Exclusive! How to Win on Dating Apps—Secrets from the Man Who Invented Swiping, Tinder’s Jonathan Badeen

I woke up one morning, just literally woke up, sat up in bed and was like, oh my God, I've got it. And welcome back to the How to Get a Girlfriend podcast.
I'm your host, dating coach Conal Barrett. I'm here to help you learn to flirt, gain confidence, and attract an incredible girlfriend, all by being authentic.
No sketchy pickup artist moves needed. And today we have a pretty amazing, pretty special guest.
I'm really psyched to welcome to the podcast, Jonathan Bedine. Jonathan isn't just the co-founder of Tinder, but he's the mastermind behind the iconic swiping feature that has changed the way online dating happens forever.
Thanks to his work, billions of people have swiped, have matched, have connected, and essentially totally reshaped how we date in the digital age. These days, Jonathan is very busy watching a lot of TV and going to Disney World.
We'll hear more about that in a second. And he's really an innovator, and we're lucky to have him.
And he's going to help you have some success with online dating and find some really great dates and have some success. So Jonathan, thank you so much for joining me on the How to Get a Girlfriend podcast.
Thanks for having me. It's awesome to be here.
Let me start with a play devil's advocate about something. I'll tell you something I hear from a lot of my clients when I send them to Tinder and to other online dating platforms.
They say, ah, Tinder, come on. That's for hookups.
It's for casual flings. That's not where I'm going to find love.
It's not where I'm going to find a girlfriend. What's your response to that? I'd say two parts to that.
One, most relationships probably started with a hookup. So just because people, a large contingent of users on Tinder, I think it's a majority, I don't know the latest numbers or whatnot, but, you know, they're actually looking for a relationship.
Doesn't mean they're not open to a hookup, but, so there is that. But on top of that, it is used for everything.
It's, you know, the number of marriages that have happened is insane. You know, I get invited to different weddings and stuff like that.
And it's really what you make of it. I think some of that stigma really came out of the fact that we launched the app on college campuses, that's sort of where we started.
And that market, that's kind of what they do. They're a little bit more hookup-centric and all, and so that came from that.
But it really isn't. It's whatever it is that you're looking for, you should be able to find it on Tinder and, of course, the other platforms.
Absolutely. I have dated some wonderful women I met on Tinder and other apps, but we're going to talk about Tinder today for obvious reasons.
And I had some flings, and I had some real relationships, and I had, to your point, I had a couple things that started off seemingly casual, but then they became something a lot deeper. So yeah, something casual or what you might think is casual at the beginning can actually become something longer lasting, right? Well, it starts off less pressure.
It's a little bit easier to be your more authentic self when it's low pressure like that. Yeah.
I've also found it a lot easier to get a woman out on a date with you, looking at it from the straight male perspective. It's easier to get a lot of women out on a date with you if it just seems low pressure.
It's like, hey, we're going to have fun. We're going to have a drink or two.
We'll talk. We'll chat.
Who knows what might happen as opposed to I must find my soulmate on this date. So there's nothing wrong with having it low pressure.
It's just a way to get more people out on dates with you. Absolutely.
I can relate quite a bit to that. I know when I used to have a really hard a really hard time dating, um, and when it before Tinder, um, and you know, I, every time I did go out on a date, um, which was very rare, um, I would, there would be such pressure on me.
I, you know, self and, uh, self-induced pressure, uh, thinking like, Oh, you know, is this my, when is I got to make the best of this because I don't know when the next date's going to be, you know, you know, and trying to, to, to make the most of everything to the point, like I have literal sweat, you know, like stains on my shirt and stuff. And then once I, once we built Tinder, it made it easy enough for me to just kind of go on enough dates.
Just, it was like, I didn't care so much anymore about, is this, is this the one or whatever? It's like, all I care about is going out, having a drink or something, meeting this person. And if it works out great, awesome.
If it doesn't, I'll go out with somebody tomorrow or next week. It's no big deal.
And to the point where it kind of flipped the future was sort of a lot of times the, the women I'd go out with would be the ones who were more nervous. And I was the one who was just chill because it was, it was not a big, uh, it was not a big deal to me at that point.
And I wasn't there to hook up or anything. It was just, it was just not, uh, I wasn't, I wasn't, you know, putting my entire future into that night.

That's so insightful what you just said.

I didn't know that about you, that you had a relative scarcity of dates or dating options back in the day.

Is that right?

Yeah, I would say so.

