OkCupid was bought by Match Group (who run almost all online dating sites, including Match, eHarmony, and Tinder) in 2011 and took down this post not long after.
EDIT: the purchase was Feb 2011 [1] and the post was removed sometime between Jan 2011 [2] and Mar 2011 [3]. The rest of the blog was still up at the time [4].
Match has turned all of its apps into tinder. That is, gambling-like "one more swipe" photo centric dating apps, where the artificial restriction of choice keeps every person starved. Tinder is casual hookups, okcupid is leftist tinder for relationships, Hinge is politically moderate tinder for traditionalists, and so on. Each is a different marketing segment, but the same basic idea that gets men to pay to meet women.
I would not say Hinge artificially restricts choice. You are limited in how many “likes” you can send each day, but it’s a different model where each like is actually a notification/puts you in someone’s “inbox”, so letting everybody like too much would make it too spammy to work.
That model is also quite good because you don’t need to pay for women to notice you. Those 10 people you like will notice you anyway, unlike other apps where you could like 1000 profiles and barely be seen by any of them.
I personally have found Hinge very effective compared to other apps without paying a cent. My like -> match -> date conversion rate was literally two orders of magnitude better than any other app.
Sounds like the same trend we se in other social media, which is that as soon as there's something new which against the odds has broken through, everyone rushes to copy it - the reason both YouTube and Facebook are pushing shorts so aggressively now.
Your experience may have location bias? I.e. where did you use OKC?
I used it in Europe (2010--2011, mostly Germany and Italy) and Asia (2011-2013, Hong Kong) and Europe again (2014--now mostly Berlin & Hamburg) and my experiences were/are very different.
People are from the full political spectrum. Very right people are the outlier though, admittedly.
In Berlin there is a leftist bias but this is pretty newish (wasn't like this at all, when I started using OKC again in Europe in 2014).
Some people are going to take this the wrong way, but I've never read a more true statement.
I'm a pretty liberal person (folks think I'm conservative because I think communism stinks), but my experience with OkCupid many years ago was that most of its users were self-proclaimed cultural Marxists or feminists with a bone to pick. My digital head was decapitated several times by women there just for introducing myself to them. I'd even been lectured a handful of times about how I was "misogynist" for the age range I specified on my profile included women 5 years younger than I was, which wasn't even low enough to include women of college age.
The day I saw an advertisement for OkCupid that actually used the initialism "DTF" was when I knew for sure I would never be returning to them ever again. It would surprise me if they still had any meaningful userbase since it was pretty much dead in the LA area the last time I used it.
> but the same basic idea that gets men to pay to meet women.
In which case men should just go to Seeking Arrangement.
Spoke to the OKC co-founder when he was working out of a co-working location making fun side project, he said that even they thought this was a bit too pretentious and very correlation vs causality issues.
Can’t wait to see all our old private messages get leaked by some hack of the parent organization now too. Or for it all to just get sold to advertisers
I wish! After I met my (now-)wife on OkCupid, we deactivated our accounts so that we'd stop getting notifications. A few months later we wanted to revisit our first messages to each other -- only to find that OkC had already deleted them. I was pretty shocked at how eager they were to discard a few KB of potentially priceless ASCII. :(
What I used to love about OkCupid was how it would nudge you into writing a profile to tell who you are and what you care about. My profile had grown and it was a nice little place to present myself to the world and to talk to various women sometimes not even for dating but for the sake of an interesting conversation. Compare that with Tinder that won't even let you write more than small quantity of letters, come this is just text! There used to be an interesting thing where you would see who visited your profile and vice versa. Sadly the OkCupid website has been crippled into being unusable and the app is just a worse tinder now. Profiles are short, and mostly uninteresting.
Im tempted to make a service where you "deposit" some fee to subscribe, I then return part of the deposit to you on a monthly basis UNTIL you find a match on the site. If/once you find a match, I keep the rest.
That should align goals for both the company and the partner seeker.
EDIT: I'll be getting interest from the remainder your payment every month, as part of my profit scheme.
They presented the reality based on data, it's not subjective, it's revealed preferences. Match.com removed that section and updated the article with "This post has was originally published in 2010 and has since been updated to reflect OkCupid’s current values."
The bisexual thing was pretty stupid and pretty revealing how much this blog post was bullshit, there was a bunch of reason why you would pick one gender as a bisexual, especially if online dating was just to meet more of the gender you wanted.
But a bi dude, in 2010 you simply wouldn't get match with women if you write bi and plenty of gay dude would turn you down as well, so you just wouldn't bother and write gay or straight eventually.
Whats inconvinient to the pollitically correct narrative is people with 0 scientific literacy making bold claims about society based on surveys on extremely sampled social studies.
Doing a study on how "dateable" black women are based on a specific dating app in 2010 is like making claims on everyones eating habits based on a survey on a Burger king drive through. It will probably not be a very good survey.
They also took down the whole blog, people only remember the weird survey because it was an incel talking point seconds after it came out, specially in black pill groups arguing that giving up was the only alternative because OkCupid had "proved" that love was impossible for some and hypergamy or some other nonsense.
> “I’m bisexual.” REALITY: 80% of self-identified bisexuals are only interested in one gender
This isn't the slam dunk it appears to be. A dietary equivalent would be "X% of self-professed omnivores avoid vegetarian dishes". They are open to the idea, but still have preferences. Just because one is open to the superset, doesn't mean they assign each subset equal weight.
>"I’m bisexual.” REALITY: 80% of self-identified bisexuals are only interested in one gender.
>People who describe themselves as bisexual overwhelmingly message either one sex or the other, not both as you might expect.
Yes, I remember this. It was sad to see such basic logic errors from OKC. It seems a little like saying that heterosexuality is a myth because all "heterosexual" people prefer some bodies over others. Bisexual means you are attracted to both masculine and feminine people. It does not imply a 50 / 50 split, or that you want to date everyone equally. The Match.com Orwellian activity aside - that critique was always very odd.
> People who describe themselves as bisexual overwhelmingly message either one sex or the other, not both as you might expect.
I don't think you can draw the conclusions from this people seem to be. Think about it. If you are genuinely attracted to both genders, then you can choose. If you're pursuing a goal (like a relationship) you're going to have some ideal you're going after, so you're probably going to pick a gender to look for for any particular period of time. I think it would be actually very uncommon to actively seek both at the same time, especially since there are cultural/societal considerations tied up with this. If you genuinely like both deciding to pursue a particular gender doesn't invalidate the fact that you could just as genuinely pursue the other. Society dictates that pursing one or the other are of varying difficulty, but this has nothing to do with the legitimacy of how you feel about the other. Bi-sexual people I've known follow this pattern -- they'll pursue one gender for 6 months to the year, and then re-bound with the other, then maybe stick with that one for a while, rinse and repeat. Since most people only use dating services for a short while, this would probably look as described above in aggregate.
