Date with mates: Tinder Social has come to the UK

A few weeks ago, Tinder announced it would be launching a new feature for group dates, and now it’s rolled out in the UK. Called Tinder Social, the new addition lets users plan double or even triple dates – and it’s just ridiculous. The idea is simple. You and up to two of your friends make a group on Tinder, and set your status to something like “going out”. Other groups can then swipe left and right as normal, and if two groups match up, they’re plunged into a super-awkward group conversation – complete with virtual wingmen.

Tinder says Tinder Social is for going to concerts, big events or just group dates – but some people think the new feature could be misused as some sort of orgy-enabler. After all, Tinder is now notoriously seen as the “casual dating app”, so a feature to get more people involved looks pretty questionable.

“Tinder is seen by many as being a hook-up site,” Ben Wood of the CCS Insight consultancy told the BBC. “By expanding in this direction, rather than becoming a more interesting social-meeting service, it could be perceived as an orgy app.”

The feature already seems popular on the app, although whether that will continue after today remains to be seen. If matching with one person is difficult enough for some people, the requirement to match with three might stop some people using the Tinder Social feature altogether.

It’s also interesting to see Tinder try and move from a traditional dating app to something more like an event planner. Rival dating app Happn lets users set a status to something like ‘up for a drink or a movie,’ but Tinder has decided to roll that feature out alongside a group function. While I’m not totally sold on the group function, I think the status function would be a great addition to ‘normal’ Tinder.