I think it's just me being, you know, I think I probably could have got plenty of dates, but I didn't have the confidence or the, you up and hitting on a girl or something like that was not going to happen generally, which makes it a little hard to ask somebody out. But I'm much more comfortable in a digital sense, a little bit of protection of a screen between me and a person to take that initiative then.
do me a favor. Do you have any memorable dates from before you came up with the idea for using a dating swiping app? Do you remember any of the early dates you had early on that led you to create or co-create Tinder when you realized, you know what, I got to change some things here based on some problems I have, and that led you on the path to Tinder? Any dating stories for back in the day that are relevant to you? You know, I wouldn't say that there were any specific stories that led to it.
And a lot of the impetus for Tinder was my co-founder had noticed some of the issues with the existing products that were out there. But I think just generally, the troubles I had made me a little bit more open to the idea of trying to create something.
Because between just meeting people in the world or using things that existed back then like Match.com or OkCupid and all, the kinds of things where I'd go out with people where it's very clear that they were just out for me to buy them a meal and, you know, essentially ghosting me afterwards and stuff like that. I think that was from my space back in the day.
Um, you know, so, uh, but, but I think to me, the most, I kind of forget about that stuff to me, the most memorable part was just how, how absolutely nervous I was. Um, and, and, and like I said, I'm not exaggerating about the amount of sweat that I had pouring off of me.
Um, so I think, uh, uh, you know, whether, whether those things happened or not, whether that, you know, would have deterred Tinder from being created, I don't know, but it, you know, it sure did make me maybe slightly more motivated to figure out a platform that would work for me a little bit better. Well, what's amazing about Tinder or any online dating app, once you get it working for you, is it can give you lots of dates, lots of options, an abundance of options.
And to your point from a couple of minutes ago, it can make it so much easier for you to relax on a date because all of a sudden the stakes are not as high. If you have two or three more good leads in your inbox, in your queue.
Is that what you started to feel once you started getting some more dates from online dating? Oh, exactly. It was that.
It was the fact that I'm sure the first few Tinder dates were much like the pre-Tinder dates. But after that, it was just like, oh, well, I've got another one tomorrow.
And maybe in the back of my mind, I'm even thinking about that date tomorrow instead of the one that I'm on right now. Not that you should be very focused on whoever you're with or whatever.
But I mean, just like, it's just that there just isn't that pressure. You'd realize how many people there are out there, you know, especially in a big city like Los Angeles, but you realize how many different options there are and you have a means to find them.
I remember I felt the same way as you. I had very few dating options back when I first started working on my dating life, when I realized I needed to.
I had a scarcity of options. If I had one date every three months, that was a really good quarter for me.
So the pressure was on. And I remember it was a combination of Tinder and Match.
I was using those two platforms. And I remember one night through both of those platforms, mainly Tinder, I had three straight dates and three straight nights and three different really cool, cute girls.
And all three dates went pretty well. I think I made out with all three girls and all three nights.
And I walked home on that third night thinking, oh my gosh, I didn't know that I was that attractive to women. And I think I took all the credit in the moment.
But it was the platforms that were making it, that were making, that were giving me the beginnings of abundance, the beginnings of some options. And that felt amazing to my confidence.
Well, it's you. It's just a matter of pulling you out.
These platforms are nothing more than... In many ways, I see them less as dating services and more as introduction services.
You know, they're not there for you on the date. They're there to get you introduced to somebody for the date.
And I think, you know, it's what you make of them and, you know, and how that affects you and allows you to come out of your shell or, yourself. A lot of guys struggle with what to talk about on dates, how to hold a good conversation.
Do you remember, I'm going to ask you to summon your younger, singular self. When you first started getting some good options, do you remember any tips that began to work for you, especially when you felt more comfortable? Yeah, I mean, I guess, to me, you know, it's, it's always just a little bit about, you know, what you do and what your family, I mean, obviously, you know, you don't want to focus too much on, you know, what you do, that sometimes can be a bad thing to some, but I mean, it is a big part of our life, you know, and try to figure out the other person's interests and just sort of, you know, for me, it was generally just trying to keep it sort of natural.
The most, you know, trying to force something was where it probably wasn't going to go well. And so it was, yeah, it's just trying to learn about the person.
And if the other person's interested and or if they're, you know, good at it, they're going to be asking you a lot of questions. And at some point, you just really have to figure out like, wait, am I the one am I answering too many questions, I should probably be, you know, you know, engaging the other person more to and learning.
Yeah, one of the tips I share with my clients, and I'll share right now with the listener is, if you catch yourself asking more than three straight questions without her asking you a question, feel free

to answer one of your own questions as if you had asked yourself.

So if you say, oh, where'd you go to college?

Oh, what year did you graduate?

Oh, what did you major in?

Take a pause and say, okay, I'm going to answer that last question myself as if she

asked me.

That way you're not constantly trying to interrogate her.

Because that quote-unquote interview mode, I'm sure you've heard about that, right?

Of course.

Of course.

Yeah.

No, I think that's important.

And for me, that comes naturally.

I'm somebody who just, you know, that's probably one of my own downfalls.

