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With Tinder, the kids are all right.
The mobile dating service, which connects people to chat once they’ve both “swiped” to indicate they’re interested, globally launched a premium version of its service on Monday called Tinder Plus.
The new version, which lets people undo a swipe they want to take back or search for people outside of their geographic area, was not unexpected. Tinder has talked about it before, and news of the launch leaked out over the weekend.
What was unexpected, however, was Tinder’s pricing model, which offers Tinder Plus at a substantially lower price for the app’s younger users.
In the U.S., Tinder plus is $9.99 a month for users 29 and under. For those 30-plus, it’s $19.99. In the U.K., the service is only £3.99 for those 18-27. Users 28 or older are charged almost four times as much, £14.99.
Tinder has been testing the product for months now at different price points, and a spokesperson says that these tiers are simply the result of what tested well. Specifically, Tinder found that younger users “are more budget constrained, and need a lower price to pull the trigger,” the spokesperson told Re/code.
(I suppose that makes sense, although it hasn’t stopped the Internet from tagging Tinder with ageism accusations.)
The premium model is the first major revenue play for Tinder. IAC, which owns a controlling stake in the company, said on its earnings call in February that Tinder would begin advertising in 2015, and Re/code reported last week that the company is already building out its first ad product.
It’s unclear what ads on Tinder might look like, but the company has lots of data about its users — including their age — that would make targeted ads a real possibility.
This article originally appeared on Recode.net.
