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Tinder will soon be a lot friendlier to the transgender community

Tinder CEO Sean Rad teased the ability to better specify who you are and the type of person you're looking for.

Roger Cheng Former Executive Editor / Head of News
Roger Cheng (he/him/his) was the executive editor in charge of CNET News, managing everything from daily breaking news to in-depth investigative packages. Prior to this, he was on the telecommunications beat and wrote for Dow Jones Newswires and The Wall Street Journal for nearly a decade and got his start writing and laying out pages at a local paper in Southern California. He's a devoted Trojan alum and thinks sleep is the perfect -- if unattainable -- hobby for a parent.
Expertise Mobile, 5G, Big Tech, Social Media Credentials
  • SABEW Best in Business 2011 Award for Breaking News Coverage, Eddie Award in 2020 for 5G coverage, runner-up National Arts & Entertainment Journalism Award for culture analysis.
Connie Guglielmo SVP, AI Edit Strategy
Connie Guglielmo is a senior vice president focused on AI edit strategy for CNET, a Red Ventures company. Previously, she was editor in chief of CNET, overseeing an award-winning team of reporters, editors and photojournalists producing original content about what's new, different and worth your attention. A veteran business-tech journalist, she's worked at MacWeek, Wired, Upside, Interactive Week, Bloomberg News and Forbes covering Apple and the big tech companies. She covets her original nail from the HP garage, a Mac the Knife mug from MacWEEK, her pre-Version 1.0 iPod, a desk chair from Next Computer and a tie-dyed BMUG T-shirt. She believes facts matter.
Expertise I've been fortunate to work my entire career in Silicon Valley, from the early days of the Mac to the boom/bust dot-com era to the current age of the internet, and interviewed notable executives including Steve Jobs. Credentials
  • Member of the board, UCLA Daily Bruin Alumni Network; advisory board, Center for Ethical Leadership in the Media
Roger Cheng
Connie Guglielmo
2 min read
tinder.jpg

Tinder plans to widen its doors to the transgender community.

Van Boom, Daniel

Tinder hasn't done a good job of opening its doors to the transgender community, but that's changing.

The dating app, which lets users swipe left or right on a profile depending on whether they want to pursue a connection, will introduce the ability to better specify who you are and the type of person you're looking to meet, according to Tinder CEO Sean Rad. He said the feature would come in the next month and a half.

"There's a transgender community on Tinder and we haven't done enough to give them a good experience," Rad said on Thursday at Recode's Code Conference in Rancho Palos Verdes, California.

Tinder's increased support of the transgender community comes amid a wider debate over the rights of transgender people, specifically whether they are able to use the bathroom of their choosing. Several states have passed laws requiring students to use bathrooms and other facilities that correspond to their gender at birth. In response, President Obama has ordered that every school in the country let transgender students use the bathroom that matches their identity.

For transgender people using Tinder, Rad admitted that it has been tough. Some transgender users had their accounts flagged because other people thought they were fake.

"We have to modify the experience to change that," he said.

Rad, who famously defined a person who is attracted to intellect as "sodomy," (the correct term is sapiosexual) defended Tinder as more than just a hook-up app.

"Our audience is older," he said. "There are now marriages happening on Tinder."

Rad also talked about the promise of augmented reality, which overlays digital images and text over the real world. He liked the idea of AR adding another layer of information, helping to create a common connection and serving to break the ice. Is Tinder pursuing some sort of AR glass?

"We toy around with a lot of things," he teased, adding that the company would start exploring it in a year and a half.