Tinder Chases Gen Z Users With ‘Swipe Night’ and Multimedia Frills

non gaming apps in the world. The Tinder has largely been a one dimensional experience on the platform until Landzoonne arrived last year. He spent the previous decade leading CBS Interactive during the Great Disruption brought on by the Dawn of streaming. He led the pioneering launch of the CBS All Access subscription service in twenty fourteen. When he arrived at Tinder, Lanzonne realized that content and video based connection tools would be key to growing the services user base.

It's gen z consumers have told them that they want more immersive experiences, so Tinder is rolling out a host of video based bells and whistles. That list includes that Choose your Own Adventure TV series dubbed Swipe Night, and new tools that allow individuals and small groups to gather around movies and TV shows and other forms of content. Tinder, which turns ten next year, also has a growing profile on TV, including a partnership with the Australian edition of

the reality series Love Island. In our conversation, lands Own offers his thoughts on how the Tinder brand has thrived as a digital native, and he weighs in on the state of play in the streaming wars from his new perch as a well informed consumer. That's all coming up after this break, MHM. Welcome back to Strictly Business, Jim Land's Own CEO of Pinder. Thank you so much for

joining me today. Good beer, Cynthia, So, Jim, you spent almost ten years in the deep in the world of traditional media in CBS, and you were one of the one of the people that brought CBS into the century with the launch of I will say it the industry's first mainstream subscription streaming service to take mainstream television assets like CBS. It doesn't get more mainstream TV than that. Into the online O T T direct consumer world, into

the online O T T direct to consumer world. All the buzzwords that everybody's talking about now you were tackling almost ten years ago, the CBS with the very successful launch of CBS All Acts, which is now morphed into a paramount plus and is now pretty much the centerpiece of the entire viacom. CBS is future growth plan. So you know, quite a foundation that you helped launch. But almost a year ago now you left CBS and back

to venture capital world and the world of entrepreneurialism. And and as in that journey you wound up the Tinder. How did all the experience of the previous ten years inform how you laid out a plan for Tinder? Yeah, well, look, I I my whole career, even going back before CBS, has been Internet products. And I spent almost a decade in search and navigation. And then my startup Clicker that we sold the CBS was you know, at the next generation TV guide meets search engine. That's how you got

the very beginning of streaming. Uh. And you know, and CBS. You know where I really ran was CBS Interactive, which had all these different divisions and thirty plus brands across entertainment, sports, news, tech gaming. So what I really love to do is Internet products. Uh. And you know when When the opportunity move to Tinder came up, it's just it's one of these iconic brands. It's it's probably one of the most

iconic brands in Internet history. And the chance to take what they had built uh in this space and really you know, blow it out over over the next uh, you know generation of what that brand could become. I just thought it was an incredible opportunity. And in my mind it was you know, Tinder had really redefined the

category of how to meet somebody online. But with that brand, like with you know, several internet brands, it starts as one thing, but it could become a platform if you start to kind of break it apart, uh and and think about all the different ways you could take that brand. And so that was about a year ago that I joined. Now and you know, we can talk about all the all the ways we're gonna take it, but about a month ago we had you know, I would say, is

my first major product launched since I joined. One of the biggest things that we launched was was video, which hadn't existed on the platform before. So Tender members are now able to upload videos of themselves, um and show off more about themselves express themselves differently. I should say at this point that you know, more than half of our audience is gen Z So it's very much meeting them where they are and how they want to express themselves.

