Is the future of dating apps in the metaverse?

Match Group, which owns about twenty dating sites and applications including Tinder and Meetic, relies on video chat and soon on the metaverse.

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With the Covid-19 pandemic putting a brake on new meetings, the atmosphere should be rather gloomy for Match Group. Yet, in a communicated aimed at shareholders, the American group is optimistic: Tinder is increasingly popular and technological innovations promise to add spontaneity and authenticity to online dating.

“Like many in tech, we believe the metaverse will be the next evolution after mobile,” Match Group executives say in the statement. They are already imagining a virtual world with games, entertainment and “shared experiences” in order to meet new people ” Just as in real life “. To develop this technology, Match Group relies on their team at Hyperconnect in South Korea, a country considered a pioneer in this field.

At first glance, a metaverse with games and entertainment doesn’t look much different from what already exists. Perhaps they will distinguish themselves by keeping the “match” system, that is to say that the two people must like the other’s profile to get in touch. However, it’s unclear whether women would be very enthusiastic about dating in the metaverse when men were already sexually harassing women in the early days of this technology.

It will take some time for the metaverse to be developed for dating apps and to find enough users. In the meantime, they rely on another feature much more accessible than virtual reality: video chat. The leaders of Match Group explain that Meetic has launched “online video cafes” which, according to them “have been very well received by users”. The Match app also has a one-to-one video chat feature. This is also why the American group approached the company Hyperconnect, since it had released the Azar application, which mainly uses video chat to meet people.

The goal of these new features: that users have longer and more interesting conversations, instead of not knowing what to say and ending up ghosting each other. Indeed, with the confinements, the users of these applications want fewer one-night encounters and are more and more likely to seek a stable and lasting relationship. In 2021, the Annual Report of Match.com on singles in the United States shows that only 11% of users only wanted sex and their first criterion for finding a partner is no longer physical appearance but emotional maturity.

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