I'm all too eager to share the same information that I've asked somebody else. Fair enough.
Fair enough. And okay.
So let's go back to the story of how you came up with swiping. And we were talking right before I hit record about what the truth is.
There's a, there's some myth about this, that you got the idea for swiping in the shower, which maybe that's an apocryphal story. Tell us the truth.
What's the story of how you came up with the right swipe? Well, first off, it is a cool story, but that's the not quite as true story, which is I had the epiphany, some basically coming out of the shower, looking at a mirror that was all fogged up and wiping the mirror only to reveal my face. And thus the swipe was born.
Sounds good. It sounds amazing.
It sounds amazing. I'm sure it's going to be in a movie or something at some point.
But it's slightly based upon the real story, which was, I actually would not, I actually came up with it prior to Tinder. And I came up with it for a flashcards, educational flashcards app that I had been thinking about problems with it.
And it really had to do with trying to solve very specific problems, like while you're

trying to study for your flashcards while walking to class, one-handed, eliminating buttons and, you know, trying to indicate whether you got the card right or wrong and all of those sorts of things. And I woke up one morning, just literally woke up, sat up in bed and was like, oh my God, I got it.
And I had been basically the swipe had been born for this flashcards app. And I was like, I've got to make this thing.
You know, this is the best way to make a flashcards app. Fast forward a few months though.
And, um, and that's actually when I had met Sean, um, my co-founder, Sean Radd. And, uh, we were showing each other our work.
Um, and I had showed him the flashcards app and all. And then when we ended up making Tinder, we just ended up with a interface that was a stack of cards and it was sort of, it was serendipitous basically and we just kind of, I ended up throwing the swipe in there.
I would never have come up with it for Tinder because I wasn't trying to solve those problems. You have a big heart and an X button in there.
Didn't, you know, didn't need it. But it felt right to put it in there.
And we didn't even tell people about it. We weren't trying to be sneaky or anything, really.
It was just, it was like, yeah, if you figured it out, it's like figuring out, you know, command or control C on your keyboard instead of clicking the copy button or something, you know, it's just a keyboard shortcut. And it was, so it was not, it wasn't some big thing that we were like, we're going to change the world with the swipe or whatever.
It was, and it was a few months later that we had a college student write in and he said something along the lines of that he and his buddies walking down the street or campus or something like that, that they would say swipe right and swipe left as code about the ladies passing by. Wow.
Changing the lexicon that early. Yeah.
And that was the moment where to me, I was all of a sudden, I was like, oh my God, we tapped into something like this is, and it wasn't long after that where we actually did start including the, the swipe terminology in our marketing, you know, in our Twitter accounts or Instagram and all of that sort of stuff. And, um, so we started talking about it that way, but it was, uh, that was really only in response for, from it sort of taking a life of its own.
That's amazing. So the shower moment didn't happen, but what's kind of the shower where the shower did come in was this like so i woke up with this epiphany and i go in i go into the shower and i'm standing there in the shower like going like i'm like does that work is that you know why hasn't anybody done this before you know so so i was like it was i was like basically thinking through it you know completely in the shower but there was no fogged up mirror.
Thank you for setting the record straight. Let's talk a little bit about what you've seen works for men on Tinder in terms of strategy.
And let's start with authenticity. That's my, in a couple words, I'm all about be authentic, show women your true, real, best self.

Because in my experience and with my clients, in my clients' experience, the more generic, the more you try to say the perfect right thing, the more a guy tends to get in his head. And the more bland you come off.
But if you really commit to being you in an attractive but genuine way, that's not going

to attract every woman, of course, but it's going to attract women. land you come off.
But if you really commit to being you in an attractive but genuine way,

that's not going to attract every woman, of course, but it's going to attract women who

are more your type. So for example, I'm a nerd.
I love musical theater. I love the Beatles and

Abraham Lincoln. I'll actually talk about some of these things on dates or with women.

