Tinder Boost UK release: App now lets people pay to be seen by potential dates

The feature won’t necessarily bring you more likes – but it will make it much more likely

Joel Balcita shows his homemade Tinder App costume at the West Hollywood Halloween Costume Carnaval, which attracts nearly 500,000 people annually (Reuters)

The people you’re seeing on Tinder might not be all that they seem. In fact, they might have paid to get there.

The app is now rolling out its Tinder Boost feature in the UK, to allow people to pay to be more visible for 30 minutes. And being more visible theoretically means more matches – it will mean that more people will see your profile, and so there’ll be more chance of you liking them.

Usually, the order that Tinder profiles are shown is something of a mystery. The company has indicated before that it runs a special desirability mechanism, which works out how similar users are and shows those people.

But the Boost feature will skip that mechanism, pushing people who’ve paid to the front.

That mechanism means that people will get up to 10 times more profile views during the time they’re boosted, according to Tinder. It’s likely that won’t necessarily translate into that many more matches – if the algorithm works, then ordinarily you wouldn’t see people you wouldn’t match with – but it should inevitably lead to some more interest.

Tinder Plus users – who already pay £3.99 or £14.99 depending on their age for some special features – will get a free Boost per week. Beyond that Boosts will have to be paid for by Plus or normal users, and it isn’t clear yet how much they will cost.

The Boosts are used while swiping in the normal Tinder mode. A Boost button can be pressed in that mode and the 30-minute timer will start.

When it’s all over after 30 minutes, the app will notify you. And it’ll also show which new matches came from the time using the Boost mode.

The company suggests that the feature is meant for busy people who just want to get out meeting others.

“You’ve got people to meet and places to be,” the company wrote in its announcement. “In fact, Tinder was designed with this in mind, providing you a simple, fun introduction to new people nearby so you can get out and meet them in the real world.

“Still, sometimes there just aren’t enough hours in the day and what you need is a boost in the right direction.”

A trial of the feature began in Australia last month, and is still ongoing there. The company said that they’d be looking to roll out the boost feature to the rest of the world soon.