I use straight dominated apps for straight dating and gay dominated apps for gay dating so my usage would basically agree with their majority statistic.
Bi isn’t an all or nothing thing. Men are well known to enter same sex relationships when in restricted environments long term such as sailing ships or prison, but not everyone is that flexible.
Women do the same with a lesser known example being elderly women swapping because of the shrinking dating pool.
So, self identifying as bi shouldn’t be taken as having zero gender preferences nor should we assume peoples preferences are static through time. People may be in a committed relationship and seek partners of the a different gender etc.
There are multiple reasons why someone would prefer to date only one gender while actually bisexual. I know a person who is bisexual and only dates the opposite gender because they don't want to deal with backlash from their conservative family and because they prefer to start a traditional family one day. I do feel like that may be a popular issue so I wouldn't expect that a bisexual person would message both genders equally, like this article absurdly claims.
Yeah, I'm gay & bi guys in the gay community complain that they're not as accepted, which to some degree is definitely true. But the number of "bi" guys who want to bang guys on the side while looking for a "real" relationship with a woman is staggering. I try to avoid them at all costs; I'm not a fleshlight/something to discard.
I feel like the gay community needs to treat bi guys better but at the same time bi guys need to take a look at themselves and consider if they're romantically bi, or just sexually bi because they just want to fulfil their sexual needs (which is much easier with guys obviously).
That implication is not logical. It is unreasonable to expect bisexuals to seek 50/50 gender split.
First, even if the actual attraction is same for both genders, it would be reasonable to expect bisexuals to seek opposite gender partners way more. Pretty much anyone who wants bio children need opposite sex partner. Pretty much anyone who don't want to deal with stigma around gayness too kuch will prefer opposite gender partner.
Second, bisexuality does not mean the attraction is same. It it fairly normal for bisexual to be attacted toany people from one gender and few from the other. It is also fairly normal foe them to have periods where they go for one gender only (either as conscious decision or not).
I am experimenting with Tinder subscription at the moment, and it feels incredibly exploitative. When you make a profile, matches are frequent and you can tell that you show up for people. However it gradually falls down with time, and the only predictable and obvious way to get back up is to pay for Boosts and/or Priority Likes.
Right now my 6-month old profile gets ZERO likes outside of the time it's Boosted ($3 a pop or something). I get plenty once I'm boosted, so the profile attractiveness doesn't seem to be a factor.
It feels like the app's algorithms are rigged to gradually push you towards paid subscription options. There must be a huge invisible market of Tinder whales given how exploitative it is, gambling addiction, loneliness, and desperation for dates are correlated traits and I would absolutely bet on Tinder exploiting this heavily.
Agreed. It also seems extremely gross that you're initially pushed to buy Tinder Gold, but then only afterward realise there are still features locked behind Tinder Platinum, and even after that you'll probably spend still more buying packs of boosts and super-likes.
I know they're far from the only game in town, but this really feels like the behaviour of a monopoly entity that knows it can do basically whatever.
If I were an unethical data scientist working at Tinder, I would actually reserve the best matches until later in the period, after the initial flurry of "visibility" subsides a bit. That way you are less likely to immediately find a good date or two in the first few matches, helping to ensure that you will not just unsubscribe next month, while providing you with enough tantalizing options that you think it makes sense to keep going. "Great matches started coming up, I had better renew so I don't lose out!"
It's like a slot machine that actively adjusts the odds as you play, in order to keep you hooked as long as possible.
I'm pretty solidly mediocre when it comes to "algorithm design" tasks like this one, so I thought of it you can bet for sure that someone at Tinder did too.
I am pretty sure they also boost you when you start using the app again after a period of inactivity, but not sure if the implementation/magnitude is different from the new-user bonus
Honestly, I am ok with this system. Paying a couple dollars for a matchmaking service isn't a big deal. If you go to bars instead you will pay way more. An introduction to a potential partner is worth at least $50 in my opinion, if anything Tinder is too cheap.
There are too many guys on tinder and most of them are not serious, mindlessly swiping as a way of wasting time. If you filter out the free users and only match guys who pay for boost with girls, it's a much better ratio for those guys and a better experience for the women since guys who buy boost are more invested and more likely to follow through.
I don't mind paying something, but their goal of selling boosts, super-likes, etc runs counter to the goal of the customer which is to meet a compatible person IRL and then (presumably) stop using the site.
My experience with boosts is that they were counter-productive. While the boosts yield likes, but a lot of them would be profiles I'd already left-swiped on, should have been excluded by my filters, or just low-effort profiles. The same profiles would keep showing up in my feed too after I had swiped.
As for your second point, I think women do exactly the same thing. There's just more guys on the site so women are just getting a higher ratio low-effort likes. I'd say a good 50% of the profiles don't have anything written in them except a series of emojis or statements like "I don't know what to write here." or other really low effort content. Even the gold profiles sending messages would initiate a conversation with the dreaded "Hi." These interactions were always a complete waste of time, I just stopped responding to them after a while.
IMO if the business model is to pay for impressions, I wish they'd be up front and just state and charge price per mille (or hundred or whatever). Instead you get an ambiguous "boost" with no accountability/metrics about what even happened? They could literally show you to no one and say "Oops, guess your profile sucks!"
The match rate thing is also kind of a lark because you don't care about matches. You care about matches with people you want to match with... in fact that kinda understates the ultimate goal -- you care about matches with someone who would be good for you (and you for them)... everything else is just vanity.
unfortunately Tinder has become a lot less useful, and a rising number of OnlyFans creators are using it as a vehicle for advertising. They'll match with a guy, chat like normal, and then start dropping hints about their "spicy site."
it's really kind of depressing, honestly. Guys on dating sites are viewed as transactions. Tinder isn't alone with this - they're on multiple sites doing the same thing.
I've made a similar comment before[1] but this is exactly right. The price-to-benefit ratio for Tinder is incredible. You can literally fill your calendar with dates for months on a budget that would last a couple of decent drinks.
Well I'd rather go to a bar/pub anyway. Social, human beings, brawling to order a beer at the zinc, contact and all that?
Not to mention you at least get the tipsiness/(more: drunk) if/when all else fails... 8>
I am sure that is the case, their goal is to keep you swiping as much as possible and buying their upgrades. I had a Gold membership for about a year or so. Boosts didn't work for me, I found that the boots only yielded a lot of low-quality likes (ie: profiles, that my filters should have rejected). I also continuously had profiles showing up that didn't meet my filter criteria and that I'd already swiped left on just days before.
