ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on Tinder, a juggernaut in the mobile matchmaking market with 50 million users worldwide and 24 million matches per day. Online dating profiles give users a face to the virtual world, serving as a means for browsing and evaluating other prospective singles. Never before has such an encounter been so accessible, and with that closeness comes a series of digital considerations tailored around the design and structure of mobile dating applications. Given the digital capacities on Tinder, applying a theoretical framework that incorporates the effects of media gratifications on user behaviour is appropriate for this study. The MAIN Model identifies four potential areas of technological affordances: modality, agency, interactivity and navigability. Modality refers to the different methods of presentation of media content. When combined with the central components of gamification, that is pleasure, reward and time, sex becomes the reward on Tinder.
