Lexicon ·
designed to be deleted
adjective phrase, a registered slogan
- Stated meaning
- Built to succeed by losing its users to relationships.
- Operating meaning
- A product whose stated goal is the end of its own subscription, and whose revenue grows in every year it misses it.
- Origin
- The slogan of the dating app Hinge, used as its tagline by 2019 and printed with a registration mark in the annual report of the company that owns it.
Hinge relaunched in October 2016 as an app for people looking for a serious mate (opens in a new window), with no swiping and a subscription of $7 a month. By 2019 its advertising was reminding users of its tagline (opens in a new window), and its help page (opens in a new window) still gives the reasoning: singles “are so busy matching that they’re not actually connecting. … So we built an app that’s designed to be deleted.”
Match Group bought 51 percent of Hinge in June 2018 (opens in a new window) and owned all of it by February 2019 (opens in a new window). Its annual report for 2024 (opens in a new window) describes the app as “Designed to be Deleted®”, with the registration mark. Hinge’s direct revenue that year (opens in a new window) was $550 million, up 39 percent, and in 2025 (opens in a new window) it was $691 million, up 26 percent.
Under load, the slogan is a promise to fail as a business, made by a business and registered so that no other business can make it. Each user who deletes the app is a success by the slogan’s measure and a lapsed subscriber by the report’s, and the report is the document with figures in it. The company has not had to choose between the two. The market keeps supplying users who have not yet deleted the app, and a share of those who have.