I ended up emailing support and making the case that the site wasn't working as advertised or even as support said it was supposed to be working. I ended up getting a full refund.
It IS exploitative, by design. If you don't have the paid service, they'll never show the people who liked you in your normal stack. But once you pay, they've identified you as willing to pay, so the incentives are at extreme odds (any time you get a match, it's a risk for Tinder that you won't pay again)
ya. I pay about $100 per month over a few apps and if you read the sales pages it's clear they deliberately disable useful features if you don't pay so you are paying to have an "enhanced experience". That alone should suggest they don't really have a value proposition for your life. Maybe that's because they don't want to be sued by promising to sell relationship success. But they keep user statistics secret and I suspect that is because the statistics would tell the truth about what they sell. I have had a bad experience but I don't think HN is the the place to talk about it.
I've only ever used ok cupid back in the day, not tinder, but - why do likes matter? Can't you still use the search function to find people you're interested, and begin interacting my messaging them?
I wonder if for younger people now the best way to meet dates is off-line. Well, I suspect it's always been so, but the question is whether the culture for young people will be decidedly on the off-line side.
The problem really happens when you do algorithmic price setting, which incentivizes you as the developer to get people addicted to the experience of swiping, regardless of whether or not the swiping has the desired outcome for the end user. A user base with just the right levels of dopamine from interactions and loneliness will probably end up buying one of the weekly promotional deals.
That's why when you first start on any dating service, you're (typically) inundated with activity, so that you can always chase that high, and when you can't get it, you try to pay for it.
Online dating is a tough problem to solve, tougher still when profit incentives misalign with user success incentives! I'm not even sure what an equitable but also successful dating service would look like, because there's this fundamental mismatch in values.
This model ignores a key incentive: dating apps that don't successfully match won't be used.
So at best, the developer is incentivized to have the user find someone to date in the short term and have the relationship fail in a manner that doesn't reflect poorly on the dating site. And it's not really feasible for the dating site distinguish between "will successfully date for a few months" and "will successfully date for a lifetime".
You could apply the same logic to any long term purchase. Dealerships only sell lemons because they want you to come back and buy more cars. Recruiters only match you with companies that you'll definitely want to leave because they want to match you again. Realtors only show you houses you'll hate because then you'll want to move again.
If an app isn't getting you decent dates every so often, you'll move to an app that does. And it's pretty clear within a couple of months if an app is working for you or not.
And then once you're in a relationship, the app has zero control over whether it succeeds or not!
So no, dating apps aren't working against your romantic interests, simply because a) there's too much competition and b) they're not even smart enough to identify your true love and then hide him/her from you.
They are trying to make a buck off of you though. Which they should, since they're a business.
But so no, the developer doesn't "usually" win. I have lots of friends who got married from an online date. The people you know who are still on the apps after a decade -- well it's not like they've settled down with anyone they met in real life either. It's probably not the apps' fault.
Honestly, I wouldn't mind paying $10K for finding someone who actually becomes my life partner, let's say due upon 2 years of stable marriage. In such a system, user incentives would be fully aligned with the business. However -- this would be hard to enforce.
My brother posted on FB offering several thousand dollars for anyone who referred him a wife. No dice though. He met his wife a couple years later via one of the apps.
> That's why when you first start on any dating service, you're (typically) inundated with activity, so that you can always chase that high, and when you can't get it, you try to pay for it.
It's striking how the business model is indistinguishable from how cocaine dealers were described to us as kids in the 80s.
I don't get it. Why does no government anywhere run a non-profit dating site from tax-payer money when this is becoming the most popular way people are meeting?
All the options people have are using toxic apps which entire business model is to undermine the self-esteem of young men and scamming them out of their money. And then people wonder where the mental health problems and mass shootings come from.
I really don't understand how this stuff is still not regulated anywhere, it's a dangerous scam.
The government of Singapore has been active in this area since the 80's. Not only having run a dating site, but also subsidizing singles cruises, hosting mixer events, and grants to college programs to get people together.
I am living in Singapore and never heard of anything like that. Would you mind giving some links besides another (purely declarative) initiative of ministry of youth?
> I don't get it. Why does no government anywhere run a non-profit dating site from tax-payer money when this is becoming the most popular way people are meeting?
California kind of accidentally did so a few years. They thought they were simply running a public sex offender registry, but it occurred to some sex offenders it was also a state run directory of people that would be less likely to be put off by their own record and might even have at least one important shared interest to bond over.
> Why does no government anywhere run a non-profit dating site from tax-payer money
Because its outside the scope & role of the government?
> I really don't understand how this stuff is still not regulated anywhere
This is a common theme I see in alot of discussions about everything. Do not confuse regulation with enforcement. Any regulation that is not enforced is useless, or it is used selectively (a.k.a "corruption"). Adding more rules wont solve anything.
And plus, we have the rules. Match group, who basically own the entire western world online dating market, should have not been allowed to buy all their competitors in the first place. This is a failure of the regulating bodies to do anything and now the users end up paying the price.
> Because its outside the scope & role of the government
Is it? Governments care very much about what their demographics will be in the future. Governments get involved in trying to modify birth rate. Hooking people up seems like an interesting idea, especially if the government thinks they're going to deal with massively bad demographic shift in the midterm future.
> Because its outside the scope & role of the government?
That doesn't align with the fact that there are government funded programmes for things like mental well being, sexual health and education, and even music appreciation.
The government is concerned with whatever the heck we say it is. It's _our_ government.
> Do not confuse regulation with enforcement. Any regulation that is not enforced is useless, or it is used selectively (a.k.a "corruption"). Adding more rules wont solve anything.
This is such a weird take when you think about it. It's like saying "people can just run traffic lights; therefore, adding more traffic lights cannot prevent accidents." Okay, well, preventing people from running traffic lights is just a separate issue that should also be solved if it's a problem. The answer isn't to stop putting up traffic lights! And it doesn't follow that some people not following the rules means rules are worthless. Besides, different governments (and different agencies within governments) have vastly different levels of "teeth". I know it's easy to get jaded seeing all the regulatory capture in the U.S., but that's not the entire world. Even in the U.S. some regulations are rigorously enforced, e.g. FAA regulations.
I'm all for a lot of state-sponsored things, but a government run dating site sounds like one of the most dystopian ideas I can imagine.
Blaming online dating sites for mental health problems and mass shooting is a new one. I don't discount the feeling of despair that can occur on dating sites for men. However, the experience of a being woman on a dating app is absolutely harrowing, even if you have incredibly low standards and/or are incredibly desirable.
