Tinder improves MongoDB functionality by moving to Rackspace ObjectRocket, and insists 'not really focused' on IPO

'We can handle four times the amount of traffic without having to buy more stuff', says CTO Ogle

Social dating app Tinder has experienced what it's calling a "four times improvement in support and stability" by taking on Rackspace's ObjectRocket platform to run its MongoDB operations.

Speaking exclusively to Computing around the announcement, the company's CTO, Ryan Ogle, sounded delighted with a cheaper price but improved functionality over Tinder's last MongoDB sharder.

However, despite this added leanness, Ogle said the company is "not really focused" on plans to seek an IPO or be acquired, and is just looking to keep improving its services.

"When we compared the amount of machinery that we had before, we can now handle four times the amount of traffic without having to buy more stuff," enthused Ogle.

"We have caching layers further down [with ObjectRocket]," he explained, adding that on the old database (which Ogle politely refused to name) "everything would have fallen over, but with ObjectRocket it just worked".

Tinder, which announced this week that it would be starting to charge UK users over the age of 28 almost four times the standard £3.99 monthly fee, still uses Redis as the caching layer for MongoDB - so effectively has moved from one sharder to the other. Unlike Viber - who Computing spoke to recently - Tinder decided not to build its own sharder. It didn't fit the business plan.

"We considered it, but the key thing for us is if you're going to go and do your own thing, you're going to make really sure you know what you're doing, and that means hiring for skills we really don't internally have for software development," he explained.

"So that was a huge factor in our requirements - to maintain knowledge and expertise in operations, so we wouldn't have to [upskill] so quickly.

ObjectRocket also turned out to cost less than the previous solution - "the price per gigabyte is actually cheaper with ObjectRocket," said Ogle.

Ogle said Tinder members will now benefit from the company focusing more on innovation and less on everyday data-handling problems.

ObjectRocket, said Ogle, "removes that weight", allowing Tinder engineers to focus on the "mile-long laundry list of features" they want to implement.

"You'll see some really cool stuff in the next couple of months," promised Ogle.

And with only "around 50 total people" working at Tinder, with 35 of those being software engineers, keeping budgets minimal and development lean is crucial.

It's also lucrative, with estimates of the company's value now running anywhere from $750m to $5bn.

But is Tinder looking into speculating to accumulate?

"I think it's a balance," said Ogle. "We want to keep lean, not be heavy and have excess people. But we're definitely growing - our goal is to double our engineering team by the end of 2015 - we want to hire 35 to 40 people."

"Most of that is in engineering for iOS, Android and backend and algorithms, and then also we want to increase our DevOps side, but it's tricky for us to find the right balance where we're lean, but can still do the things we want to do. It's about having the right systems in place and leveraging what we can so I don't have to hire 10 people to build a service or to maintain that service."

But the question remains - if the company is counting the pennies and trying harder to monetise, is it heading towards IPO?

"We're not really focused on whether we get acquired or whether we go IPO," explained Ogle.

"We honestly don't know. It could be anything. The way we look at it internally is that if we add features and add to the user base, it can allow us to do any of those things. We're just focused on building a great company.

"The revenue piece specifically - we're doing that because, at a certain point, you have to be self-sufficient. You can't run a real company unless you do that. We've been lucky in the past two years that we don't have to worry about funding, but it's time for us to start looking wider now."

But does Tinder feel it can truly expand if it continues sitting on top of Facebook - on which users are required to have a membership, and from which Tinder collects much of its user data - to function?

"We've talked a lot about it, but nothing definitive yet. There's pros and cons," says Ogle.

"That's still to be decided right now."