If you’re the type of person who asks friends and family for help with your love life, Tinder aims to make things a little easier by allowing them to suggest potential partners to you right within the app. Tinder’s new Matchmaker feature allows users to invite loved ones, regardless of whether they have a Tinder profile or not, to view and recommend potential matches, essentially integrating a “friend quiz” into the dating app.
Tinder Matchmaker is now available in 15 countries, including the US, UK, Australia, Canada, France and Germany, with a global launch expected “in the coming months.” Users can start a Matchmaker session directly from a profile card or within the app’s settings, creating a link that can be shared with up to 15 friends or family. Participating loved ones (or ‘matchmakers’) have 24 hours to recommend profiles before the session expires. Matchmakers cannot chat or message potential dates on behalf of the user who invited them.
Once the Matchmaker session expires, the Tinder user can review what potential dating candidates their loved ones have suggested. Profiles that matchmakers like will be marked as “recommendation,” but the Tinder user who invited them still has the final say on who to officially “like” on the app. Tinder says profiles marked no by matchmakers will not change.
If your friends and family are anything like mine, then I can see Matchmaker being used more for trolling than to help your love life, but it’s still a cool feature for people who need to verify their dates. According to a study commissioned by Tinder, more than 75 percent of young singles talk about their dating habits several times a month with their friends, so this streamlines the process a bit. And if you’re unlucky anyway, why? No Let your grandmother examine your next date?
