Ever swiped left or right? If you've used the popular dating app, Tinder, then you know that the swipes you're getting are based on your looks and the profile you created, right? Well, there's one thing you might not be aware of.
While you're busy swiping left and right, Tinder itself is busy doing the same thing. The popular dating app is busy scrutinizing its users with an internal rating system that enables the company to score each user's desirability and rank them among all users.
You may not be getting random profiles nearest to your location. A Fast Company writer was able to dig deep into the online social app dating buzz and found something from his own profile ratings.
It's called an "Elo Score". It is the same term used to rank chess players' skill levels. What does this score do? This score helps Tinder manage matches based on score compatability. Which means, the more "swipe rights" you get, the higher your desirability score is. This heightens your chances of ending up with a match of the same desirability score.
However, Sean Rad, CEO of Tinder explains that the rating isn't to measure attractiveness. He didn't elaborate further except that he said his own desirability score is "above average". He explains:
It's not just how many people swipe right on you. It's very complicated. It took us two and a half months just to build the algorithm because a lot of factors go into it.
The scores are not available to the user or the public and Tinder's Data Engineer, Tor Solli-Nowlan, adds that the Elo score isn't a universal ranking of attractiveness.
Tinder data analyst Chris Dumler describes it as a voting system in which each swipe is a vote of whether you think someone is desirable. The company engineers apparently use this info to study which profiles are considered the most appealing overall - since we all have different tastes.
Though it makes sense that a dating app has an internal rating system, the beauty of the app still lies on its swipes, tech reports indicated.