But we also announced uh what we're calling the Explore tab, which is going to be an area of Tinder where you could do all kinds of things, uh, from you know, from experiencing uh piece of media with another person or with groups of people, um, you know, to all these different ways now that you can uh discover people within tender and um. And so that is is a huge new opportunity for us down a more multi dimensional or

multimedia pathway. And we're just getting started without Okay, now I have to ask you the idea of people uploading video to Tinder. You must have some content guidelines. Are there specific maybe parts of the body that you don't want them to do? Yeah? Well, well, look, I mean the especially for gen xers and people. You know, we kind of came to the tinderbrand a while ago. You know. The thing is at this point, Tinder is number one

in over a hundred and ten countries. Uh. It is the number one grossing app in the world for non gaming apps, and it's much more than U. You know, people upload photos of themselves or videos of themselves now in order to help meet the right person. Now we're not judgmental about that. Could be that might you know, be one date, and it may be getting married. I mean there are status that basically show that tinders the number one source of marriage in the United States. Uh

and everything in between. You know, we facilitate that. Well, we're great at is the matching right is bringing to people together. A lot of cases people who didn't you wouldn't have normally met or you wouldn't expect to be attracted to um. And so you know, their incentives to upload something about themselves that shows them off them rock climbing them at a forty niners game, you know, their dog.

A photo is pretty one dimensional for that. And a video again, especially for gen Z, which lives in forms of social media entirely in video in a more natural way to express themselves. But I have to ask, I mean, do you have guidelines there? So one of one of our one we have three main product groups. The one of those is trust and safety and so on a global basis, whether it's fighting spam or fraud um or yes, uh, you know, content moderation. Those are all things that we cover.

It's not just uh images, it could also be somebody saying something you don't like. All kinds of AI that's in there that alert to you and says, you know, did this offend you? Or we actually now and we just launched this in uh the first half of the year, we have something that intercepts somebody and says are you short, like meaning are you sure you want to send that? Because we can actually sniff out that it might be offensive. Uh.

And that's that's purely AI. I mean, that's that part of that part of I mean, we have a huge team behind it obviously, both on product and on member experience, like uh, you know, working with people on that. But um, but yeah, look, we there's no company in this space that puts more resources or technology or manpower people power into moderation. Uh. And you know, in addition to safety and so that is part and parcel of how we

how we do this. It's also one reason why we launched in English speaking countries first, because that's where those technologies are are the most developed, and then we'll roll them out around the world. You know as we go

or in a hundred and nine countries. That's that's a that's a that's a that's a wide footprint print of bringing people to model languages to to deal with And I know that you know from our conversations, I know that in addition, you know, you've added video for for people that the people on the site can communicate through video now. But I know you have also some ambitions in the television era, you have ambitions for video for Tinder that are in the you know, beyond the individual

user video. It's been one of the richest areas for innovation for us. And I think something that you know, we now have a multi year roadmap ahead of us. Some things that we could do. Um you know, look, one thing that people want to do is more ways to express themselves on on Tinder. Another thing is they want more ways to navigate. So rather than just uh you know, leaning back and letting us do the matching with our algorithms and our product, people want to lean

forward and actually choose some of the pathways. So uh so we're launching many different ways to navigate. So you can just look at at thrill seekers or people who have pets, and and just navigate that way. But the more robust version of this is they want experiences within Tender that they can they can participate in as a way of meeting people, which really, if you think about it,

mirrors real life. Right. No matter how you met somebody in real life, whether it was at a bar, at school, um it you know you then we go do things together and this is how you would figure out, you know, whether you like somebody or what you had in common. Um, those are all things that we can bring to the to the app itself, not because we want to compete

with entertainment. In fact, we want to partner with entertainment because our job is not to get attention, to monetize, you know, through advertising, or to help you get followers or likes. Our our jobs connect you with the right person. So there's all kinds of always that we can partner with with me of partners to bring that into the app.

And one thing that we did and this actually predated me at first and then we launched it again last October, was our own uh episodic essentially television show as you and I would think about it, streaming television show within Tender, and it was a grand slam in terms of how many people participated and what it drove in terms of engagement. Um. So, it was called swipe Knight and it was an event, multi episodic over several weekends, and it was a choose

your own adventure television show. You know, the one you would that should come to mind for you is is you know the Bandersnatch episode of Black Mirror right where it was their choose your own Adventure attempt at Netflix. Swite Knight was that within Tender, except it was it was actually interactive physically, like with your finger. You were swiping through and you were choosing in the show what would happen next? So you know, does somebody go downstairs?

