The product that I referred to in my last post from week 2 was the smartphone application, Tinder. To me, when I consider and contemplate the motivations for the application, I thought that the motivation was to make people feel more comfortable and develop a sense of confidence with dating, whether it be online or offline. There are a lot of people who may not be completely comfortable with themselves, lack confidence, or have a fear of being turned down, but because of this application's anonymity, users dont have to get down on themselves or worry about wasting time with people that they just don't match with physically. This is mainly because the user will not ever know who "dislikes" them on the application, and the other user will never know who likes them unless both users like each other. Continuing, another motivation for this application could also be to build a users confidence. When two users "match", at least one of the users may be excited, happy, or surprised at the person they match up with. When this happens, not only are the users filled with positive emotions, their overall confidence and comfortability may also grow.
You've written a great post here. I think you've gotten to the heart of Tinder's creators were going for. I'd like to try Tinder, but, alas, Windows Phone does not have an app.
ReplyDeleteOn their website they say "Tinder is how people meet. It's like real life, but better." Their marketing video makes this seem like the first gut reactions that you have when you first meet someone in person can also happen in the digital space. I wonder how the app handles cases when your gut reaction turns out to be a false positive. That is to say, what happens when you regret engaging with that person based on your gut feeling. The reaction (how you handle the situation) will probably be the same as it would had you met in person, but in the in person context, the "blame" lies solely with yourself (or whoever might have set you up). When Tinder enters the equation it is likely to attract some of that blame since it was a part of the situation. So, it is like real life, but how is it better?