Dating apps are conventionally very lonely.
When most people think of dating apps, they cannot shrug off the feeling that they are going to end up in a pointless conversation with someone who is talking to 8 other people, and are hoping that they may just be lucky to get a date settled. Hopefully this all happens before 1 am too!
Let us paint a picture for you. It's 2pm on a Friday, and you're bored. What do you do?
You plan a night out to go to Northgate with your friends. You go to a game with your friends. You try a new coffee shop because your friends won't stop talking about it. Every social thing in college is a group thing.
And after the night is over, we've all quietly agreed to hop on dating apps to see if someone might be interested in you, when there was always people out there who were interested all along.
We wanted to change that, sharply. The reason dating apps feel bad isn't the dating itself, it's that you're doing it alone.
When we sat down with singles and couples around campus earlier this year, one number really surprised us. Singles were genuinely excited about the curating Tango experience, rating their likelihood to book a planned date at a 6 out of 7 (haha!)
Couples, on the other hand, were rather lukewarm. What they liked about Tango wasn't the "app doing dating for you" part. It was the "planning nights out with the people that you really care about".
Dating is still at the heart of Tango, but the truth is, Aggies want help getting out of the door with the people already in their lives, and not just the person they might meet next Friday.
That's why we have FRIENDS MODE: Sharing dating experiences with your friends, or just going out with your friends. No dating needed.
Tango's new Friends mode makes your friends part of the app, not a separate group chat you have to keep sending screenshots into. Start a group with your roommates, your org, your study buddies, whoever. Propose a night out, vote on a time that actually works, and Tango picks a real College Station spot for you. No swiping. No matching. Nobody's going to slide into your DMs because you joined.
For the Friends, You're only in the dating pool if you choose to be. If you're not ready to date yet, or you're between relationships, or you just want to be the wingman for a while, Friends mode is a full standalone experience. Use it as long as you want. When you're ready to date, one tap flips your account over and you're in the singles flow, with your friends already there to hype you up.
Friends mode is live now on iOS and Android. Grab it, start a group, and get out of the house. Thanks, and Gig 'em!