You know, does somebody Actually? Rico Nasty was actually in it driving. It was an end of the world theme. There was a kind of like this is the end with Seth Rogan, but uh, you know, the world is kind of ending and you could get into time for last year I'm guessing exactly. You can get in the

car threeco Nasty and go one way. You could save the dog, you know, They're all these different things you could do, and at the end you would be dropped into you, you would be massed with people who had the same outcomes that you did and had made the same decisions that you did. Uh. And it drove a increase in messages between people and matches. And we just won four Grand pre Awards at can Lions just for

that first attempt. So what we're announcing now here, this is the first time I'm talking about, is we'll have We'll have season two of Swipe Night in the fall. Um. It's gonna have a really interesting theme and be even more in active with some of the products that we've recently launched embedded into it. But would you ever just do a flat out Tinder branded dating show or reality show? I don't use to break on that, but I would

say you never know. But actually, in a serious, um sort of serious way, could there could there be Well, certainly there could be a downside to something like that, But at this point with an established brand, is that since it seems like such a natural, I gotta believe that they're somebody along the way has said, maybe that's not right for this brand? Is there? You know? Because people tend to think of TV is the end all and be all, but maybe not. We were approached weekly

on this for for the Tinder brand. So yeah, I think um to your point. I mean, I think it's an iconic brand. It definitely has some edge, and it also is the number one way people meet for relationships, uh, you know, in in over a hundred countries. So so I think that's why they're coming our way. And you know, I think I learned a long time ago you also have to be careful you partner with and not to

just say yes to everything. I think if we go down that pathway, it'll have to be something pretty special. It's interesting though, because again, you're you're at a company, at a at a place in its history where you know a startup would be dying for any kind of exposure, but you don't. You don't need that exposure. So it is an interesting and just the technology leap, you know,

moves ahead, leaps and bounds. You can look at media, you know how media can help Tinder in very creative ways that don't have to fit into the box of a half hour show or an hour long show. That must be kind of exciting, especially since you have the background to really know what's you know, what's possible at the high end of production versus what the cutting edge tools you have to work with. Yeah, and it was

again part of what attracted me to the company. And I think once you have a mentioned at this level in a brand that that that's this good, there's just so much history has proven there's so much you can do with a brand like that online. So you know, again, we're we're just getting started in many ways. And by the way, I mean, we're still just coming out of COVID. Uh. You know, I started here a year ago. I still have not had a full work day in the office.

It has still been all over zoom. So we're we're we're cranking relative to to all that. But um, but there's a lot more to come, especially in this this notion of of multimedia and kind of you know what what we internally we have called tender three D just a much more multi dimensional version of tender to which also allow people to express themselves, you know that way. What is the basic kind of ballpark figure for your platform the number of you know, monthly or annual users

that you have. Uh, they don't historically give the you know what we think of his dow ur now and and uh and on on line consumer Internet so men, monthly active users and things like that. Those are all private numbers, and we're but um, you know, we have over seven million subscribers who are you know, very similar again to my background the streaming industry. It's a freemium product. A lot of people use it for free, a certain

number of people pay for extra features and extra access. Uh. And but we we have some incredible broad stats like, for example, the majority of of days last year each had over three billion swipes per day. We had our first three billion swipe day in March of last year, and then we had over a hundred and twenty more during the year, over three point five billion. We tender has had over five trillion swipes since inception in two thousand twelve. Uh, it's pretty huge. We've had over sixty

five billion matches of people. Uh. And yeah, again, I think sometimes the one that blows people away as tenders than umber one grossing uh, non gaming. But you know, that's how they kind of break out the category app

