Snap Partners with Tinder to Bring Stories to the Dating App

Back in 2015, Tinder ditched their “Moments” feature, but that didn’t stop the popular dating app from attempting to give users access to ephermeral (disappearing) content in a Snapchat kind of way. In fact, if you’re online dating later this year, you can start posting Snapchat Stories directly to your dating profile. This partnership was announced by Snap during its Partner Summit in Los Angeles. From a technological perspective, this is all thanks to Snap Kit, which allows third-party apps to use Snapchat’s augmented reality camera to send Snaps to a “My Tinder Story” option right inside the app. This means, you’ll also have to have Snapchat if you want to use the feature. Within Tinder, you will only be able to view the story, rather than publishing your Snaps.

Is this something that people would actually want to use? I’m not suggesting that this is necessarily a bad idea, but it is an odd one, isn’t it? While many suggest that the purpose of Tinder is for finding a romantic partner, I think the undertones is that it is app to help you find short term pleasure. I guess I’m wondering if this kind of disappearing image or video of yourself would help you in finding a relationship? In my experience with Tinder, it’s very superficial. I don’t necessarily think that’s a bad thing, which is why I actually think this partnership with Snapchat is going to go a long way. If you think I just indirectly said that Snapchat was superficial, you’re not wrong, but it’s also not necessarily a bad thing.

Snapchat is meant to be seen as an app that allows users to share moments in a fast way. In the beginning they were initially focused on person-to-person photo sharing, but now it has a range of different tasks including sending short videos, live video chatting, messaging, creating caricature-like Bitmoji avatars and sharing a chronological story that is broadcast to all of your followers. And it’s because of these features, that I think it would be of benefit to Tinder.

Aside from this partnership, Snap is also bringing their new App Stories to House Party and Adventure Aide. These are two apps that hope to use Stories in order to help users better connect with one another. With all of these app integrations, the hope is that users will see its Stories on other people’s profiles, and that will ultimately drive them to use Snapchat more often or even create an account if they don’t have one. Right now Snapchat is really struggling to get new users, so while this might be an attempt to get more momentum going to their app, it isn’t necessarily a bad idea.

It doesn’t end there. Snap announced that that Fitbit smartwatch owners will also be able to have their Bitmoji avatar on their watch face, marking the first time that Snap’s digital avatars have been available on wearable devices. iOS users will also have the ability to share what they’re watching on Snapchat Stories or direct messages. This doesn’t mean that you’ll be able Snap an entire episode, but it will show your friends custom artwork from the title that you would like to share. All-in-all this is a lot of work and effort on Snap’s part, and I hope that it pays off.