BY DARREN “STR8JAKTJIM” MACNEALL
TINDER is a straightforward concept. Create your profile, write a bit about yourself and start swiping – a left swipe for no, and a right swipe for yes.
When two people swipe right on each other they match and can chat, getting to know each other; it’s this easy approach that has made Tinder the go-to app for those wanting to meet people.
Since its release on a university campus in 2012, Tinder has introduced new features, such as connecting to Instagram and Spotify, to provide more ways for potential matches to know if you’re what they’re looking for.
Its latest innovation is Swipe Night, originally set for a March 14 launch in Australia but postponed in the wake of the COVID-19 Coronoavirus pandemic. A message on the Swipe Night site said:
“We decided not to launch the Swipe Night series around the world this weekend. We were excited to bring this innovation to our members outside of the US, but given the series’ apocalyptic theme, and because we are sensitive to the current events our members are experiencing, we felt it would be difficult to launch it in the right spirit”.
Originally launched in October 2019 in the US, Swipe Night is a short interactive movie taking its cues from the Choose Your Own Adventure books and more recently interactive movies like Netflix’s Bandersnatch.
At key moments you are offered choices leading to branching paths in the narrative, swiping left for one option or right for another.
Tinder reports that there was an increase in matches by 26 per cent and in messages by 12 per cent during the US Swipe Night, so with those numbers it’s no surprise that Aussie swipers will soon be able to experience this for themselves.
23-year old Karena Evans, best known for her work on Drake’s music videos, directs the first-person apocalyptic adventure in Swipe Night.
“I jumped at the chance to work with a brand like Tinder,” she said.
“They gave us an opportunity to experiment with new ways to tell a story, with a highly-engaged, diverse community that’s incredibly open-minded.”
It’s exciting to see Tinder innovating in this way; it keeps people interested and creates talking points in an almost water cooler-type moment.
Generating discussion and helping matches learn more about each other through more than just a text, the user’s own choices speak for themselves.
Tinder’s Swipe Night has been postponed with no new launch date confirmed.
