What Is a Tinder Swipe Surge?

A Swipe Surge is a moment when activity on Tinder naturally spikes and far more people than usual are using the app at once. If you join one, Tinder moves you to the front of the line and shows you people who are active right then. Surges can start at any time, which is why Tinder suggests turning on push notifications, and it describes the feature as a test on iPhones in select cities.

A Surge is not something Tinder schedules. It is a stretch when lots of people happen to be on the app together, and Tinder says activity during one runs far higher than normal.

Joining gives you two things. You jump to the front of the line, so the people using the app see you sooner. And the people you see are the ones who are active at that moment, rather than a mix that includes accounts nobody has opened in weeks.

Plenty of men have never had a Surge alert, and there are two plain reasons.

The first is where you are and what phone you use. Tinder describes Swipe Surge as a test on iOS devices in select cities. An Android phone, or an iPhone somewhere outside the test, will not get them.

The second is notifications. Surges have no set time, so the only way to hear about one is a push notification. If Tinder's notifications are off on your phone, a Surge can come and go without you knowing.

Being put in front of a lot of active people at once is useful, and a dating coach has made the same point about a related feature. His experience with boosts is that a boost used after a quiet spell, when you have not been shown to many people lately, gets very good results.

He also noticed the opposite. Boost after boost in quick succession does less each time, because there are fewer new active people left to show you. It is reasonable to expect Surges to behave the same way. Joining one now and then is likely to do more than jumping into every Surge that fires.

My view of anything that puts you in front of more women is that it multiplies your results. That sounds great until you remember what happens when you multiply zero.

If your photos and what you wrote are already getting you some likes back, a Surge can give you more in a short time. If they are getting you almost nothing, a Surge just shows a weak set to more women faster, and you get the same nothing. My advice is to get to a point where you are getting at least some matches on your own first, and only then use the things that multiply them.

A Surge fills the screen with active people, and that tempts men to swipe right on everybody while the window is open. Resist it.

a dating coach's read on the apps is that swiping right on almost everyone works against you. The apps seem to treat an unselective man as a less attractive one, and they have little reason to show him the women he actually wants. His students who stopped liking everybody and started choosing got better results. So during a Surge, look at each woman properly and like the ones you would genuinely take out.

The Surge does help with one thing that matters a lot: timing. My texting advice includes a simple rule, which is to write when she can actually answer. Everyone in a Surge is on the app right now. If you match with someone, send your first message then, while she is still holding her phone. Keep it short and about her.

A feature that can fire at any moment has a cost. If you turn on every notification to catch Surges, your phone starts deciding when you use the app.

a dating coach keeps his app time to two short blocks a day, one in the morning and one in the evening. He handles the women closest to a date first, then new matches, and he only goes looking for more people when those are done. By his account, he swipes every few days rather than every day, because the apps give diminishing returns if you hit them for new people day after day.

A Surge fits into that as a bonus, not a summons. If one lands while you have your time set aside and your conversations are in order, join it. If it lands while you are at dinner with friends, or while three women are waiting on a reply, let it go. The women already talking to you are worth more than a busy half hour on the app.