Tinder Parent Company's Executive Mulls 'Summer of Love' Prospects Amid COVID Pandemic

Swidler reportedly pointed out that it remains to be seen exactly how comfortable about socialising dating app users will feel when the Omicron variant is no longer dominant.

Gary Swidler, chief financial officer of the Match Group which owns and operates prominent dating platforms such as Tinder and Hinge, has expressed hope that 2022 will serve up the “summer of love."

According to Insider, Swidler made this remark on 2 February during the company’s fourth quarter earnings call, saying they “have increased confidence that while the first part of 2022 may be tougher than” they anticipated, “the second half could be stronger."

"We're hopeful that once we get past the effects of Omicron, we could even have that summer of love that we had expected back in 2021 after the vaccines were introduced," he said.

He did reportedly note, however, that it remains to be seen exactly how comfortable about socialising people who use dating apps will feel when the Omicron variant is under control, whenever that may be.

"And so that is a swing factor in our outlook, but we're not assuming a huge summer of love right now in our outlook," he said. "I know a lot of people feel like as soon as we get to those warm summer months, there's going to be a real big wave [in dating app activity], but we're not forecasting that at the moment until we see some evidence that really this is over and that is how people are going to behave, but we'll have to wait and see."

Swidler added that Match Group is currently “more sober” in its forecasts, seeing how they have been “head-faked a few times” and that “no one's had a great ability to predict kind of what the pandemic brings and what the effects are."