Tinder’s business will double this year to more than $800 million | Social

Young people are apparently happy to pay for online dating.

It turns out young people don't mind paying for online dating.

Tinder will generate more than $800 in revenue this year, according to Match Group CFO Gary Swidler. That's more than the roughly $400 Tinder brought in last year, and also means the dating app will be responsible for almost half of Match Group's projected annual revenue of $1.7 billion.

Swidler mentioned Tinder's projected revenue on Match Group's earnings call this morning. The company has talked about Tinder revenue in the past, but always at the end of the year. Today was the first time it has shared Tinder revenue projections.

Tinder generates almost all of its revenue from subscriptions. Swidler says that Tinder Gold — the premium subscription service it rolled out last year gives users more features for $14.99 a month — is a big reason that sales are up. The other reason is more paying subscribers. Tinder added almost 300,000 new subscribers in the second quarter, and now has almost 3.8 million total.

For context, Tinder's in 2018 will be almost as big as Snap's business was last year, and growing at about the same pace Snap was in 2017, too.

The big difference is that Tinder is very profitable and Snap isn't. Match has said in the past that Tinder's profit margin is higher than 40 percent. That suggests the company could generate at least $320 million in profit in 2018. Snap lost $353 million in the second quarter alone.

Lastly, it's clear after seeing Tinder's success why Facebook is suddenly interested in dating. Facebook has some perceived advantages over Tinder — it has a massive network of people already on its service and has shown that its matching algorithms can be almost too good.

One of Tinder's advantages over Facebook, though, is that it's not Facebook. Still, Facebook is suddenly facing the prospect that its main Facebook app, which has grown like crazy for a decade, may be slowing down. Adding another line of business — particularly if it chooses to follow Tinder's subscription strategy — would make some sense.

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