Match Group’s Chief Operating Officer Gary Swindler on CNBC’s ‘Closing Bell’ show to talk about video features, dating and lockdown, and whether or not recent trends are set to continue post-COVID.
He explained how the dating company looks after its members when using the video features.
For example, some subsidiaries like Tinder and Hinge only facilitate virtual dates after a match has been made and both parties have confirmed that they want a call.
Swindler also assured the hosts that human moderators might track some calls and users can report others if necessary, but the private data will never be sold to third-party companies for monetisation purposes.
A number of dating platforms, specifically in the LGBTQ community, have removed their race filters in response to the ‘Black Lives Matter’ movement. However, Match Group has continued to keep them in place.
When challenged by CNBC, Swindler answered: “We allow our users to filter in a variety of ways. Different people are looking for different things in dating and people they want to meet, and so we think it makes sense in the product to have those kinds of preferences that people can make.
“We don’t monitor for any kind of bad behaviour or problems that it may be causing, but I think overall we’re watching to see if this works on our platforms, we don’t see any issues with it at the moment and we’re just making sure users have as good an experience as possible.”
Finally, he shared his thoughts on how the online and virtual dating world will change as offline venues begin to open up again.
Match Group apparently aren’t expecting it to go back to normality right away, as singles could be initially wary about meeting new people in busy places.
Watch the full interview here.