Current dating apps are designed to make money for their creators. A dating app made by the government could be made with completely different incentives in mind.
To put it differently, I'm reading your argument as equivalent to saying that the existence of the USPS (which will deliver to remote rural areas, despite the fact that doing so isn't profitable) is more dystopian than the existence of UPS and FedEx (which will not).
It's always weird to read how government-run XYZ is somehow "dystopian" when we currently already have MassiveUnaccountableCorporation-run XYZ. I'd rather not have either of them run things, but if I had a choice, I'd much rather it be an institution that at least in theory answers to voters, than a meagcorporation that answers only to a set of rich shareholders. Talk about dystopian!
At some level, a dating network needs to make recommendations.
In Plato's Republic, he proposed his vision for a utopian city-state. Essentially, citizens would be ranked into castes: bronze/iron for laborers and artisans, silver for soldiers, gold for leaders. When people came of age in this utopia, they would be paired off through what they would be told is a random lottery.
In reality, however, the city's leaders would decide on the couplings ahead of time, pairing like with like. Plato called this the "noble lie", and it neatly demonstrates what any government-run dating system would probably develop into: a systemic eugenics program.
If you leave it up to private companies, you'd still get an eugenics program, one that selects for creating the perfect little consumer.
In a future where dating apps (and technology in general) becomes the only way to meet potential mates, only those who successfully "engage" with the apps/tech in a way that the company approves of will be allowed to reproduce.
Those that either refuse to engage on principles, or don't "engage" with it the "right" way (let's say by not falling for dark patterns, etc) and end up banned are effectively prevented from reproducing.
Both options can end up dystopian, but I'll take a government-run scheme any day. Not only are governments at least theoretically accountable to their citizens, but they are also as slow as molasses and terrible at tech, so they'd fare much worse at eugenics than a private company.
You people take it to far. I am not talking about some dystopian government that forces marriages to create some kind of super-citizen.
I just want the incentive of making profit removed and provide a decent service that does what it promises. If that service can only be provided at a loss (which seems to be the case) then let the state do it. Nobody would force anyone to use it.
>Why does no government anywhere run a non-profit dating site from tax-payer money when this is becoming the most popular way people are meeting?
Sounds like a great idea. I nominate NSA as the host organization. You wouldn't even need to bother creating a profile, they will just use all the surveillance data to find you the best matches.
Ha. The NSA or Amazon. Just log in through Amazon SSO and it matches your purchase history against a variety of candidates. Medical purchases excluded for a fee.
Well how about we start a non-profit dating app? I was just wondering how much it could cost to run the backend with todays cloud services. With what Tinder is charging for boosts and subscriptions I feel like they're raking it in. But I've never developed and deployed a fully cloud based app, just used a bunch of their services off and on.
I’ve wondered about this for years. Given the obviously misaligned incentives between a for-profit dating app and its users, dating seems like a perfect area for a non-profit to operate.
It’s not non-profit afaik but doesn’t plenty of fish [0] essentially provide this service?
The problem is the population has already been divided and Match exists using predatory practices. You could maybe dethrone it using regulations or an organic campaign.
I don't know about the mass shootings being linked to dating apps but I thought about this too.
I think the fundamental problem is that more men always sign up on these apps than women. That would be true of a government app also. It seems like this ruins the experience for both men and women alike. I am speculating here because we don't really know much about how these apps work since no one releases their user data. But women I have talked to complain about married men, copy-pasted pickup lines, and men treating women like prostitutes. With my own experience men complain about fake accounts, having to do all the effort and getting nothing for it, and for both, meeting people, going on dates, and then after you've become attracted to each other you find out how deeply damaged and incompatible the other person is because they hid all their baggage.
A lot of this just seems like it's exacerbated by the use of an app. I think the apps drive decent people away. This is all speculation.
I somewhat think the whole proposition of online dating was doomed to fail. I don't know if a non profit/government office could fix this leaving aside how politics could affect it.
If you think they look bad, you should check out some of their constituents.
Seriously though, this seems like an area where anti-trust and transparency regulation (service X has a Y rating for producing matches that meet standard Q) could play a useful role.
I kind of love this idea, take the skills of 18F https://18f.gsa.gov/ and put them into making the ultimate dating site! An awesome application of data science. Let's take it further -- Government-funded matchmakers! They can hire all the Korean and Indian aunties that are already doing this for free.
Sharing your desires, sexual preference and all intimate conversions with the government doesn't seem like a good idea.
You could say they can tap into that currently, and that's probably true, but deliberately broadcasting it to them would probably be out of question for many people.
Also, consider what government run IT projects look like. Now mix that with a dating app, perfect recipe for a disaster.
You would always be able to switch to whatever service you like for further messaging, a non-profit the wouldn't care about keeping you on their app. Why would you have intimate conversations on a dating site anyway.
Some places do. Not gov. level, and probably not in the US, but your hunch has been followed-up in some european and asian towns where they’ll organize matching pools of local singles. It’s beneficial to everyone: the town keeps their working age tax payers, willing to build a family there, and the people get to find partners with high chance they share many values alredy.
People can meet each other offline like they did 10+ years ago. They (or some large proportion) might prefer to meet online though, as the evidence seems to indicate.
Well, if the government wants to help people meeting offline, it's gonna cost a helluva lot more than a website... to the point it doesn't sound like a waste anymore. I don't see society going back to offline dating by itself.
You, as a user of a dating app, are forever in a Nash Equilibrium with the dating app. When you find the love of your life, you delete the app forever. Therefore, everything the app does to help you find that person works directly against their own goals (user growth, “engagement”. subscriptions).
> works directly against their own goals (user growth, “engagement”. subscriptions).
... success stories, marriages per day due to the app (as per Match.com's advertising material in the article), word of mouth advertisement for the app to your friends...? Again, from the article, even in 2011 match.com was proudly reporting that its active user base changed out every six months. So the "dating apps don't want you to find someone perfect" narrative strikes me as a little simplistic.
On the other hand, plenty of people use dating apps like Bumble and Tinder to find hook-ups, not the love of their life. These people will keep coming back to the app as a result of being frequently successful.
For short-term incentives, you could have some kind of scheme where you monetize dates. Eg when you match someone the app proposes you a list of partner bars, restaurants, parks, etc.
In theory, this could create a perverse incentive for the app to set you up for matches that last just long enough for a few dates, but not long enough that you get off the app. In practice, I don't think matching algorithms are precise enough that the app could act on that incentive.
The bigger problem is that most users would completely ignore the monetized dates.
