Wednesday 3 August 2022 09:04 PM Tinder swipes left on the metaverse as company reports $10M quarterly loss from ... trends now
Dating app Tinder has a message for the metaverse: it’s not you, it’s me.
The company is reducing its commitment to moving into the much-touted virtual reality realm as it reels from an operating loss of $10 million in the most recent financial quarter.
In February, 2021 Match Group bought South Korean company Hyperconnect for over $1.7 billion. At the time, top executives hyped the purchase as one that would see Match Group’s various dating apps slide into DMs of the future metaverse thanks to Hyperconnect’s live video and chat technologies.
The metaverse, which has been highly pushed by Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and other Silicon Valley moguls, can include virtual reality and also augmented reality that would combine aspects of the physical and digital worlds.
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Tinder is reducing its commitment to moving into the virtual reality realm as it reels from an operating loss of $10 million in the most recent financial quarter
Tinder CEO Renate Nyborg is leaving the company just a year after taking the job. Pictured above is her resignation note from LinkedIn
Bernard Kim, CEO of Tinder’s parent company, Match Group, praised how that metaverse tech has been incorporated into some of the company’s non-Tinder apps, but also said 'uncertainty' over what the much-hyped metaverse will actually turn out to be means caution is necessary.
'I believe a metaverse dating experience is important to capture the next generation of users, and Hyperconnect has been innovating in this area,' Kim wrote in a Tuesday shareholder's note.
'However, 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.
