Miller, product lead at Tinder. “It does offer more control than Tinder has today because in our testing, we found the members, they go across multiple of these categories.”

Other new Tinder features, such as Swipe Night and Hot Takes, will also be integrated into the Explore tab, as will the Verified Profiles feature recently added that’s designed to authenticate real people and avoid fake profiles.

Rad does not speak for Tinder, however. His interview where he mistook sapiosexuality for sodomy does not reflect the opinions, values, and mission of Tinder in any way. Match.com, Inc said Rad was “not a director or executive officer of the company and was not authorised to make statements on behalf of the company”.