http://www.lamag.com/longform/tinder-sociologist/
Kismet” is the word Jessica Carbino likes to use. She joined Tinder in
October 2013, about a year after it launched in Los Angeles. Carbino
was 27 and “looking.” She was also a Ph.D. candidate in sociology at
UCLA, writing her thesis on online dating. An undergraduate student had
tipped her off about the free app, explaining how it pulls up an endless
scroll of photos of people around you, displaying minimal, if any,
biographical details about them. If you “like” someone, she was told,
you swipe right; if you don’t, go left. A chat box appears only when
both parties are into each other.
Her interest piqued, Carbino gave the app a spin. One of the photos
she swiped right on was of a twentysomething with short dark hair and a
stare intense enough to knock down walls. He swiped right on her, too.
The guy, it turned out, was the company CEO, Sean Rad. Instead of a
date, Carbino landed a job as the start-up’s in-house sociologist.
Close to three years later she’s leading me through Tinder’s
headquarters several stories above the Sunset Strip. Tinder moved here
last October, and the space still has a just-out-of-the-box vibe. The
building belongs to Barry Diller’s IAC, a media conglomerate that owns
four dozen dating sites, including OkCupid, Match.com, and PlentyOfFish
as well as a controlling stake in Tinder. Yet those holdings constitute
only a tiny fraction of the nearly 4,000 sites that make up the $2.2
billion online dating market. You can bet more will be emerging. Because
as much as computers and smartphones have changed the dating game, what
hasn’t changed is the central challenge everyone contends with: how to
lock in a better match.
To a large degree the sector has staked its success on
algorithms—proprietary math formulas that use a combination of profile
information and online behaviors—to come up with the answers. For end
users, though, providing the data to feed those algorithms can feel like
a drag, what with the tedious profiles, the Psych 101 personality
tests, and the interminable questionnaires (eHarmony’s has more than 150
questions). The payoff isn’t always there, either. “Chemistry [needs
to] kick in, and that’s the toughest area—how to know someone’s going to
have a good pheromones effect,” says Mark Brooks, president of New
York-based Courtland Brooks, a consulting firm that has worked with many
dating sites.
With
Tinder,
Rad has seemingly bypassed all that stuff and focused on one underlying
premise: Attraction, at least with that initial spark, might really
only be skin deep. Four years and 10 billion right swipes later, more
than three-quarters of the app’s users are between 18 and 34 years old, a
traditionally elusive demographic for the dating industry. Now Tinder
is pushing for growth and revenue by adding extra features. It launched a
tiered subscription service early last year, charging those over 30 a
$20 monthly fee (and those younger, $10) for the privilege of undoing an
accidental left swipe and the ability to search for prospects in other
cities. In November the app started allowing users to include their
employment and education information to provide a slightly more
complete, as in more right-swipable, snapshot of themselves.
That’s where Carbino’s work comes in: to find out what users want and
what they don’t know they want. “I think Tinder is far more complex
than simply physical attractiveness,” she says. “With photos, people are
not simply looking at whether someone has a nice smile or a nice face
per se. They are looking at other factors related to that individual’s
attributes—like socioenomic status, whether they think they are kind,
nice, or mean.” We’re standing at her workstation by the marketing
department, which at 10:30 a.m. (early by tech standards) has yet to
clock in. Her portion of the cubicle consists of a chair, a desk, and a
PC. That’s all the hardware Carbino, a petite and fast-talking
30-year-old brunet, needs to do her job, which entails running focus
groups, creating surveys for Tinder and non-Tinder users, and filtering
loads of data through the lens of social behaviors.
One project she spent seven months on involved poring over 12,000
images of Tinder users in Atlanta, Los Angeles, and New York, cataloging
in minute detail the visual qualities users deem “attractive” and
taking the definition beyond hot or not. The analysis draws on a
long-established concept in psychology called “thin slicing,” which has
to do with the vast amount of nonverbal cues first impressions can give
us about a stranger. For instance, men with a softer jawline are
generally perceived by women as kinder than, say, a guy with a Christian
Bale thing going on. Carbino has also found that the selfie is the most
common type of photo on the app, that women with makeup tend to get
swiped right more by men, that a group shot should never be someone’s
first photo, and that men in L.A. are more clean-shaven than those in
other cities. There’s also this: About 80 percent of Tinder users are
seeking long-term relationships, according to Carbino’s research.