in the world. So it's if you think about it, above food and shelter, you know, human connection and bring people together relationships is probably the next level thing on uh, you know, and and and human needs and and so you know, that's why I just think it's it's so big and why people pay a lot of attention to it as a category outside of the subscription fees. What what drives that revenue was a partnership because you have

a traditional advertising. We do have a little bit of advertising, not a huge amount on the free products UM the the way and so the subscription product, which again is global UM. There are three levels of it again something you might you're familiar with from from OTT services UM and then are the only rest of and that's the

vast majority of our revenue. The rest of it is is people paying for individual activities UM to be able to see more in the service or be promoted ahead of other people in line kind of you know, within the service, and you can pay individually for that. And that differs by regions. You'll see more of that in Asia, which is our number one growth area right now. UM and uh, you know versus the subscription service in more mature markets. UM. But it's actually a pretty simple revenue model.

And and that's why you know the methods of growth, which is always the mission statement really for any CEO is growth at the end of the day, um, you know, happens on delivering a better consumer experience. Do you see any more like you know, kind of more mass marketing or even more even more of an image campaign or

a brand messaging campaign. Have you do you feel like the brand is at that stage or do you like being still more of a word of mouth than a you know, internet traction type of Yeah, it's hard to see Tinder being a classic uh you know, like a

super Bowl ad kind of a marketer, right. Um. And that said, you know, we already are really good partners with TikTok and Snap and Instagram and others and as you know, YouTube and as you know, that's that's every bit as important now, especially for the generation that we're targeting. So I think there's a lot of ways that we can be creative, and you know, we already are with things like the Love Island partnership and smother things that

we've done. Um, but but it will be interesting to see like the different ways that you can take the Tinder brand if you start to play offense, which I intend to. Don't even think about swiping again. We'll be right back with more from Tinder CEO Jim land Zone and we're back with Tinder CEO Jim land Zone. Tinder is, as I understand, found the cornerstone of a large publicly traded digital company called Match Group. Can you talk about sort of how the ecosystem there and how Tinder fits in. Yeah,

for sure. So and this goes back to my roots too, because a long time ago I ran asked jeeves mass dot Com within i C, which Barry Diller ran, So I worked for Barry for three years. UM, and I see, as you know, you know, spins companies out, so they

owned Expedia. It's spun out Ticketmaster. Uh. And one of them was mass Group, which was bought by i C years ago and incubated over a long period of time, became its own public company about six years ago, and Match Group is now a forty five billion dollar market cap conglomerate essentially of mostly dating apps, um, with Tinder being the largest. They owned others like match dot Com, which was the original, but also Hinge, which is a really up and coming brand which is great in the space.

Plenty of fish okay cupids, so those are all under one roof. We also own ones in Japan and Europe and other places. One of the most interesting things is that uh, you know, match Group is now starting to branch out beyond what you would think of as dating. So we just uh, you know, a couple of months ago closed on a deal called for a coming called hyper Connect, almost two billion dollars that we spend that company.

They're based in Soul, South Korea, and they're very deep into video live streaming, so between individuals or someone's you know, broadcasting out themselves with products called Azar and Hakuna, which you probably haven't heard of, but they're they're huge in

in in Asia and the Middle East. And so that's more what we call social discovery where you're you're which is another trend among gen z of just meeting people digitally, and that really really became a much bigger thing during COVID, where people were stuck at home, they were lonely, and just meeting people platonically online became a much bigger thing again for Tinder. That's never gonna be our objective to Tinder.

It's about meeting people with the spark with the hope of something more um but we are seeing a lot of these apps again developing a new foothold with consumers down this pathway of social discovery. And I think that's a uh something that match group itself is leaning too strongly to your point about you know there's food shelter and you know, somebody to watch the baseball game with

at night. Um. Clearly, if if there's a billion dollar market cap out there and then somebody wants to connect online, Um, do you see you know, bringing in that a company with live with good live streaming technology. Do you see some element of that potentially being added to Tinder down the run. Yeah, I mean I think that's one of the best things about the hyper Connect deal, is it? Really?

