Tinder is pushing forward with its $500-per-month subscription offering, tentatively called “Tinder Vault.”
The feature is still in the early days, says the company’s chief product officer, Mark Van Ryswyk. Tinder could still pull plans to release it, or at least drastically cut prices. It’s still unclear as to when Tinder would want to release the offering broadly.
“I’m always like, ‘I want it yesterday.’ And, of course, these things don’t work that way,” Van Ryswyk says. “We’re still in this learning mode.” Part of that is figuring out how something that could cost someone $6,000 per year adds value to the overall Tinder ecosystem. It can’t break the experience for Tinder’s free members, which make up the vast majority of overall users. And it has to be impactful enough for the serious daters willing to pay for Vault.
The company has been under a period of change since Bernard Kim took over Match Group broadly last May, and then as Tinder’s interim CEO in August. The dating giant posted its first-ever quarterly decline during its fourth quarter of 2022, with Kim partly blaming Tinder’s “weaker-than-expected product execution.” Kim said during the earnings call in February that things have turned around, and Tinder now has a strong focus on product momentum.
Tinder Vault fits in as part of this refresh of the company’s star brand.
“We’re really looking at a whole range of additional value-add services to Tinder overall,” Van Ryswyk says. The executive points toward experiences learned from Match Group’s July 2022 acquisition of The League, an exclusive dating app that costs up to $1,000 per week. It showed Tinder that there’s “high intent members” who are looking for quality matches and experiences and willing to shell out a small fortune. Tinder can lean into helping them discover future partners or relationships.
Vault will be an amplification of Tinder’s technology, rather than an entirely new segment like building out human matchmakers. Van Ryswyk declined to comment on exactly what features Vault will have compared to its other, less expensive premium offerings. Right now, users can pay for things like profile amplification, limitless swipes, and prioritized likes, which is when a paying member’s likes are likely to be seen before non-payers.
The Tinder Vault testing comes at a time when consumers are increasingly price-conscious and cutting costs where they can to deal with high inflation. Van Ryswyk says that League members have stayed strong, showing the dating space can be resilient to macro conditions. But Tinder is also exploring a weekly subscription offering to Tinder Plus for people who may not want to shell out the funds for a full month or year of access.
The ultra-premium test run coincides with Tinder’s larger rebrand. The company, known by many for being a hookup app, is trying to shift the narrative and recently launched its first ever marketing campaign that shows Tinder is there for long-term relationships as well.
“It’s great to see us start to claim our voice again,” Van Ryskwyk says.
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