We knew Tinder Places — the dating app’s new way to connect people through location sharing — was coming, but Tinder officially announced today that it’s testing the service in Australia and Chile. Places will let users find potential matches based off of the places they travel, whether that be a dog park, restaurant, coffee shop, or movie theater. The idea, Tinder says, is to give users a mutual interest. It’s powered through Foursquare, which has already done all the hard work of mapping venues and identifying public spaces. Tinder says this technology will prevent private places from being shared, including doctor’s offices and workplaces.

Each location will populate about 30 minutes after a user has left and will expire after 28 days. Places will be added automatically if a user opts into the service, but they can be removed whenever a user so chooses. Places is separate from the Tinder swiping page. You’ll be able to toggle to a map screen and swipe on potential matches from there. You’ll only be able to view people who have visited the same places as you, and there’s no way to view a user’s entire Places map. People you’ve already unmatched or blocked won’t show up in Places, and if you swipe left on someone within Places, they won’t show up there again.

Tinder isn’t saying if or when this service will come to the US. Samantha Stevens, director of location products at Tinder, just says the company is “looking forward to seeing how users adopt and interact with Places in our test markets,” and that the company will “assess and make adjustments based on user feedback.” That doesn’t give us much to work with! I’d be interested to try Places and see how it goes. I don’t necessarily visit highly unique bars or coffee shops, but the idea that I could maybe get to know people in my neighborhood is appealing to me.

Font: https://www.theverge.com/2018/5/23/17384450/tinder-places-location-sharing-launch-test