Match vs. Tinder

There are a host of dating sites and apps you can choose from. Match and Tinder represent polar opposites.

I’ve had great success with Match — several long-term relationships over the past twenty years — so I prefer Match to Tinder hands-down. But Tinder gets one thing right that Match gets wrong. And it’s a big thing that can shape your entire online dating experience — for better or worse.

Match is one of the oldest dating sites. Launched in 1995, long before smartphones and apps existed, it’s available on both laptop and phone. The amount of text you can post to describe yourself is almost unlimited.

Tinder, on the other hand, is a “second-generation” service designed primarily as a phone app. It pioneered the swipe-left/swipe-right model, which encourages users to make instant decisions based mostly on photos. The amount of text you can post is limited.

So the user interfaces are fundamentally different, but there’s another difference that shapes user satisfaction when you look at online dating from 30,000 feet.

Everyone hates online dating. Why? Because people are dissatisfied with the results. Most would tolerate the frustrations if the services actually delivered what they expect.

And what is this expectation? That apps will match you with the right person.

That’s where Match.com stumbles. By calling itself “Match,” it creates the expectation that it will actually deliver your match. But it can’t. In fact, no online dating service can. Human beings are too complex. No computer system can truly identify a match — only you can.

What Match really does is provide opportunities to meet people with whom you might match. But its responsibility ends after the introduction. What happens after that is up to you.

In contrast, Tinder picked a name that better describes what it offers. The founders liked the idea of sparking attraction — as tinder is used to start a fire. But fanning the flames into a relationship was up to the people involved, not the app.

So Tinder’s name is actually more honest. Match’s name promises the impossible. Tinder promises a spark — and delivers one. The rest, as always, is up to you.