'China’s Tinder' matches users with mystery dates with blurred pictures

Tantan will match you with another active user based with the pictures blurred out for the first 20 messages

Popular Chinese dating app Tantan has a new feature that automatically matches people with another active user. But there's a catch: You don't get to see your match's photos until you've exchanged more than 20 messages, be it text, voice or pictures.

Tantan is known as China's Tinder, with a similar interface and monetization model to the popular US dating app.

The new feature dubbed "Flash Chat" matches people based on hobbies, location and other metrics. It's only available in some provinces now, but Tantan said it will roll out to the rest of the country soon.

This new real-time feature could give Tantan a way of keeping users engaged on its own platform for longer periods of time. The platform now boasts more than 3 million users, but the dating app market in China is heating up. Tencent recently rolled out an app called Qingliao that focuses on "high quality socializing" and is also similar to Tantan and Tinder.

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