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Tinder to charge older users more for premium facilities

m.bbc.co.uk

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Re: Tinder to charge older users more for premium facilities

#71

Post by logn »

WildUtah wrote: post #43
citricsquid wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

and OKCupid engages in price discrimination too, and has done for many years. The price you'll see for OKCupids premium service ("A-list") is based on a variety of factors: attractiveness, age, location, gender... an attractive woman will pay ~$3.99 per month whereas an unattractive middle aged man will pay ~$20.

How do they do the attractiveness rating? Is it an internal eval or some kind of crowdsourced bayesian inferential hotornot?

It's the latter (using things like click through rates). I'm not sure if any one blog sums up their methods, but they write about this topic a lot. In one post I read, they specifically mention that having a high quality camera correlates with their attractiveness ratings and so do different types of poses. So "attractiveness" might be better thought of as popularity, not beauty (though, that's the approximation).

Re: Tinder to charge older users more for premium facilities

#72

Post by bazookajoes »

hkmurakami wrote: post #64
bazookajoes wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you say okcupid's tinder clone are you talking about locals?

I think it was called Instamatch? (it's been a while)

OK, it was called quickmatch, then locals, now it is called OkCupid Dating.

http://www.okcupid.com/forum?tid=10204328337611738961

Re: Tinder to charge older users more for premium facilities

#73

Post by [deleted] »

bazookajoes wrote: post #67
minimaxir wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Basic Tinder was crippled (swipe limit) in order to convince people to buy the premium version.

How do you know that Tinder Plus doesn't have the same swipe limit? That is not stated in the Tinder FAQ, in the BBC article or the TechCrunch article.

[deleted]

Re: Tinder to charge older users more for premium facilities

#74

Post by bazookajoes »

Zelphyr wrote: post #47
krschultz wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are giving them way too much credit. FWIW, the CEO of Tindr is 27.

I suspect you're right but damn; didn't SOMEONE on his board pull him aside and say, "uh, yeah... you don't want to do that."??

I imagine that they didn't realize this would blow up because it didn't blow up when okcupid started doing it. However they probably forgot that tinder is on much larger stage than okcupid.

Re: Tinder to charge older users more for premium facilities

#75

Post by protomyth »

nilkn wrote: post #59
protomyth wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Age is not a good discriminator of looks, particularly starting at 28.

I'm not sure I agree. And it's not just about looks. It's about youth and the hook-up culture. College students are more likely to be into that sort of culture than older working professionals, which means they're more valuable to Tinder as users. That said, I don't agree with this pricing strategy.

"youth and the hook-up culture"

I agree that age is probably a good indicator on that. I still think any tech associated company that brings in age is just asking for trouble.

Re: Tinder to charge older users more for premium facilities

#76

Post by bazookajoes »

kelukelugames wrote: post #11

Because we have more money or we are more desperate?

Those are factors, but also because older people are typically looking for a long-term relationship and young people are typically looking for a short-term relationship.

People are willing to pay a lot more for a potentially life changing long-term relationship. I think eharmony and match.com's pricing strategy proves this.

Re: Tinder to charge older users more for premium facilities

#77

Post by baddox »

czr80 wrote: post #20
baddox wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Price discrimination only works if people can't easily identity that discrimination is in play. While this specific pricing model seems odd to me, I don't think I agree with your general claim. I think everyone understands the iPhone product line, with different prices for different amounts of storage space. As far as I know, that works really well for Apple, yet it would be difficult to have a more blatant example…

Price discrimination is when a business charges different prices to different groups of consumers for the same product or service. Charging different prices for similar goods is not pure price discrimination.

The widely accepted and used definition in economics refers to products that are identical or nearly identical, or more specifically, whose functions and costs of production are nearly identical. Student editions of software, for instance, are often functionally limited, but it is widely listed as an example of price discrimination. Some econ textbooks will make a distinction of "pure price discrimination," which requires the products to be literally identical. Note that the identity function for products is not always obvious.

I maintain that the iPhone's storage pricing is a clear example of price discrimination.

Re: Tinder to charge older users more for premium facilities

#78

Post by [deleted] »

dragonwriter wrote: post #18
baddox wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Price discrimination only works if people can't easily identity that discrimination is in play. While this specific pricing model seems odd to me, I don't think I agree with your general claim. I think everyone understands the iPhone product line, with different prices for different amounts of storage space. As far as I know, that works really well for Apple, yet it would be difficult to have a more blatant example…

"Price discrimination" means charging different users different prices for the same product/service . Apple charging different prices for different amounts of storage space is not price discrimination.

[deleted]

Re: Tinder to charge older users more for premium facilities

#79

Post by baddox »

dragonwriter wrote: post #18
baddox wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Price discrimination only works if people can't easily identity that discrimination is in play. While this specific pricing model seems odd to me, I don't think I agree with your general claim. I think everyone understands the iPhone product line, with different prices for different amounts of storage space. As far as I know, that works really well for Apple, yet it would be difficult to have a more blatant example…

"Price discrimination" means charging different users different prices for the same product/service . Apple charging different prices for different amounts of storage space is not price discrimination.

"Price discrimination" is widely used to refer to identical or nearly identical products whose cost of production is nearly identical despite being offered at significantly different prices.

Re: Tinder to charge older users more for premium facilities

#80

Post by bazookajoes »

aetherson wrote: post #68
tsotha wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's kind of a stretch to call Tinder a tech company. It's a hook up site, basically, and they want to charge less attractive people more money for the same reason fat people can't find stylish clothes - too many unattractive people will hurt your brand.

I don't think that they're using age as a proxy for attractiveness. Rather, I think they're trying to profit from an asymmetry that they believe exists: that there is a significant population of people over 28 who would really like to hook up with people under 28, and are willing to pay for the privilege. They may also believe that they will be more attractive to their core demographic if there are fewer older people…

The problem with your argument is that basic tinder is still free and tinder plus gives you almost no competitive advantage.

It gives you undo, which is a minor advantage, and it gives you passport which can be accomplished for free on any unrooted Android phone or any jailbroken IPhone.

In the future it will prevent you from needed to see ads, but I imagine that will also be a minor advantage.

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