Today, Tinder launches Places, a new feature allowing you to find common ground (in a quite literal sense) with people who frequent your favorite haunts.
Tinder claims Places will "help you find people who hang where you hang," meaning you can swipe to find other regulars at your favorite coffee spot or ramen joint.
Tinder has incorporated various safeguards into the app to ensure user safety. Importantly, the feature is opt-in: to enable it you need to tap the pin at the discovery screen, and from there you'll be able to see potential matches who have visited the same spots.
Additionally, Tinder claims the feature will not record personal places such as your house or place of work. It isn't in real time either, meaning you won't be associated with a particular locale until 30 minutes after you've left. The app can also be disabled for certain spots where you'd like to avoid human interaction.
“As a female who designed this feature, I personally made sure that I would feel safe using it,” Samantha Stevens, director of Location Products at Tinder, told Techcrunch. “I do think that—and this is a personal hypothesis of mine—if you match with someone who you know goes to the same place as you, I think that will set a very different tone to the conversation than someone who is more or less anonymous as an online match on a dating platform.”
The feature was first announced back in February and will now undergo public beta testing in three cities: Sydney and Brisbane in Australia, and Santiago, Chile.
Do you think Places is a cool way to meet new people or straight up creepy? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.
—
Staying with Tinder, here are seven mistakes you *might* be making.