People spend more time swiping to the left or right on Tinder than they do navigating news feeds and giving thumbs up on Facebook, according to usages statistics reported by both companies.
The Tinder app, rising star in the world of online dating, presents its users with a stream of photos of other lonely hearts located nearby.
Users swipe profiles to the left and to the right to "like." When a pair of Tinder users mutually swipe each other's profile pic to the right, a made is forged and the two can move on to chatting.
Tinder is said to have approximately 14 million active users, which is dwarfed by the roughly 1.35 billion individuals that visit Facebook every month. But Tinder's users burn far more time using the dating app than Facebook users spend on Mark Zuckerberg's site.
Facebook users spend about 40 minutes on the site each day, while Tinder says its users spend approximately 90 minutes sorting though potential matches each day.
And when the perfect match is hidden in a metro area's millions of inhabitant, the search for love is leading more people to look online. Some dating sites have sought to capitalize on the millions of people who turn to the Internet for help in finding love, while others have even preyed on them.
Tinder says women spend about 8.5 minutes sorting though matches per session, while men typically consume about 7.2 minutes doing so. Tinder users log into the app approximately 11 times each day, a statistic that could indicate that people are addicted to the idea of finding a perfect match or the app's formula is more successful than rival.
"When was the last time you walked into a bar and someone said, 'Excuse me, can you fill out this form and we'll match you up with people here,' " says Sean Rad, co-founder and chief executive of Tinder. "That's not how we think about meeting new people in real life."
While some may argue that Tinder's premise is more shallow than rivals like OKCupid and Plenty of Fish, Rad contests those assertions. Pictures are worth thousands of words, according to Rad.
"There is this idea that attraction stems from a very superficial outlook on people, which is false," says Rad. "Everyone is able to pick up thousands of signals in these photos. A photo of a guy at a bar with friends around him sends a very different message than a photo of a guy with a dog on the beach."
