Tinder abandons plans to develop metaverse for dating

The company’s CEO Renate Nyborg will leave her post one year after her appointment

04.08.2022 - 07:25

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What’s new? Tinder, a mobile dating app, has postponed plans to create its own metaverse and the full launch of the cryptocurrency Tinder Coins. The main reason is the company’s poor financial results for the last quarter. Tinder CEO Renate Nyborg will also leave her post less than a year after her appointment, The Verge reports.

News on The Verge’s website

What is known about the Tinder metaverse? Last year, Tinder bought Hyperconnect, a company that specializes in video, artificial intelligence, and augmented reality technology. The parties planned to work together on the metaverse. Tinder users were supposed to be able to meet and interact with each other in a virtual space. Now, however, according to parent company Match Group’s CEO Bernard Kim this development will go into the background. Kim stressed that Tinder will continue to evaluate this direction and 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 reported that the purchase of Hyperconnect caused a $10 million operating loss in Q2 2022. Meanwhile, for the same period the previous year, Tinder recorded an operating income of $210 million.

As for Tinder Coins, the coins were supposed to be used to pay for the app’s premium features, such as “Super Likes.” Users could get Tinder Coins for being active and keeping their profile data up to date, as well as through purchases. The feature was launched in test mode in several countries. However, according to Kim, “after seeing mixed results” the company decided to re-examine the initiative to make it more effective in terms of increasing revenue.

In March, the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) published a report on the increasing cases of scams on dating apps like Tinder. The amount of cryptocurrency lost as a result of “romance” scams increased by 80% for 2021, with the total amount of damage amounting to $139 million.

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