Can you talk a little bit about authenticity, being yourself, how that can and does work if you agree that it can and does work on tinder on dating apps i think it absolutely does i mean ultimately it's only going to that's the only way you're going to succeed you know unless you are strictly looking for hookups and you know can keep the lie going or something for a while but yeah uh you know ultimately uh whatever facade that you put up it's going to it's going to. So you might as well start off and get the people that you're, as you said, who are going to be more interesting to you and interested in you.
But Tinder in many ways was really built to try to drive authenticity. I don't think people realize this today as much, but some of the features that we originally did were including things like shared friends.
That was sort of taken away from us at a certain point, but that was a big thing. And for sort of safety, and you could essentially vet people, but it was trying to show that authentic person.
You didn't get to choose your name on there. You didn't get to choose the original version of Tinder.
You couldn't even choose your photo. It was your Facebook photo.
And it was locked to that, trying to get that real photo that you share with your family and friends. It showed your shared interest with the person that, of course, today it's useless, but based upon Facebook interest, like you're not sitting there lying.
These are the things that you liked on Facebook. You know, you weren't doing it for the purpose of that.
So I think that that was really what we were trying to do. You know, of course, people have other ideas a lot of the time, but, but that is where we were really going.
And because we think it is, we thought it was so important to sort of to show an authentic side of oneself. And, you know, people are going to see through it if you're not.
And it's going to, at worst, turn or at best turn somebody off away to at worst, make somebody think you're creepy and, you know, and deceitful. Absolutely.
I had a first date once in my my book where i was trying so hard to be what i thought she wanted her name was lauren her profile on tinder was all about i want an adventure man or i like a man who's into adventure outdoorsyness so i'm on the date i'm lying through my teeth about how i love to go swimming with sharks in the Caribbean. Total BS.
I have done that once, but I'm not, yeah. What did you do? Sharks in the Caribbean.
I thought I invented lying about sharks in the Caribbean. No, I did it once.
I'm not suggesting you should go do it, but it's not really. Oh, you actually swam with sharks in the Caribbean.
Yeah, I did. Oh, I see what you mean.
I see. Okay, well, you actually could have said it and been honest about it.
I'm not the adventure person. Sorry for interrupting.
No, you're fine. You're fine.
But I just said, oh, I'm going to say what Lauren needs to hear. And of course, she friendzoned me.
She ghosted me. Not because she could probably tell I was lying, but she could probably tell there's just something off about this guy.
But then once I started showing women, and in fact, I had a second chance with her, I started leaning into that nerdy, dorky, smartass I am, like a sweet ginger nerd, but a little bit of edge through sarcasm. She liked that type.
And so yeah, I just had to drop the facade. And what about tinder i think what or what tinder did in in the world of dating is it said hey let's let's really let you show your freak flag your authentic quirky whatever self you are and let's draw people in who like your type right absolutely and i think you know you really shouldn't try to predict what somebody else wants anyway because i mean like there's, you look at it, oh, I'm looking for somebody who's interested in the same things as me.
That's the key to success of relationship. Or is it? Because they also say opposites attract.
So I mean, you don't necessarily even know what it is. And so it's not really worth it to try to predict what the other person is wanting.
Because it may not be that, or they may not even know what it is. And so maybe, you know, it's not really worth it to try to predict what the other person is wanting because, you know, it may not be that, or they may not even know what it is until they see what it is.
And same for yourself, really. You struggle with dating, right? Sure.
You have a good job and cool friends, but you just aren't sure how to flirt. The apps don't work for you, and sometimes women put you in the friend zone.
It's frustrating. Hey, I struggled with dating too.
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Have you ever... Actually, back to Tinder and back to some of the features.
Obviously, the swipe right, the swipe left, that's the foundational iconic feature. But there's lots of other bells and whistles that have been on and off of Tinder over the years.
Are there any features you ever thought up that never made it on Tinder that you thought, oh, man, that would have been a great idea.

We should have done that.

Oh, there's a billion.

I mean, that's actually one of the most frustrating things as time goes on is that you just build this.

Everybody in that company just had a long list.

The list of things that we wanted to make just went on forever.

