Tinder Select

Tinder tested a roughly $499 a month tier aimed at its biggest spenders. Tinder has a few "whales" who buy the top subscriptions plus many à la carte products. Tinder Select tested whether an even higher tier with better service, priced around $499 a month, would sell to them.

Tinder already ran hybrid monetization, with several subscription tiers (Plus, Gold, Platinum), weekly and monthly plans, and à la carte products like Boost, Super Likes and Passport on top.

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A luxury tier fails when the brand and audience don't fit it. Select's perks may have been good, but paying $499 a month and then seeing the same ordinary people as on cheaper plans did not feel special. Shawn Gong compares it to an exclusive, expensive club versus a regular club with an expensive table.

Gong's view is that not every company can go high-end, because it rests on the brand and on whether customers see the offer as a fit. "It's like a luxury offering, but people might not feel the benefits meets their expectations."

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Test willingness to pay with real purchases, then move on quickly. Big spenders' behavior suggested they would pay for more, but that did not turn into Select purchases. Tinder is gradually scaling Select down rather than expanding it, since it was not worth further investment.

Gong says "it is not like a fail": Tinder learned what it set out to learn and has better bets for its effort. The host's takeaway: "people don't always do what they say in a user survey or a user interview", but the idea was still worth testing. No survey data, conversion or revenue figures for Select are given.

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