Tinder’s new CEO: ‘We probably have dropped the ball’ on women’s experiences on the dating app

– On the apps. Dating can be a marathon, but the woman leading the world’s biggest dating app is racing out of the gate: “We need speed and we need urgency right now,” says Tinder’s new CEO Faye Iosotaluno.

Tinder parent Match Group last month named Iosotaluno as the app’s chief executive after leaving the role vacant for a year and a half. Tinder—responsible for more than half of Match Group’s $3.4 billion in annual revenue—had cycled through several leaders, most recently Renate Nyborg, who was its first female CEO; she left in mid-2022.

Iosotaluno, now Tinder’s second female CEO, is inheriting the business as it faces some pressing challenges. Tinder’s paid users dropped 5% year-over-year in 2023, a trend that’s hit the online dating industry as a whole as consumer spending tightens and users grow weary of dating apps. Tinder, now 11 years old, is also working to stay relevant. Its “swipe” feature was innovative when it hit the scene for millennials, but today’s daters (particularly Gen Zers) want something different.

What’s more, a lawsuit seeking class action status (and filed on Valentine’s Day) accuses Match brands Tinder, Hinge, and the League of turning users into “addicts” who pay for the false promise of endless matches. The suit claims Match violated consumer protection, false advertising and defective design laws. (Match says the suit is “ridiculous and has zero merit.”) The parent company’s stock has fallen 17% in the past year.

Match Group chose an insider to steer Tinder through the tumult. Iosotaluno joined Match in 2017 as Tinder’s SVP of new business initiatives. Then, she pivoted to the broader portfolio—which includes OkCupid and Hinge—as Match’s chief strategy officer. Most recently, she was Tinder’s COO.

Courtesy of The Match Group

In an interview at Match’s New York offices earlier this month (before the lawsuit was filed), Iosotaluno acknowledged she has a lot to do. Driving paying users is one of Tinder’s top priorities for 2024. (Last year’s to-do list included AI integration and an overhaul to Tinder’s marketing to appeal to Gen Z.) “We want to drive high-quality payers, and we want to drive revenue,” she says. “We don’t want to maximize payers for the sake of maximizing payers.” To that end, Tinder has introduced some new options like a $500-a-month “ultra premium” subscription tier.

“We want to make sure we’re putting the right product in front of the right people at the right time,” Iosotaluno says. On the paid front, that could mean monetizing different features in different places; in Japan, an anonymous browsing mode is one of the most popular features but is not monetized, the CEO says. Or it could mean a different version of Tinder for a 19-year-old who’s excited to swipe compared to a newly-single 28-year-old woman who’s cautiously getting back on the apps after a breakup, the CEO says.

“We probably have dropped the ball” on women’s experiences on the app, Iosotaluno admits. “I envision a product that really thinks about, what are your best interests at heart?”

Emma Hinchliffe
emma.hinchliffe@fortune.com
@_emmahinchliffe

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ALSO IN THE HEADLINES

- Front of the line. Amanda Bardwell will become the first female CEO of Woolworths Group in September after Australia’s largest supermarket chain announced CEO Brad Banducci would be stepping down. Bardwell, who worked her way up to the top of the chain’s loyalty and e-commerce departments over 23 years, will be tasked with easing consumer concern over rising prices. Bloomberg

- Big city pay. Citigroup CEO Jane Fraser’s pay jumped 6% to $26 million in 2023 thanks to what the bank called the “most consequential set of changes to its organizational and management model since the 2008 financial crisis.” Even though bank profits dropped by nearly 40%, Fraser’s strategy of streamlining its departments and workforce helped end a three-year decline in stock price. Fortune

- Barriers to building. A new Goldman Sachs survey found that Black women struggle to accumulate generational wealth because of factors like economic disadvantages in home ownership and student loan debt. The report found that about half of Black women have retirement savings, less than half own their homes, and 28% owe more than $50,000 in student loans. Axios

- Screen time drops. USC researchers found that the number of women with leading roles in the 100 highest grossing films of 2023 was a "historic low." Only 30 of the movies featured women leads, which matched the stats reported in 2010 and trailed the 44 recorded in 2022. Variety

- Legal dominoes. The University of Alabama at Birmingham on Wednesday paused in vitro fertilization procedures over legal concerns after the state's Supreme Court ruled that frozen embryos are classified as "extrauterine children." Multiple embryos are often created during IVF to increase the odds of a successful pregnancy; discarding unused embryos could now carry a wrongful death charge in the state. AL

MOVERS AND SHAKERS: DHR Global appointed Priya Taneja as chief operating officer. OpenStore hired Rebecca Traverzo as head of marketing.

ON MY RADAR

Women of the Year Time

Ex-Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer on AI, remote work and her new app: ‘I think it is really hard to join an organization that is fully remote because that notion of culture gets lost’ Fortune

Women outnumber men in South Korea’s sports stadiums The New York Times

PARTING WORDS

"I was once upon a time somebody dreaming to have resources and opportunities and the ability to have a voice in the world. It’s so gratifying to be able to work with a team to do that for millions of women."

—Chanel CEO Leena Nair, who has placed women in 60% of all managerial positions at the company and significantly increased its charitable donations for women and girls