And it was just a matter of picking which one are we going to try. So there's all sorts of things that we wanted.
Anything come to mind that you thought, oh man, I wish we would have tried that, or that was a cool idea, or maybe an idea that was so out there you couldn't do it? Well, I think one of my favorites that I wanted was a, uh, you know, I won't go into full detail on it just in case anybody cares or whatever, but it's, uh, it was a basically sort of a, a group dating bar hopping type of, uh, product that I thought would have been pretty cool trying to use Tinder, uh, which was trying to essentially make Tinder useful at a time when the Tinder isn't generally useful. Because, you know, like Tinder, for instance, like one of the, you know, the lower usage days are the days where people are out and busy and they've got things going on.
You know, the, you know, that's the time when people have downtime, that's the time where they really use Tinder. And so that was sort of the goal, is to try to make Tinder useful at those times when you're out and about with your friends and all of that.
Yeah. And the thing about the right swipe, and correct me if I'm wrong, Jonathan, but I feel like it comes down to it's fun.
It's fun to turn online dating into a game, or at least it can feel like a game and games are fun. Games feel good.
It feels good to swipe right and get a match, of course. Who wouldn't like that? But also, isn't there something about the anticipation of the possibility that's just as addictive and just as fun? I think so.
I think there's a little bit of that slot machine effect of like, you know, let me do one more. I remember back in college, Hot or Not was a thing.
You know, it wasn't for dating, but it was for, you know, they added that later, but it was, you know, it was just sort of like, I'm going to, I'll stop once I get one more, when I see one more nine or something like that, you know? So there was a little bit of that element going on. Um, but I think even just the sort of the, the swipe action itself ends up sort of having a, an emotional connection to it, you know, where you're sort of like, Oh, hell no.
You know, or, you know, like, you know, there is that sort of a, um, uh, emotional connection to it. And, and I think that was, uh, so, and it, it kind of, the, I think the sort of that sort of that interface and everything and in general, it kind of feeds into that sort of almost people watching kind of thing that we, that people like to do.
And to me, I'm, you know, I like to think of as a Disney fan, I always think of Mary Poppins and the, a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down. And so that was, you know, not necessarily that quote being, you know, very cognizant of it when we were creating Tinder, but this idea of like, look, this is, dating can be a difficult thing and going through all of these things.
And let's see if we can try to make that process fun and sort of disguising the work. Because Tinder, I think compared to other platforms that predated Tinder, Tinder was a little bit more of a numbers game.
It was a bit more go through a whole bunch of people and that's going to ultimately, whether swiping through a whole bunch of people and Um, and you know, and, and that's going to help ultimately, you know, whether, uh, swiping through a whole bunch of people and then going out on dates with a whole bunch of other people with people. Um, that's the idea is you're going to increase the chances of finding the person that's right for you.
Um, and so other platforms were a little bit more focused on, you know, diving into the person you'd spend more time on those those and all. So we had to make something that was fun to get you through more people faster.
The man listening to this episode, chances are his biggest, the biggest thorn in his paw of online dating, Tinder or whatever app he's on, he's not getting very many good matches, if any. He's swiping and swiping and swiping and he's just very rarely, if ever getting that, it's a match.
What advice would you give that guy? What should he look at first to start getting some of those matches and start getting those great feelings you get when you start swiping right and getting matches? Well, I think, you know, some of it starts with, um, trying to, you know, portray your best self, whether that be, you know, uh, evaluate your, you know, your photos and your profile and everything, uh, everything on there evaluated. And, and, you know, you'll notice a lot that like people put horrible pictures up on there.
You know, I'm not saying you have to be a model or anything like that, but you know, horrible quality photos, things like that and run it by your friends, um, preferably, uh, preferably women, uh, who can say, you know, either, Oh, that's not a good picture of you or like, yeah, that's not really going to be interest. Um, a woman.
So I think, you know, bringing people in to kind of help evaluate, I know it can feel uncomfortable sometimes to expose yourself to your friends and this side of you or whatever. But I think that's important.
You know, and I think also just it's utilizing the tools that are there. And that, you know, there's a lot of tools that are in there from everything from sort of testing photos to trying to determine which of your photos is the best.
Um, there's a lot of things, you know, for adding to your profile and all on, and those little things, um, they, they, you know, they can help. Um, you know, they might, you know, somebody sees that you like something that, you know, on there that they don't like.
Yeah. Maybe it'll turn them off, but guess what? That's, that's fine.
They weren't going to, it wasn't going to work out with them anyway. Um, the, um, but, but you're giving people, you're giving other people another reason to swipe right.
Um, you know, and, and try to, try to keep it a little bit lighthearted, try to add a little bit of, um, uh, fun, uh, fun to your profiles. Um, and then, you know, the, the, the paid features do work.
I'm not saying go spend all your money on that, on them. Uh, that's not the, that's not the goal.
And in fact, you know, Tinder was, we, we tried to, um, we tried to make the, the paid feature something that it would just break the system if everybody had it. But if it was something that we felt that everybody would truly benefit from having it, then it shouldn't be a paid feature.
So the paid features we kind of saw as superpowers. And so they're useful.
But useful. But I'm not, you know, you can get by