Additional "relationship management" services? Anniversary reminders/suggestions to counseling to help on any possible angle of being a couple. Probably also access to lawyers (possibly paired with more dating).
This is why I had high expectations and hopes for Facebook Dating. They "have all the data" - and benefit from you being on the site, whether you get married and stop using dating, or not.
Unfortunately, they made a pretty shitty 'dating' system and left it to rot.
When you find the love of your life you move from user to free marketing. People constantly talk about how they met, early dates, etc. New users always enter the dating market, either by just younger people getting older or breakups, divorce, erc. So it seems like it wouldn't be in the best long term interest to keep users in the dopamine loop.
Sounds good in theory, but consider two dating apps: one with hockey stick user growth and high retention, and another with stagnant growth but high user churn. Which one would get the VC dollars? The story you tell would present itself in metrics as the latter app (high churn).
> When you find the love of your life, you delete the app forever. Therefore, everything the app does to help you find that person works directly against their own goals (user growth, “engagement”. subscriptions).
I'm not sure this is a fair modeling of how an app must work -- think of other industries that have extremely long sales cycles like, say, a realtor. Realtors are incentivized to match you to a home in such a manner that you might recommend them to others (and leave positive reviews), perhaps even use them again on the buy/sell side later on if their career is long.
Mind you Realtor is closest to professional match maker, but there's no reason an app couldnt take a middle ground between tinder and a highly involved match making service.
Tinder and OkCupid are not in the "I want to find a partner for life" demographic, they are in the "we give you a constant stream of hookup connections" business.
Surprisingly I thought the same though there is more than one person I know who is married to his Tinder date. Somehow it works out apperantly (this is still anecdotal).
I've long had an idea for an app that helped you be a better boyfriend/husband by helping you plan dates and find good ideas for dates in your city like museums, great restaurants, concerts, etc.
only if they are the only dating app around. if not, then having a reputation for actually matching people well will bring more people to the app and generate more revenue than you would ever get from a small amount of desperate customers.
Of course, matching people well is hard - so any model that isnt good at that will be better off trying to game their customers and brute force their marketing. (for example, if their entire model is based on superficial values like how well they can take a photo of themselves - it may not be good at actually matching people)
I thought OKCupid did a great job. The second person I had a conversation with ended up becoming my wife.
I really liked how OKCupid had a seemingly never-ending set of personality questions. You could answer none of them, or you could answer 100 of them, and the more you answered, the more confidence it had in its matching. You would even flag the importance of each question, so you can tell it if something is an absolute deal-breaker (like your desire to have kids or stay child-free), or if something is a mild preference, like hair color.
> (for example, if their entire model is based on superficial values like how well they can take a photo of themselves - it may not be good at actually matching people)
IMO, Tinder ruined online dating. AFAIK, it makes zero attempt at actually matching people based on any metrics other than location and age.
Actually, I take that back. Tinder didn't ruin online dating, shitty men that send unsolicited dick pics or go ape-shit when they get rejected did.
To a complete outsider it feels as if Hinge is just becoming the new Tinder. Anecdotal of course (mostly from women friends), but partly supported by the growth of Hinge lately.
People looking for relationships don't want to be matched with people only looking for hookups, and people looking for hookups don't want to part of a club that accepts them. Apps have the incentive to make money so they don't really do anything.
OkCupid used to have great engineering blogs often with an embedded and nuanced social commentary regarding the haves vs have-nots when it comes to the dating world. I believe at one point they divided users, or rather let them self-classify as A-team and B-team. Some would never even pass each other in the hallway based on this score and designation.
Their articles were really interesting too; its sad Match took all of them down. One of the ones I distinctly remember was about the right profile pictures. Its been years, but I clearly remember for men it was something along the lines of "full body, outdoor picture, while shirtless looking away from the camera"
Bumble will tell you which of your photos caused the most right swipes. In my case it was EXACTLY that: photo of me from behind shirtless while rock climbing, muscles on display.
Counter-point: always pay for online dating (as a guy). (Everything that follows is anecdotal.) I used Tinder off and on for years. When I was active I’d swipe for 10-30 mns a day and I think I estimated I could get through 100 right-swipes (“Yes, I want to match”) per day. Even with that I would only end up with 1 or 2 matches a week. Which predictably when you include the chances of them being a bot, of them not responding, or not being serious about going out on dates meant I was basically going on at most 1 date a month with Tinder.
At this point, I had refused to pay for a subscription because it felt cringe/sad as a reasonably attractive guy who doesn’t have terrible luck dating in real life. At some point I got over my dumb ego and paid for the highest tier subscription—cause, hey, why not? I kid you not the number of matches I got went up 10x. I would swipe on someone and match within 30 mns vs 1 week 1 month later. I had multiple dates a week, more dates than I’d ever had in my life. And eventually met my current girlfriend.
My point: the game is clearly rigged. Nothing about me changed. My behavior using the app, my physical appearance, my bio were all the same. As soon as I gave them my money Tinder flipped a switch and my profile which was likely barely being placed in front of women was now pushed front and center.
Readit News
EDIT: the purchase was Feb 2011 [1] and the post was removed sometime between Jan 2011 [2] and Mar 2011 [3]. The rest of the blog was still up at the time [4].
[1] https://www.npr.org/2011/02/03/133456140/The-Last-Word-In-Bu...
[2] https://web.archive.org/web/20110113034228/http://blog.okcup... up
[3] https://web.archive.org/web/20110301161329/http://blog.okcup... down
[4] https://web.archive.org/web/20110301161329/http://blog.okcup... different post up
That model is also quite good because you don’t need to pay for women to notice you. Those 10 people you like will notice you anyway, unlike other apps where you could like 1000 profiles and barely be seen by any of them.
I personally have found Hinge very effective compared to other apps without paying a cent. My like -> match -> date conversion rate was literally two orders of magnitude better than any other app.
Your experience may have location bias? I.e. where did you use OKC?
I used it in Europe (2010--2011, mostly Germany and Italy) and Asia (2011-2013, Hong Kong) and Europe again (2014--now mostly Berlin & Hamburg) and my experiences were/are very different.
People are from the full political spectrum. Very right people are the outlier though, admittedly.
In Berlin there is a leftist bias but this is pretty newish (wasn't like this at all, when I started using OKC again in Europe in 2014).
Edit: spelling
LOL
Some people are going to take this the wrong way, but I've never read a more true statement.
