Tinder takes a page from Snapchat, offering vanishing photos

Although the memory of a bad date can take a lot longer than 24 hours to truly fade, the dating app Tinder has decided that's plenty of time for its users to share photos with their matches.

The company introduced a new feature Thursday called "Moments," which lets users share photos with their matches that disappear after 24 hours. Tinder is positioning the feature as a way to help people get a better sense of who their matches are, using a model that has proven popular with other apps like Snapchat. It's available on iOS and Android.

Tinder's app lets its users quickly swipe through other members' profiles, using basically nothing more than the person's photo to decide whether to swipe right signifying they "like" the person or a left swipe to indicate rejection. If both members "like" each other, Tinder calls that a match.

With the photo tool, users can instantly share the vanishing photos with all their matches.

The service, according to Tinder, mimics real-life moments. "Just like real life, the moments we experience start to fade, which is why every shared Tinder Moment can only be seen for 24 hours," the company said in its announcement.

The feature has drawn comparisons to Snapchat, which lets users post photos that stay up for 24 hours, but also for much shorter periods of up to 10 seconds. And like on Snapchat, Tinder's tool also lets people draw or apply filters and text to the images.

Tinder reported Thursday that it matches more than 10 million people every day, with 2 billion matches made to date. But the company did not say how many of those matches led to dates or relationships, as do some other dating services such as eHarmony.

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Tinder sees Moments as a way to give people better information -- ostensibly in a flirty way -- about their matches, which could push them to meet up. And because the images expire in 24 hours, "you can be yourself without the pressure of making it perfect," the company said.