You know, if you run consumer internet products, the one thing that's always a bottleneck is just your your resources and and to to build new things. It's it was true, it's CBS all Access. It's true for me a Tinder. It's I hear people of Google and Amazon complaining about not having enough resources sometimes and uh and the hyper Connect team is beyond world class with many different technologies. Streaming is one of them, VR and a R is

one of them. They have a great avatar platform. There's a lot of things that we're gonna be able to bring over to Tinder. Uh. So very excited about that. In fact, we were supposed, you know, COVID is against slowing down us all being able to be together in person. But that's coming out of COVID. That would be one of the biggest, the first things that we do. Well. It sounds like you have no shortage of plans and

additions and iterations of tinder um. Let me ask you, though, if I could just ask you to step back a little bit, having been early into the space and now that you're a little bit outside of the the core of the television world, what I'd love your perceptions on sort of how the dynamics, how the streaming wars are shaping up. Having been in that business but now just a little bit arms length, has it given you perspective about you know, do you do you think our media companies,

you know, are they are they chasing? Are they chasing reality? Is there enough audience and subscription revenue out there for for the biggest players that have put there, you know, planted their flags now to prosper in this world? Or do you think we're going to see more consolidation and more bulking up or something different. I don't mean to make that in either war I'll work backwards. I do

think more consolidation is likely. But that said, um, and we can use Paramount Plus and Viacom as an example of this. I think people tremendously underestimate the category, and for some reason, there's a lot of skies following predictions about it that only a few people can win. I don't think it's infinite, you know that. The but there aren't them? Is that many people who spend as much money as Viacom CBS does you know Again, I have no affiliation with the company anymore, but I just to

use them as one example. Um. Who who puts as much money into making as much content as they do per year? If it is good, if it's original, if it's scarce and only available in their platform? Uh? And that could be original, scripted, unscripted, you know, NFL football, the Grammys, whatever it may be. Uh. You know, people

are going to find it. And I think people still underestimate how big just CBS all Access was, Uh, and how many people historically had subscribed, now keeping people subscribed, and again we would think of them as going on pause in any given day. The biggest source of new

subscribers was old subscribers. People were always kind of coming back through the service and the only thing that you need and they they've announced recently that they're going to make a fifty original shows, and of course they're putting movies in the platform and others. Is great content and you know, Netflix, I'm sure we'll have great quarters ahead, but just lost four hundred thousand subscribers in the quarter

despite how much money they're spending on content. And at the end of the day, and this is why, you know, for me personally, it's probably a good time to move on. Is I really believe at this point it's a content game and your your you know, the products have been built. You know, our first business plan for CBS all Access, or at least the first pitch about it was in the fall of It took us three more years to

get it approved and launched in October. Uh, and we definitely were ahead of our time, and I think probably could have been Uh, you know, there's probably more we could have done with it if we've leaned it even harder during those five years before Disney and other others launched. But at this point those tracks are laid down and now it's about content. Who makes the best content. Uh and and to me that's still to be And I mean, Disney has done a great job. I've been loving the

Marvel shows. The Mandalorian was awesome. I almost cried when a spoiler alert, but when you know Luke came back in the last episode. Um, Hulu is doing a great job with content. I mean. But at the same time, you know this may resonate with you. I have a six hour flight on Sunday. There aren't that many shows I really want to go download to watch. It's like, with all its money being spent, you still don't have that many great shows that are just being demanding to

be watched. And so I think in there is still an opportunity. It's not a product game, too content game, but that is still to be written. I think. Thanks for listening to Varieties Strictly Business podcast. Please be sure to leave us a review at Apple Podcasts. We love to hear from listeners, and be sure to tune in next week for another episode of Strictly Business to be did ut spilm teams decat siply tings detail