I'm a pretty liberal person (folks think I'm conservative because I think communism stinks), but my experience with OkCupid many years ago was that most of its users were self-proclaimed cultural Marxists or feminists with a bone to pick. My digital head was decapitated several times by women there just for introducing myself to them. I'd even been lectured a handful of times about how I was "misogynist" for the age range I specified on my profile included women 5 years younger than I was, which wasn't even low enough to include women of college age.
The day I saw an advertisement for OkCupid that actually used the initialism "DTF" was when I knew for sure I would never be returning to them ever again. It would surprise me if they still had any meaningful userbase since it was pretty much dead in the LA area the last time I used it.
> but the same basic idea that gets men to pay to meet women.
In which case men should just go to Seeking Arrangement.
Internet Archive is great for cases of self censorship like this. I assume that as part of the acquisition the author was compelled to take it down.
Presumably this means advertisers.
I used OKC for years until the founders sold it (and my private data) to this shady company, then I was forced to delete.
Acquisitions are worse than breaches for end user privacy. GitHub sold your whole travel history (via client IP geolocation) to Microsoft.
That should align goals for both the company and the partner seeker.
EDIT: I'll be getting interest from the remainder your payment every month, as part of my profit scheme.
I think the biggest obstacle to solving the Dating App problem is the onboarding.
It was recently purchased by Match.
Edit: Here's an example.
“I’m bisexual.” REALITY: 80% of self-identified bisexuals are only interested in one gender.
People who describe themselves as bisexual overwhelmingly message either one sex or the other, not both as you might expect.
https://web.archive.org/web/20170307114207/https://theblog.o...
They presented the reality based on data, it's not subjective, it's revealed preferences. Match.com removed that section and updated the article with "This post has was originally published in 2010 and has since been updated to reflect OkCupid’s current values."
But a bi dude, in 2010 you simply wouldn't get match with women if you write bi and plenty of gay dude would turn you down as well, so you just wouldn't bother and write gay or straight eventually.
Edit: removed today
Doing a study on how "dateable" black women are based on a specific dating app in 2010 is like making claims on everyones eating habits based on a survey on a Burger king drive through. It will probably not be a very good survey.
They also took down the whole blog, people only remember the weird survey because it was an incel talking point seconds after it came out, specially in black pill groups arguing that giving up was the only alternative because OkCupid had "proved" that love was impossible for some and hypergamy or some other nonsense.
This isn't the slam dunk it appears to be. A dietary equivalent would be "X% of self-professed omnivores avoid vegetarian dishes". They are open to the idea, but still have preferences. Just because one is open to the superset, doesn't mean they assign each subset equal weight.
>People who describe themselves as bisexual overwhelmingly message either one sex or the other, not both as you might expect.
Yes, I remember this. It was sad to see such basic logic errors from OKC. It seems a little like saying that heterosexuality is a myth because all "heterosexual" people prefer some bodies over others. Bisexual means you are attracted to both masculine and feminine people. It does not imply a 50 / 50 split, or that you want to date everyone equally. The Match.com Orwellian activity aside - that critique was always very odd.
I don't think you can draw the conclusions from this people seem to be. Think about it. If you are genuinely attracted to both genders, then you can choose. If you're pursuing a goal (like a relationship) you're going to have some ideal you're going after, so you're probably going to pick a gender to look for for any particular period of time. I think it would be actually very uncommon to actively seek both at the same time, especially since there are cultural/societal considerations tied up with this. If you genuinely like both deciding to pursue a particular gender doesn't invalidate the fact that you could just as genuinely pursue the other. Society dictates that pursing one or the other are of varying difficulty, but this has nothing to do with the legitimacy of how you feel about the other. Bi-sexual people I've known follow this pattern -- they'll pursue one gender for 6 months to the year, and then re-bound with the other, then maybe stick with that one for a while, rinse and repeat. Since most people only use dating services for a short while, this would probably look as described above in aggregate.
It's how I use the tools not who I am, though.
Women do the same with a lesser known example being elderly women swapping because of the shrinking dating pool.
So, self identifying as bi shouldn’t be taken as having zero gender preferences nor should we assume peoples preferences are static through time. People may be in a committed relationship and seek partners of the a different gender etc.
It makes sense, considering the self-professed "bisexuals" I've known, which are well known as well in liberal-leaning circles:
1. Young women who pretend to be Bi to get more attention from Men
2. People who pretend to be Bi to avoid having to completely come out of the closet
There's actually a saying in the gay community for the latter, "Bi now, gay later!"
I feel like the gay community needs to treat bi guys better but at the same time bi guys need to take a look at themselves and consider if they're romantically bi, or just sexually bi because they just want to fulfil their sexual needs (which is much easier with guys obviously).
First, even if the actual attraction is same for both genders, it would be reasonable to expect bisexuals to seek opposite gender partners way more. Pretty much anyone who wants bio children need opposite sex partner. Pretty much anyone who don't want to deal with stigma around gayness too kuch will prefer opposite gender partner.
Second, bisexuality does not mean the attraction is same. It it fairly normal for bisexual to be attacted toany people from one gender and few from the other. It is also fairly normal foe them to have periods where they go for one gender only (either as conscious decision or not).
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I am experimenting with Tinder subscription at the moment, and it feels incredibly exploitative. When you make a profile, matches are frequent and you can tell that you show up for people. However it gradually falls down with time, and the only predictable and obvious way to get back up is to pay for Boosts and/or Priority Likes.
Right now my 6-month old profile gets ZERO likes outside of the time it's Boosted ($3 a pop or something). I get plenty once I'm boosted, so the profile attractiveness doesn't seem to be a factor.
It feels like the app's algorithms are rigged to gradually push you towards paid subscription options. There must be a huge invisible market of Tinder whales given how exploitative it is, gambling addiction, loneliness, and desperation for dates are correlated traits and I would absolutely bet on Tinder exploiting this heavily.
I know they're far from the only game in town, but this really feels like the behaviour of a monopoly entity that knows it can do basically whatever.
It's like a slot machine that actively adjusts the odds as you play, in order to keep you hooked as long as possible.
I'm pretty solidly mediocre when it comes to "algorithm design" tasks like this one, so I thought of it you can bet for sure that someone at Tinder did too.
There are too many guys on tinder and most of them are not serious, mindlessly swiping as a way of wasting time. If you filter out the free users and only match guys who pay for boost with girls, it's a much better ratio for those guys and a better experience for the women since guys who buy boost are more invested and more likely to follow through.
My experience with boosts is that they were counter-productive. While the boosts yield likes, but a lot of them would be profiles I'd already left-swiped on, should have been excluded by my filters, or just low-effort profiles. The same profiles would keep showing up in my feed too after I had swiped.