just fine without them. So if you don't need them, don't, I'm not suggesting, you know, I make no money off of it now.
So don't, I'm not, I'm not trying to push anybody to go spend all their money on Tinder or any other of the platforms, but, but, you know, some of them do work. So it's, it's worth trying and it might be worth trying, you know, that I, last I read, you know, is the average dater, data online daters on three platforms maybe try a little something different on each platform too and you know which is your own a b test or you know so i i think those are some ways it might help yeah i think it's important to make sure that you're expressing that authentic self in different ways on different apps depending on the kind of woman you're looking to attract and the kind of app you're on so i'm going to show i have a tinder profile it's a bit more it's a bit more playful edgy more fun and light as if i was looking to date casually i have a hinge profile that is much more bread and butter kind of boyfriend material.
And I could mix and match those if I want to. So I think one of the, a lot of guys think, oh, you know, I think one of the biggest myths in dating is the apps just don't work.
Dating apps just don't work. And I tell so many men, look, the problem is not dating apps don't work.
The problem is your profile doesn't work yet. Let yet let's make some changes some intelligent ones so you can start getting the kind of success you want absolutely absolutely i mean there's uh there's a lot of proof that they do work that's that doesn't mean uh to say that you know things aren't difficult they're they're difficult out the bars too they're difficult everywhere so you know and it's a matter of uh of uh you know portraying yourself in the best way that you can.
Yeah, I think that was great advice about having some people, especially some single women or some women, look at your profile and having a little bit of personality in your profile. I have a new client who came to me and I said, hey, let me see your Tinder.
Just see why you're struggling. He's like, yeah, I have no idea.
I guess women just don't like me. I looked at his profile.
There was one photo, just one. It was a bathroom mirror shot.
Yeah. And that was literally his only photo.
And all his bio said was, here's what I want. There was no personality.
There was no humor. And there were no other photos to show what this gentleman what it would be like to date him and here's a smart sweet wonderful guy and he's mistaking his struggles on this dating app or on tinder for him being unattractive i'm like no dude you're amazing your profile is terrible yeah i think you know i think that, a lot of people end up taking, taking it out on dating services as well as online services in general, because of, uh, of, of either what, you know, the people on there or what they're doing and all.
And it's, it's, uh, it is kind of what you make of it. Um, it's not to say it's all perfect.
It isn't. But it is there are certainly ways to have a better profile than that for sure.
Yeah, it really comes down to the core foundational things. Really good photos, attractive photos, and some personality and not just pure information on a profile.
Absolutely absolutely do you have any favorite these could be things that you saw on tinder when you were there uh any favorite um any favorite little prompts or bios that made you laugh over the years or that because they were so good or maybe they were so bad uh yeah there's so many i can't remember i'll tell you though i think one of my one of my favorite things though is uh that's i don't even think it's on tinder and it was a friend of mine had uh put on his profile like the kinge has some sort of audio thing and he used like an ai thing which's like i don't remember if it was obama or somebody like basically an ai basically vouching for him in the little voice note thing. And it's not like nobody thinks that it's Obama or whoever it was doing it.
It's just something that's like, it's a little fun and playful. And it's something that he certainly attested to.
And so I thought that was fun and clever. Yeah, so it a nice kind of yeah variety little pattern interrupt a lot of my clients have had success with you know on hinge you have the low key flex caption prompt and I'll just say put a screenshot of a really high credit score like low key flex 810 I get so many matches my clients do too it's like oh that's i think that's a high key flex um and it's not even my credit rating it's just a 810 credit rating so finding ways to have fun finding ways to to enjoy it and i that gets back to something that i i was when i was asking you about how the swipe right is all about fun because it feels good.
It feels good to swipe right and get a match. And I think part of what Tinder's big innovation was and is is that it made online dating for those who got at least reasonable results.
It made it fun. It injected fun into dating.
And I think that's just so important because dating can be so unfun for so many people. And I think, and I think it kind of all goes back, you know, you're just talking about profiles and injecting fun into it, how important that is because you're, you're essentially trying to give an idea of what going on a date with you is going to be like.
And you don't want to go on a date with somebody who's not, you're not going to have fun with. So if you're able to inject some fun into your profile it gives a hint of like look we're gonna have some fun um that's uh i that's just hugely important i agree one of the biggest mistakes i see men making other than bad photos or no good photos they do their zoolander photos i don't mean ironically they think they're being sexy so it's like here's my sexy zoolander or here's my brilliant you know uh heartfelt shakespearean thoughts about love and dating and i'm just like no make her laugh make her smile if you can make a woman smile if you can make her laugh on your tinder profile because the prompt made her giggle that's worth that's like being six three with six-pack apps for so many women exactly because you're telling them hey we're gonna go out and have fun we might not get married but hey it's tinder you're probably not gonna get married and if you do bonus right yeah it's like you're not gonna be miserable you know all night you know that's that's that's i think what most people are just trying to avoid is misery.
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I love you. you're about to start confidently flirting with women going on dates and soon getting a great girlfriend go get your flirty 30 a lot of men listening to this are introverts naturally shy, naturally introverted do you have any tips on, it could be Tinder tips or it could be a first date tip for a guy who's more on the introverted or shy side to still be able to have a great connection with a woman? I mean, I float somewhere in between.
I think some people might call me introverted. Some people might call me extroverted.
Kind of depends on the situation. But I think, you know, from my own experience, the places where I my introvertedness kind of showed was that that sort of especially in those nervousness.
And I think the more you practice the better. And so, you know, go out on those dates and just feel like, you know, as much as possible.
And, and you might even think like, Hey, look, you know, next five dates, they're going to suck. They're going to, they're all going to suck or something.
You actually don't, you know, hope for something good, but, but at the same time, like, don't, but like reduce the pressure on it and, and just use it as experience to get yourself more comfortable. Um, and, and the only way to do that is to not, to not add, you know, to not make the stakes high.
I think, uh, practice, you know, practice makes perfect. And, and there's a lot of, uh, uh, a lot of people out, you know, there's a lot of women out there who are introverted too.
So that might be a good thing for you, but at the same time, it's going to make it a little bit harder for you to meet. So somebody has got to step up and try to act a little bit more extroverted to make it work.
Someone's got to lead that dating dance. Exactly.
It should be you, listener. It should be you, the man.
That's my opinion. I can't have a Tinder insider, the ultimate Tinder insider here, without asking you about the algorithm.
I've heard so many things. The ELO score, I don't know if that's real or not.
I hear, oh, if you're struggling on Tinder, it's not your photos. It's the algorithm.
The algorithm doesn't like you. Can you give us any insight baseball, any secrets from behind the curtain of the Tinder algorithm? Can that be the reason why a guy is struggling on Tinder, if he's struggling, or is it just about his profile? Any insider tips there or insights? Well, it's certainly, you know, there's algorithm.
I don't even know what the current algorithm is, is it changes over time. There's, including the ELO thing was real.
That was a way of just trying to better match people. And, but there's a lot of things that end up going into it.
And one of the things that really is heavily used, we found over the years, was recency. So that one's an important one.
You've got to keep using it. Again, I'm not there.
I'm not making money off of this. But just telling you kind of how things work is that you have to keep using the thing because we want to show other, like we don't want to match somebody up.
We didn't want to match somebody up with somebody who is not going to be there to answer them. We were able to observe that the better chance of a conversation happening and thus ultimately success on Tinder