All of her findings make their way into marketing pitches and tip
sheets for users, but they are being used as well to refine the
“product,” including its algorithm. Yes, even Tinder uses one. Called
“Elo,” a chess reference, the formula assigns an undisclosed rating to
each profile based on the frequency of right swipes. It’s one variable
the app uses to determine which profiles someone sees (not that people
at Tinder will say anything else about it).
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The challenge Tinder faces is how to
retain its photocentric simplicity while adapting to an ever-evolving
marketplace. Pleasing those on the hunt for one-night stands is easy
(like Grindr, the gay hookup app, Tinder gets flak for encouraging
promiscuity—despite the fact that Carbino’s research shows otherwise).
But it’s considerably harder to sell users who are interested in
something longer term on looks alone. One competitor, the League,
follows the tried-and-true route of exclusivity by focusing on ambitious
professionals. (“You’ll never have to wonder if that Harvard hottie is
too good to be true on The League” is one of its pitch lines.) With
another app, the
Bumble, women have to make the first move to connect.
“Photos are very important but very limited,” says Brooks, the dating
industry consultant. “Character is not being communicated there. I
think Tinder will prompt us to think differently about how to match-make
behind the scenes. And that’s important because that’s the evolution
required for the industry to really reach its potential.”
Brooks’s expertise is tech-based dating, but what he’s pointing to
are the limitations that Katie Chen capitalizes on. “Everyone online
looks kind of similar, especially in the L.A. metro area. Everyone’s
going to dress nice, they all work out, they all hike, they all love
dining, love having good friends and traveling,” says Chen, who
cofounded the Pico-Robertson-based Catch Matchmaking, which offers what
Tinder doesn’t: personalized service. “You would think that online
dating and matchmaking would grow in different directions, almost like
if online dating is popular, matchmaking would go away,” she says. But
the opposite is true. Too many choices can overwhelm a shopper. Catch’s
clients are “busy professionals” in their late twenties through
seventies, who are willing to shell out for a more tailor-made
experience that includes pointers on how to dress and how to take a
better photo. Sometimes they even get an honest talking-to about
attitude and expectation. “They really are sick of online dating and app
dating,” says Chen. “They’re like, ‘I’ll just hire you because if one
more girl shows up and she doesn’t look like her photo…’ or ‘I’m not
good at writing my profile’ or ‘I am not good at texting.’ They’d rather
outsource it.”
Of course a matchmaker can cost thousands, which is partly why online
dating cropped up in the first place. About 15 percent of American
adults have used a dating site or app, according to a Pew study
conducted earlier this year. The scholarly view of online dating is that
it emerged because of socioeconomic forces: As people move around for
jobs and school, they leave behind the network of family and friends
that has traditionally helped them meet their other half. With those
connections far away, the Internet became the most viable option.
It’s a phenomenon ripe for examination. Carbino certainly isn’t the
first academic to be lured by the dating industry. Anthropologist Helen
Fisher, who works for Match, famously created a personality test for
Chemistry.com, another IAC property. And the now-defunct
Perfectmatch.com was built on an algorithm developed by sociologist
Pepper Schwartz. But every generation needs its interpreters. “I am a
young sociologist, and it’s a young company,” Carbino says. “I think
that’s my unique standpoint in the field.”
She became intrigued by online dating after starting her graduate
program at UCLA, where she knew “not a soul.” Carbino figured that
joining JDate, the Jewish singles site, was her best bet for meeting
someone. “I went on one good date and saw the person on and off for a
while,” she says. “I also went on many bad dates.” She quickly moved on
to Ok-Cupid, Match.com, Jswipe, Hinge, and
Coffee Meets Bagel.
The more she browsed, the more curious she became. “The thing that was
interesting to me is how people presented themselves. No one was
studying that at the time,” she says.
As for her personal relationship with online dating, she called it
quits long ago. A month after she started at Tinder the company, she met
her boyfriend on Tinder the app. The couple have lived together for
nearly two years with a pair of Maltipoos they rescued as puppies. Their
names are Bonnie and Clyde.
