Tinder CEO Elie Seidman joins Vergecast host Nilay Patel and Verge senior reporter Ashley Carman for a chat about the future of the platform.

Nilay Patel: How have things changed for Tinder in the midst of all this?

Elie Seidman: It’s interesting. The high level is that now more than ever, people want connection. You’ve got physical isolation, but if you’re single and you’re alone, now is perhaps the most important time. So there’s some interesting sub=trends, but that’s probably the highest level thing that we’re seeing, a lot of engagement. [It] depends on where you are in the world, depends on whether you’re kind of in the peak of the crisis moment, the way Italy or Spain were or New York was a month ago. But the thing that’s really come through loud and clear is people want connection. Makes sense: when you get isolated, you want it even more.

So you’re seeing increased usage of Tinder during all this?

Yeah, it’s kind of ebbed and flowed. It depends. We break it into two parts. There’s the business side of Tinder, the part of Tinder which is the financial engine. Then there’s the engagement side: the majority of people who are using Tinder in any given day, the majority of the community globally, is not paying for it. It’s basically an entirely free product for them, and a small subset of them are the paid members, people who are paying for premium features.

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