From the dating app’s earliest days, Tinder users have been linking out to their Instagram profiles to provide a bit more personality and context for their potential next right-swipe. Acknowledging that, a new update to Tinder (version 4.4) adds Instagram support that can be enabled through the app itself.
Tinder
Prior to the update, Tinder users link to their Instagram profiles the old-fashioned, unclickable way, adding their Instagram handle to the text of their profile itself. In fact, the practice was so common that “IG: Username” was often only profile information you’d run across, aside from six of your most flattering photos that definitely look exactly like you on an average day.
As the Tinder blog explains: “Now there’s no need to put your Instagram handle in your profile description to tell your story (we got sick of having to do that, too).”
Tinder’s empire of frictionless swipe-based online dating expands again, though its most obsessive users might not take kindly to the change. If a picture if worth a thousand words, well, those 1,000 IG photos just made your impeccably-curated Tinder profile a rambling, long-winded mess.
Illustration by Max Fleishman