A secret elite section of Tinder has been running for at least six months. If this is the first you’ve heard of it, you’re not one of the elite.
Tinder Select is by invite only and is aimed at “CEOs, super models, and other hyper-attractive/upwardly affluent types” according to Tech Crunch. Writer Jordan Crook says the profiles in the secret section appear to be “generally attractive and relatively high-profile” people. (The fact it’s taken so long for the section to be publicly revealed suggests most of us tech writers don’t fall into these categories.)
The set-up appears to be that Tinder invited a certain group of people to join the Select service. Some of those users were given the power to invite people themselves – but none of those invitees were able to add anyone else, making the elite pool inherently limited.
How Tinder made the invite decisions is under wraps, though the site is known to have an internal ranking system that combines your swipe performance with various factors from your profile such as education and work details. It’s not entirely clear if the sheer volume of “swipe rights” is what matters or, as with chess rankings, swipes from higher-ranking users count for more credit.