Compare this to OkCupid.
When IAC acquired OkCupid in 2011 for $50MM, OkCupid had almost as many users as Tinder does now, but Tinder's valuation (according to IAC) is literally 100x more.
When IAC acquired OkCupid in 2011 for $50MM, OkCupid had almost as many users as Tinder does now, but Tinder's valuation (according to IAC) is literally 100x more.
You could say that, feature-wise, Instagram was literally a subset of Foursquare, or Twitter was literally a subset of Tumblr (blogging) or Facebook (status updates). But how people actually interact with and use those platforms (and the value derived from those interactions) are very different.
OkCupid recently introduced a feature where you can pay a small fee (about $1) to temporarily boost your personal search ranking. This is clever, and also fits very well in Tinder's matching model. Adding features like that or the ability to pay for additional profiles for A/B testing would put Tinder in the black pretty quickly, I think.
edit: I should throw in some negatives. There are quite a few duplicate/spam profiles on Tinder created by escort agencies. Finding a way to seamlessly detect & block these will be important to avoid a reputation of seediness. It's already on the line due to the common practice of mentioning Tinder alongside location-based hookup apps.