Tinder’s CEO Responds to Facebook’s New Dating App

Elie Seidman, the CEO of swipe left or right matchmaking app Tinder, had some things to say about Facebook’s entrance into the dating service industry.

It was earlier this week that Facebook announced it would be getting into the dating industry at its F8 annual conference.

Tinder’s parent company Match Group collapsed on the news, falling down almost 21%.

In an exclusive interview with Yahoo Finance, he said on Thursday, “When you use Facebook, there’s a lot of context, right? There’s a lot of ‘ambience.’ That ambience is really specific. It could be kids’ pictures that you’re seeing. It could be knowing about Cambridge Analytica. It could be all of the other stuff they do, and so they have an interesting set of baggage.”

Seidman says he’s not particularly concerned.

This could be because Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said their app will be focused on “meaningful” relationships and not hook ups.

“Facebook is in a very competitive space,” Seidman said.

He remarked, “Facebook has lots of things to think about. We have the benefit of thinking about one thing, all day every day. We don’t have a lot of the data complexity. We don’t sell data.”

Disclaimer: We have no position in Match Group Inc. (NASDAQ: MTCH) and have not been compensated for this article.