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Tinder's swipe mechanic, while incredibly superficial, helps with the biggest problem with OkC and other traditional dating sites: The experience is horrible fo

by m12k 11y ago

Tinder's swipe mechanic, while incredibly superficial, helps with the biggest problem with OkC and other traditional dating sites: The experience is horrible for women. Their inbox receives a torrent of marriage offers and incredibly explicit sex offers from men they have no interest in. Tinder's reciprocality system, where you both have to show interest before a chat is even possible, solves this elegantly. The downside IMO is that it's incredibly hard to find someone that you have more than a physical interest in. OkC's matchmaking questions and match% system is actually a really good solution to this. I think there's a business opportunity in combining the two - enforce the reciprocality like Tinder does, but have matchmaking questions, so it can try to pair you with more likely matches first. (OkC actually has a feature like this, but when they don't enforce its use, it's entirely meaningless). Of course this would begin compromising Tinder's other big advantage, the incredibly easy setup (it doesn't really _feel_ like making a dating profile, so it attracts a much wider audience) - but I think it'd be worth experimenting with nonetheless.

lqdc13 11y ago
OkC has (or had when I used the site) a quickmatch mechanic where it's essentially the same. If both sides match, both receive a message that they matched each other. I guess all they could do is just filter all messages and only keep the quickmatch mechanic? Initially, they had something like that as well! Basically a forced requirement that someone can set. Such as... you can only message me if this or that. One would be only if I first match you. They had more success when they got rid of that mechanic.
- m12k 11y ago
  The problem is that they try to fully integrate Quickmatch with the existing system. That means that swiping right on someone in Quickmatch is the same as liking them on their profile page. And as a paying user, I can see who likes me without having to like them back. So the anonymity of showing interest that is not reciprocated is completely lost. If Tinder did this they'd lose most of their users. And frankly, adding this on top of an existing platform as an opt-in is just hopeless - it just exacerbates the problem of too much configuration to get started. Not to mention focus (or even space) in the UI - Tinder works because swiping and chatting are the only two things you can do. This would only ever work as a new app.
personlurking 11y ago
I haven't used Tinder but I've watched as my friends use it. The other problem with these dating apps and sites is people like or are merely confused about what they want. For someone to positively answer the question "would you sleep with someone on the first date?" but then put that they want a long-term relationship - these things seem counter to each other, imho. Both sexes need to be able to say it straight out that they just want sex, then there needs to be a filter to remove these people for the LTR dating pool users. Instead it's "if I can have sex, then the LTR can wait til someone else comes along". That being said, there is a question on OKC that asks how long one would wait before having sex (ex, 3-5 dates, etc). They could make this question have much, much more weight.
- vfdfv 11y ago
  Why are wanting a LTR and wanting sex on the first date incompatible?
  - personlurking 11y ago
    It's likely I'm just old-fashioned, where getting to know someone precedes having sex with them.
mcv 11y ago
Traditional dating sites can definitely be horrible for women. I think it'd help if you could autoblock anyone you haven't contacted. Or separate between a spam box and one for messages you're actually interested in.
krfsm 11y ago
As most people aren't unique snowflakes when it comes to mate preferences, the likelihood of being the only woman fancying a certain man is low. With Tinder women trade the obnoxious problem of heaps of unwanted attention for the less glaring but quite insidious problem of letting the eligible bachelors know exactly how well off they are. With OkCupid, these men play the same game as everybody else, just with more success. At Tinder they have an exact count of how in demand they are, giving less incentive to commit.

by m12k 11y ago

lqdc13 11y ago

OkC has (or had when I used the site) a quickmatch mechanic where it's essentially the same. If both sides match, both receive a message that they matched each other. I guess all they could do is just filter all messages and only keep the quickmatch mechanic? Initially, they had something like that as well! Basically a forced requirement that someone can set. Such as... you can only message me if this or that. One would be only if I first match you. They had more success when they got rid of that mechanic.

m12k 11y ago
The problem is that they try to fully integrate Quickmatch with the existing system. That means that swiping right on someone in Quickmatch is the same as liking them on their profile page. And as a paying user, I can see who likes me without having to like them back. So the anonymity of showing interest that is not reciprocated is completely lost. If Tinder did this they'd lose most of their users. And frankly, adding this on top of an existing platform as an opt-in is just hopeless - it just exacerbates the problem of too much configuration to get started. Not to mention focus (or even space) in the UI - Tinder works because swiping and chatting are the only two things you can do. This would only ever work as a new app.

personlurking 11y ago

I haven't used Tinder but I've watched as my friends use it. The other problem with these dating apps and sites is people like or are merely confused about what they want. For someone to positively answer the question "would you sleep with someone on the first date?" but then put that they want a long-term relationship - these things seem counter to each other, imho. Both sexes need to be able to say it straight out that they just want sex, then there needs to be a filter to remove these people for the LTR dating pool users. Instead it's "if I can have sex, then the LTR can wait til someone else comes along". That being said, there is a question on OKC that asks how long one would wait before having sex (ex, 3-5 dates, etc). They could make this question have much, much more weight.

vfdfv 11y ago
Why are wanting a LTR and wanting sex on the first date incompatible?
- personlurking 11y ago
  It's likely I'm just old-fashioned, where getting to know someone precedes having sex with them.

mcv 11y ago

Traditional dating sites can definitely be horrible for women. I think it'd help if you could autoblock anyone you haven't contacted. Or separate between a spam box and one for messages you're actually interested in.

krfsm 11y ago

As most people aren't unique snowflakes when it comes to mate preferences, the likelihood of being the only woman fancying a certain man is low. With Tinder women trade the obnoxious problem of heaps of unwanted attention for the less glaring but quite insidious problem of letting the eligible bachelors know exactly how well off they are. With OkCupid, these men play the same game as everybody else, just with more success. At Tinder they have an exact count of how in demand they are, giving less incentive to commit.