was that conversation happening.

And therefore, the more recently somebody used the app,

the higher the chance of that happening.

So that was actually one of the big levers that really there was.

So that's one of those things.

You do have to kind of be active on there in order to get those matches. I'm sure the algorithm can hurt some people and help people, but it's something that they constantly are looking at and trying to adjust because ultimately they want the same thing as you.
They want you to meet people. I know there's conspiracy theories out there about like, no, they don't want you to meet, they just want you on there all the time and that they want you to, they're holding everything back until start paying them.
None of that's true. I mean, the best advertising for Tinder was a successful use case,

whether that be hookups

or whether that be marriage or whatever.

Those are the people that were going to get

the other people on the platform.

So we didn't care if we lost some people to a wedding.

That was amazing.

That was how we were going to get more people in.

So, you know, if you blame the app, you're never going to be able to conquer the app. I will say that.
Like, you know, I'm not saying like everything's going to, you know, it's going to work for you exactly the way you want it to. And that, you know, there might be something back there that's, you know, getting in your way on an algorithm or whatever.
But ultimately it is, if you think that way, it's going to be really hard to improve yourself and make it better if you're blaming something else. Even if it ends up not being you, use it as an opportunity to improve it.
Yeah. I come back to the basics of, well, you and I were talking about football before we got on here.
Go Lions, go Chiefs. Blocking and tackling, so important.
It's the basics. And with Tinder or any dating app, blocking and tackling to me would be good photos, personality, showing up consistently in terms of messaging people, and doing the core foundational things that any digital platform will reward.
Answering messages instead of going quiet and being responsive. And of course, the good photos, the good profile, and these foundational things.
And if you do, one of my old coaches told me back in the day, he said, Connell if you behave on tinder the way you want others to behave in ways that'll make them feel good yeah um responsive show up good photos if you make the app happy the app is going to make you happy or more likely make you happy absolutely and the algorithm won't punish you no and and you know and the better you make the profile too like i don't i don't know what the current algorithm is, but it probably does hurt you to have just one photo. Years ago, we did research too, where we found that there were a certain number of photos.
And obviously, not every photo is equal to the next. but your likelihood of matching increased with every photo that you added to your profile up to a certain extent.
I don't remember what that number was. But so that ended up being kind of one of our goals is try to encourage users to add photos up to this point to increase their chances of success.
And so I wouldn't be surprised if the algorithm takes things like that in, factors that in. But ultimately, I don't know what it is at the moment.
A couple of final questions here, Jonathan, and I will let you get back to your day. You must have some fun stories about strangers coming up to you and saying, hey, you owe me a drink.
My last date was a disaster. She ghosted me.
Or the opposite. I can't even imagine how many weddings you've been invited to.
Any fun anecdotes of Tinder people either blaming you or praising you or both? It's usually praising. I mean, every once in a while, somebody will say something, but I think most people probably, if they had bad experiences, they might keep it to themselves to be nice to me, I guess.
But, um, but no, I've had, there's just so many, uh, you know, weddings. I think the, you know, now there's been so many that I, you know, they kind of just blur together, but like, I, I just remember some of those early times, you know, when I was, you know, there.
And I remember when we first made Tinder that I was thinking to myself, hey, if this doesn't work out, if I meet somebody who met their husband or wife or something 20 years from now, the whole thing will have been worth it. I'm pretty sure that's going to happen now.
And it was just really early on those sort of first people that came up and like, oh, I met whoever. Actually, the first time I had somebody tell me that they were getting married and the app had not been out that long, that was a little bit scary to me.
I'm like, we haven't been around that long. Are you sure you're getting married? But, you know, it's, and I think some of the stories, too, that have been really, some of the more proud ones to me that made me more proud of Tinder was, were the ones where relationships that would not have happened if it weren't for Tinder.
like people it might be a racial difference or something like that where they're like if well