As for your second point, I think women do exactly the same thing. There's just more guys on the site so women are just getting a higher ratio low-effort likes. I'd say a good 50% of the profiles don't have anything written in them except a series of emojis or statements like "I don't know what to write here." or other really low effort content. Even the gold profiles sending messages would initiate a conversation with the dreaded "Hi." These interactions were always a complete waste of time, I just stopped responding to them after a while.
The match rate thing is also kind of a lark because you don't care about matches. You care about matches with people you want to match with... in fact that kinda understates the ultimate goal -- you care about matches with someone who would be good for you (and you for them)... everything else is just vanity.
I haven't online dated in a long time, but if I ever do again, I'll go with a service that has a transparent pricing model with no free plan.
it's really kind of depressing, honestly. Guys on dating sites are viewed as transactions. Tinder isn't alone with this - they're on multiple sites doing the same thing.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30485955
I ended up emailing support and making the case that the site wasn't working as advertised or even as support said it was supposed to be working. I ended up getting a full refund.
I experimented a lot with it because I used to work at a different online dating company (where I was also doing scummy things).
I'd be extremely surprised if it happened to be otherwise.
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That's why when you first start on any dating service, you're (typically) inundated with activity, so that you can always chase that high, and when you can't get it, you try to pay for it.
Online dating is a tough problem to solve, tougher still when profit incentives misalign with user success incentives! I'm not even sure what an equitable but also successful dating service would look like, because there's this fundamental mismatch in values.
The user (perhaps) wants to find a lifelong partner, and never use dating apps again.
The site developer wants users to never find a lifelong partner, and to spend months/years returning to the app to find new candidates.
In my experience, the developer usually wins - some users on dating sites have been there a decade or more, and active much of that time.
So at best, the developer is incentivized to have the user find someone to date in the short term and have the relationship fail in a manner that doesn't reflect poorly on the dating site. And it's not really feasible for the dating site distinguish between "will successfully date for a few months" and "will successfully date for a lifetime".
You could apply the same logic to any long term purchase. Dealerships only sell lemons because they want you to come back and buy more cars. Recruiters only match you with companies that you'll definitely want to leave because they want to match you again. Realtors only show you houses you'll hate because then you'll want to move again.
If an app isn't getting you decent dates every so often, you'll move to an app that does. And it's pretty clear within a couple of months if an app is working for you or not.
And then once you're in a relationship, the app has zero control over whether it succeeds or not!
So no, dating apps aren't working against your romantic interests, simply because a) there's too much competition and b) they're not even smart enough to identify your true love and then hide him/her from you.
They are trying to make a buck off of you though. Which they should, since they're a business.
But so no, the developer doesn't "usually" win. I have lots of friends who got married from an online date. The people you know who are still on the apps after a decade -- well it's not like they've settled down with anyone they met in real life either. It's probably not the apps' fault.
It's striking how the business model is indistinguishable from how cocaine dealers were described to us as kids in the 80s.
All the options people have are using toxic apps which entire business model is to undermine the self-esteem of young men and scamming them out of their money. And then people wonder where the mental health problems and mass shootings come from.
I really don't understand how this stuff is still not regulated anywhere, it's a dangerous scam.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Development_Network
California kind of accidentally did so a few years. They thought they were simply running a public sex offender registry, but it occurred to some sex offenders it was also a state run directory of people that would be less likely to be put off by their own record and might even have at least one important shared interest to bond over.
The state was not pleased with this.
Because its outside the scope & role of the government?
> I really don't understand how this stuff is still not regulated anywhere
This is a common theme I see in alot of discussions about everything. Do not confuse regulation with enforcement. Any regulation that is not enforced is useless, or it is used selectively (a.k.a "corruption"). Adding more rules wont solve anything.
And plus, we have the rules. Match group, who basically own the entire western world online dating market, should have not been allowed to buy all their competitors in the first place. This is a failure of the regulating bodies to do anything and now the users end up paying the price.
Is it? Governments care very much about what their demographics will be in the future. Governments get involved in trying to modify birth rate. Hooking people up seems like an interesting idea, especially if the government thinks they're going to deal with massively bad demographic shift in the midterm future.
That doesn't align with the fact that there are government funded programmes for things like mental well being, sexual health and education, and even music appreciation.
The government is concerned with whatever the heck we say it is. It's _our_ government.
P.S. No, I don't live in America ;)
This is such a weird take when you think about it. It's like saying "people can just run traffic lights; therefore, adding more traffic lights cannot prevent accidents." Okay, well, preventing people from running traffic lights is just a separate issue that should also be solved if it's a problem. The answer isn't to stop putting up traffic lights! And it doesn't follow that some people not following the rules means rules are worthless. Besides, different governments (and different agencies within governments) have vastly different levels of "teeth". I know it's easy to get jaded seeing all the regulatory capture in the U.S., but that's not the entire world. Even in the U.S. some regulations are rigorously enforced, e.g. FAA regulations.
Blaming online dating sites for mental health problems and mass shooting is a new one. I don't discount the feeling of despair that can occur on dating sites for men. However, the experience of a being woman on a dating app is absolutely harrowing, even if you have incredibly low standards and/or are incredibly desirable.
To put it differently, I'm reading your argument as equivalent to saying that the existence of the USPS (which will deliver to remote rural areas, despite the fact that doing so isn't profitable) is more dystopian than the existence of UPS and FedEx (which will not).
In Plato's Republic, he proposed his vision for a utopian city-state. Essentially, citizens would be ranked into castes: bronze/iron for laborers and artisans, silver for soldiers, gold for leaders. When people came of age in this utopia, they would be paired off through what they would be told is a random lottery.
In reality, however, the city's leaders would decide on the couplings ahead of time, pairing like with like. Plato called this the "noble lie", and it neatly demonstrates what any government-run dating system would probably develop into: a systemic eugenics program.
In a future where dating apps (and technology in general) becomes the only way to meet potential mates, only those who successfully "engage" with the apps/tech in a way that the company approves of will be allowed to reproduce.
Those that either refuse to engage on principles, or don't "engage" with it the "right" way (let's say by not falling for dark patterns, etc) and end up banned are effectively prevented from reproducing.
Both options can end up dystopian, but I'll take a government-run scheme any day. Not only are governments at least theoretically accountable to their citizens, but they are also as slow as molasses and terrible at tech, so they'd fare much worse at eugenics than a private company.
I just want the incentive of making profit removed and provide a decent service that does what it promises. If that service can only be provided at a loss (which seems to be the case) then let the state do it. Nobody would force anyone to use it.
Sounds like a great idea. I nominate NSA as the host organization. You wouldn't even need to bother creating a profile, they will just use all the surveillance data to find you the best matches.
https://crossdysfunctional.tumblr.com/post/109024982557/fund...
