Jack Tame: The spark for a thousand hook ups

Tinder is to love what Domino's Pizza is to fine Italian: a guilty last resort on a Friday night. Photo / Michael Cunningham

Opinion

Forget the Chinese year of the horse.

Forget the year of Lorde or the year of disaster for Malaysia Airlines.

Google has crunched our numbers and their results for the past 12 months are just as compelling as they are unsurprising.

If we're to be defined for all eternity by the application we searched for most, 2014 was the year of Tinder.

I've been hassled by a colleague for the way I described Tinder this week on Seven Sharp.

"A smartphone application," I said on telly, "... helping Kiwis fall in love."

Granted, this makes for a grandparent-friendly interpretation of Tinder's common function. In reality, Tinder is to love what Domino's Pizza is to fine Italian: a guilty last resort on a Friday night that might simultaneously leave you satisfied and craving a shower and a block of pumice.

But this is the age of convenience. And what Tinder might lack in serendipity and nuance it makes up for with sheer expedience.

Tinder users judge fellow candidates on face value and wait to confirm a match, having used its location function to find potential suitors in their immediate vicinity.

I have a friend who went on 21 Tinder dates in seven days. Consider the logistics. In any other year, in any other time, it would've been impossible. And still, his lustful crusade left but a ding in Tinder's hook up-facilitating bumper.

The app today boasts more than a billion profiles. It's active in two dozen languages.

In New York, I'm about the only person I know - single or otherwise - not to partake in the occasional digital fling.

And thus, these holidays I'll be thinking.

I'll be remembering that time in the late 1990s when I discounted the year of the cell phone. I'll be considering how I held out on Instagram and took years to join Twitter.

And although 2015 might not yet prove to be the year of love, Tinder will boast a few million more users who can't resist but get with the crowd. Swipe.