To Win Over Asia, Tinder is Trying To Shed its Hookup Image

During its first four years, Tinder, the popular dating and hookup-facilitating smartphone app, largely ignored everything west of the Pacific. Tailoring the service to varied local dating rituals in Asia was deemed too challenging for the fledgling company. For example, premarital sex is frowned upon in the Philippines, arranged marriages are commonplace in India and sogaeting (blind dates arranged by friends) is the norm in Korea.

But that has changed. As Tinder’s explosive subscriber growth has started to wane in North America, its parent company, IAC/Interactive Corp.’s Match Group Inc., has done what so many companies have done before: it’s looked to Asia.

Over the past two years, the company has been strategizing a way to expand in the region, where millions of single people have never tried a dating app. To win over Asia, Tinder is reinventing itself.

In South Korea, the company is trying to shed its reputation as a hookup app—instead, it’s selling itself as a place to find new friends. In university towns, new billboards have emerged for Tinder: “New Year, New Friends, New You.” In Seoul, illuminated cubes adorn subway stations with models blowing chewing gum bubbles while asking if “anyone is down for a quick chit-chat.” Famous South Korean pop star Seungri signed on as the local face of Tinder, telling his fans that many of his friends around the world use the app. The strategy seems to be working. In the past two years alone, Tinder’s user base has more than doubled. In 2015, Tinder didn’t even feature in the top five dating apps by downloads on iOS or Google Play in South Korea, according to analytics firm App Annie, but now it’s ranked No. 1 for both downloads and monthly active users in the country.