The problem is the population has already been divided and Match exists using predatory practices. You could maybe dethrone it using regulations or an organic campaign.
0 [ https://www.pof.com ]
https://www.msf.gov.sg/policies/Marriages/Pages/Finding-a-Pa...
I think the fundamental problem is that more men always sign up on these apps than women. That would be true of a government app also. It seems like this ruins the experience for both men and women alike. I am speculating here because we don't really know much about how these apps work since no one releases their user data. But women I have talked to complain about married men, copy-pasted pickup lines, and men treating women like prostitutes. With my own experience men complain about fake accounts, having to do all the effort and getting nothing for it, and for both, meeting people, going on dates, and then after you've become attracted to each other you find out how deeply damaged and incompatible the other person is because they hid all their baggage.
A lot of this just seems like it's exacerbated by the use of an app. I think the apps drive decent people away. This is all speculation.
I somewhat think the whole proposition of online dating was doomed to fail. I don't know if a non profit/government office could fix this leaving aside how politics could affect it.
They are so incompetent that famine/frost/nuclear apocalypse are serious possibilities..
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Seriously though, this seems like an area where anti-trust and transparency regulation (service X has a Y rating for producing matches that meet standard Q) could play a useful role.
You could say they can tap into that currently, and that's probably true, but deliberately broadcasting it to them would probably be out of question for many people.
Also, consider what government run IT projects look like. Now mix that with a dating app, perfect recipe for a disaster.
Your first mistake was thinking that culture actually cares about this.
From what I heard it's mostly speed-dating stuff.
EDIT: Aand I got ninja'ed. Twice.
https://www.upi.com/Top_News/World-News/2017/06/27/China-lau...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/comrade-me...
Because dating apps have distorted courting even if we elect to ignore them.
They alter expectations and make the proverbial sea seem much more filled with fish than it truly is.
And even if this distortion has no impact on us, we can't control whether or not it has had impact on our prospective date(s).
Why would your date willfully overlook a glaring fault of yours, for instance, if they have 999 likes in their pocket from seemingly-flawless suitors?
Hell, even if your date doesn't use dating apps either, then they likely know what's available from friends, relatives, etc.
Users that want relationships want to find someone ASAP and delete the app.
Those two goals are completely incompatible.
Popular does not mean effective. Online dating is the most toxic way of dating invented, so why would the governments contribute?
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... success stories, marriages per day due to the app (as per Match.com's advertising material in the article), word of mouth advertisement for the app to your friends...? Again, from the article, even in 2011 match.com was proudly reporting that its active user base changed out every six months. So the "dating apps don't want you to find someone perfect" narrative strikes me as a little simplistic.
On the other hand, plenty of people use dating apps like Bumble and Tinder to find hook-ups, not the love of their life. These people will keep coming back to the app as a result of being frequently successful.
Tobacco companies are spending serious money to stop kids from smoking, because they really care about their health.
Read the article again; their explanation is that after 6 months, people either butt out, or pair-off and butt out.
Could you put a lien against someone's marriage, such that in order to marry someone you meet on HappyDating.com you had to pay the outstanding debt?
Anything less extreme?
In theory, this could create a perverse incentive for the app to set you up for matches that last just long enough for a few dates, but not long enough that you get off the app. In practice, I don't think matching algorithms are precise enough that the app could act on that incentive.
The bigger problem is that most users would completely ignore the monetized dates.
Hookup apps. Apps for non-monogamous people. You're looking for repeat customers.
The only other way is paying when the couple gets into something long-term, but the fee would probably be higher than people want.
Unfortunately, they made a pretty shitty 'dating' system and left it to rot.
I'm not sure this is a fair modeling of how an app must work -- think of other industries that have extremely long sales cycles like, say, a realtor. Realtors are incentivized to match you to a home in such a manner that you might recommend them to others (and leave positive reviews), perhaps even use them again on the buy/sell side later on if their career is long.
Mind you Realtor is closest to professional match maker, but there's no reason an app couldnt take a middle ground between tinder and a highly involved match making service.
Of course, matching people well is hard - so any model that isnt good at that will be better off trying to game their customers and brute force their marketing. (for example, if their entire model is based on superficial values like how well they can take a photo of themselves - it may not be good at actually matching people)
I thought OKCupid did a great job. The second person I had a conversation with ended up becoming my wife.
I really liked how OKCupid had a seemingly never-ending set of personality questions. You could answer none of them, or you could answer 100 of them, and the more you answered, the more confidence it had in its matching. You would even flag the importance of each question, so you can tell it if something is an absolute deal-breaker (like your desire to have kids or stay child-free), or if something is a mild preference, like hair color.
> (for example, if their entire model is based on superficial values like how well they can take a photo of themselves - it may not be good at actually matching people)
IMO, Tinder ruined online dating. AFAIK, it makes zero attempt at actually matching people based on any metrics other than location and age.
Actually, I take that back. Tinder didn't ruin online dating, shitty men that send unsolicited dick pics or go ape-shit when they get rejected did.
To a complete outsider it feels as if Hinge is just becoming the new Tinder. Anecdotal of course (mostly from women friends), but partly supported by the growth of Hinge lately.
People looking for relationships don't want to be matched with people only looking for hookups, and people looking for hookups don't want to part of a club that accepts them. Apps have the incentive to make money so they don't really do anything.
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That's true only for users who have this goal.
I contacted the staff, but never found out what this meant in the end.
https://www.amazon.com/Dataclysm-Christian-Rudder-audiobook/...
At this point, I had refused to pay for a subscription because it felt cringe/sad as a reasonably attractive guy who doesn’t have terrible luck dating in real life. At some point I got over my dumb ego and paid for the highest tier subscription—cause, hey, why not? I kid you not the number of matches I got went up 10x. I would swipe on someone and match within 30 mns vs 1 week 1 month later. I had multiple dates a week, more dates than I’d ever had in my life. And eventually met my current girlfriend.
My point: the game is clearly rigged. Nothing about me changed. My behavior using the app, my physical appearance, my bio were all the same. As soon as I gave them my money Tinder flipped a switch and my profile which was likely barely being placed in front of women was now pushed front and center.
Never Pay for Online Dating (2010) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26945413 - April 2021 (116 comments) Related:
Never Pay for Online Dating (2010) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25055501 - Nov 2020 (265 comments)
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Cached OkCupid Article: Why You Should Never Pay For Online Dating - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2170998 - Feb 2011 (80 comments)
Why You Should Never Pay For Online Dating - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1842557 - Oct 2010 (32 comments)
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