3 ms·
I read a very insightful comment on a previous similar thread about this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17682648 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17
by furi 8y ago
I read a very insightful comment on a previous similar thread about this:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17682648 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17682648
The short of it is that any platform you build to make friends (at least if you take the naive approach and just build a dating app for friends) turns into a dating platform. It certainly matches how I interested I am in new people I meet online despite having a partner already. My hypothesis is that you typically have friendships with people of the same sex in a group (I certainly hear about people hanging out with "the lads" or "the girls" more than I hear about them hanging out one-on-one with same sex friends) and that isn't something any dating-app-for-friends has provided thus far.
- jfk13 8y ago> The short of it is that any platform you build to make friends (at least if you take the naive approach and just build a dating app for friends) turns into a dating platform. I think this is largely true. And the followup is that any dating platform [that shows even a hint of success/growth] tends to turn into a platform for scammers and spammers.
- yorwba 8y agoAnd if that platform doesn't take steps to rate-limit its users, it will likely become a dating platform only for gay men. At least that's what I observed when I tried WeChat's "people nearby" feature in Berlin. The first thing I noticed was that almost everyone was male. The second, that many of those men had a signature that implied they were looking for gay sex. My guess is that such a feature will be abused by some men who send messages to a large number of women, causing them to feel harassed by the onslaught and leave. Then the straight men notice that there are fewer and fewer women, so they stop using it as well. Then the people left over are mostly gay men.