Tinder CEO Renate Nyborg previously set out ambitious plans for Tinder’s take on the metaverse
Amidst a disappointing set of earnings for the last quarter, Match Group has announced it’s scaling back Tinder’s metaverse dating ambitions and scrapping plans to offer an in-app Tinder Coins currency.
Tinder CEO Renate Nyborg, who became the dating app’s first female CEO just last September, is also leaving the position, parent company Match Group’s CEO Bernard Kim announced. Kim himself was named CEO just two months ago.
While we search for a permanent Tinder CEO, I will oversee a newly formed team of executives who will manage day-to-day operations and will ensure the Tinder organisation is well coordinated, ships great new features at increased velocity and delivers on Tinder’s promise, said Kim.
Kim has asked Amarnath Thombre, CEO of Match Group Americas, to advise the senior team on ‘Tinder product roadmap and growth drivers’.
Thombre has more than 15 years’ experience across Match Group. He was heavily involved in Tinder’s key successes, especially in designing high impact monetisation features such as the Boost feature and Tinder Gold subscription, and more recently has overseen the phenomenal success of Hinge following our acquisition, said the Match Group CEO.
Nyborg previously set out ambitious plans for Tinder’s take on the metaverse. Tinder acquired a company called Hyperconnect last year, which focuses on video, AI, and augmented reality technology, and Nyborg later cited its avatar-based ‘Single Town’ experience as a way Tinder’s users might one day be able to meet and interact with one another in virtual spaces, TechCrunch reported at the time.
Now, however, Kim says he’s instructed Hyperconnect to scale back.
Given uncertainty about the ultimate contours of the metaverse and what will or won’t work, as well as the more challenging operating environment, I’ve instructed the Hyperconnect team to iterate but not invest heavily in metaverse at this time, Kim said. We’ll continue to evaluate this space carefully, and we will consider moving forward at the appropriate time when we have more clarity on the overall opportunity and feel we have a service that is well-positioned to succeed.
Match Group cited the acquisition of Hyperconnect as contributing to a $10 million operating loss in the second quarter of 2022, down from operating income of $210 million in the same quarter last year.
There was also bad news for Tinder Coins, the in-app currency that Tinder had hoped would encourage more spending on the service. The idea was that Tinder would distribute coins as a reward for users being active on the service and keeping their profiles up to date, but would also allow them to be purchased directly. They would then be accepted as payment for premium Tinder features like Super Likes. As of February this year, the feature had been soft-launched in a handful of markets around the world.