if you gave me the option to choose, I would never have seen the person, I would never have met. There's all sorts of crazy stories like that that have been pretty special.
But I do get a kick out of it. Every time somebody tells me, it's like, yeah, I had a, uh, a part of that.
Uh, I really, I really want to, uh, it's, uh, the Jason Kelsey one is the one that hit me the latest being, you know, a fan of Travis Kelsey and all. And I was just like, Oh my God, that, you know, I'm responsible for Travis Kelsey's nephew and niece or whatever.
I think he's got nieces. I don't remember.
But yeah. That's got to be, it's got, it's a jaw dropping influence you've had on the world of romance and love and dating.
If you think about it, billions of swipes, billions and billions, who knows how many babies, marriages, people falling in love. That's got to feel, it's got to be hard to wrap your head around that.
It is. It is.
You know, we also used to have some baby onesies that we used to send out that said Tinder tot on them. So no's what made it made it so special was is that you really were um changing the lives of uh of people in very meaningful ways and that that you know that's what it's all about yeah giving back and making things better for others i never thought i was going to be a dating coach i just got into this world almost 20 years ago because I was struggling like you.
I was just like, friend zone, girls don't like me. I'm a dorky, nerdy ginger.
I got to fix this. I was just trying to find love and find some connection.
And now I think, wow, all those friend zones, all that pain I went through, now I can help men occasionally. Not occasionally, but help men get girlfriends and occasionally have babies and families.
And it just lights me up. Well, you're doing good work.
I'm trying. I thought I'd end with a couple of fun little silly questions.
I thought I'd just name a couple things, maybe some things in the culture, and ask you if you would swipe left on these things or swipe right on these things. Are you up for it? Let's do's uh patrick mahomes oh so that's a big swipe up i guess actually i'm gonna cheat that's uh that's a super like right there yeah he's the goat well he's the of current players he's the goat to be exactly um swiping left or right on the detroit chances? To get there, right for sure.
But I've obviously got my love that will hopefully stop them. We've been through a lot of pain, us Lions fans.
I just want that third one. You can have the next one.
I don't blame you. I don't blame you.
How about movies real quick? I'm just going to throw some movies. I don't know anything about your movie taste or music taste.
I'm just going to throw some names at you. The Godfather.
I'll swipe right. Swipe right.
Okay. The Godfather 3.
Eh. You know, I might close the app and come back to it later.
How about the Beatles? Oh, the Beatles? I'm a big fan. Swipe right on that, for sure.
Okay. How about Ringo singing? Left or right? I like some of his songs singing, sure.
Okay. Swipe right on Ringo singing.
Yeah. okay how about uh Justin Timberlake um I don't my god I don't know I guess right I don't have anything against the guy maybe just don't drink and drive but you know left on drinking and driving there you go right on JT singing uh what about you mentioned Disney you mentioned going to Disney and you mentioned Disney a couple times.
What Disney movie or park or character would you swipe right on? Oh, not so much. Obviously, Mickey Mouse.
I don't want to make Minnie jealous, so I'd swipe right on her, too. I love all the parks the parks you know disneyland disney world and um

you know uh favorite disney movies i guess probably i don't know like beauty and the beast and a lot of the pixar films and uh yeah there's there's there's always something good there okay and uh your ultimate swipe right what is your desert island slash ultimate swipe right or swipe up TV show?

Ultimate show.

Oh, God.

Let's see if i was going one of my favorite dramas uh of all time really is uh one that a lot of people didn't watch was halt and catch fire i remember that show it was on uh during the breaking bad era i believe right it's really good that and maybe Parenthood comedies I'd go for let's see Arrested Development not the Netflix stuff Coupling the British version the Parks and Rec I really liked too some of my favorites in comedies love Parks and Rec I really liked, too. Those have become some of my favorites in comedies, I think.
Nice. Love Parks and Rec.
I'll give you the final word, Jonathan. Any final parting words of wisdom or hope? Or keep it up, buddy.
Go at it. For my listener, the introverted nice guy, he's struggling on the apps, but he's going at it.
Any final words for this guy? I think I'll have to do something that's on brand that combines Disney, Pixar, as well as, well, my work, which is just keep swiping, just keep swiping, finding Nemo instead of swimming. Nice.
I love it. Yeah.
I tell my clients, it's all about constant, continual,ual intelligent action but then adjustments and then new action so swipe if that profile is working great once you get a really great tinder profile that converts you don't have to really do anything else to it that's what's so beautiful about online dating that's how i met my girlfriend jessamine because i a great profile. She swiped right on me.
Here I am.

But until you get there, you got to keep swiping right or keep swimming, as they say in Nemo.

And improving that profile.

Jonathan Bedine, thank you so much for being here.

This is a blast.

Thank you for having me.

Yeah, it was wonderful.

Great.

And thank you so much for listening.

And don't forget, your dream girlfriend.

She's out there. And she's going to love you.
but she's going to have to meet the real authentic you.

So go out there, take authentic action. Carpe datum.
Seize the date. Until next time.