Tinder to use ‘Augmented Reality’ approach to find the perfect match

Tinder to use ‘Augmented Reality’ approach to find the perfect match
HIGHLIGHTS

Tinder just swiped right on Humin app to make its second acquisition.

It’s Saturday and you go to your favourite cafe to chill as usual. You open up Tinder and look for people close to you. But this time you have a specific person in mind, that dancer who was really cute and also were lucky to receive a quick smile back. So you just type in “the dancer” or “the person I met last week (well, you tried!).”

Popular dating app Tinder has acquired Humin, a company that works on figuring out the context of social connections. Notably, Sir Richard Branson and Will.i.am had previously given financial support to it.

Tinder’s long term goals seem to be about managing social interactions and organise collated information. Humin’s CEO, Ankur Jain, who will henceforth be Tinder’s VP of Product and Head of Special Projects, views Tinder as ‘augmented reality’ because it is all about meeting and connecting. 

It uses the hardware that you own, in this case your phone, to augment the special information about people around you, and put that into context. Called ‘actionable information’, the social context here means information such as meeting places, mutual friends and trips.

With this acquisition, Tinder will look to consolidate upon becoming an important social media platform, completing its evolution from a dating app.

 

Nithya Palaniyappan
Digit.in
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Digit.in
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