Social media didn’t evolve till the dating app came in: Sean Rad

CANNES: The highlight of Day One at the 62nd Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, inarguably, was the session on technology disruptors which had Sean Rad, founder of Tinder — a location-based dating app that allows users to chat with their ‘matches’ via a swipe on their phone.

The audience sighed a tad when Rad announced on Sunday that no romantic interest was a trigger behind the app but soon gained fervour upon hearing the founder is on Tinder himself.

And so is his 60-year old aunt who’s gone on two dates thanks to the app. Founded in 2012, the app gets around 1.4 billion swipes per day. That’s almost 16,000 swipes per second.

Tinder was built to bolster the human need to connect with more people.

“We used tech to make the interfacing more efficient in real life,” Rad said. It’s interesting the number of times he took a polite “we beat you at your game” dig at Facebook during those 45 minutes in the auditorium.

The first was when he said social media elevated everyone’s desire to be more connected, but the medium hadn’t evolved much until Tinder came along.

Rad also pointed out how the ‘swipe’ feature is a result of their focus on delivering content at the rate at which the user likes to consume it, as opposed to Facebook where you need to scroll down. “Bit slow,” he remarked.