5 ms·

Dating apps are working on this, albeit higher up the funnel (which is arguably more important), and so a lot of resources are being invested in this area.

colechristensen 5y ago
Dating apps have gotten worse as there has been consolidation and attempts are being (successfully) made to extract more money out of customers.
- idontwantthis 5y ago
  My last experience with Tinder over 3 years ago was that it's a carefully controlled dopamine drip. You get a lot of matches at first on the free tier then it slowly decreases until it convinces you to pay then you get a lot of matches again to justify the price and then it decreases again to keep you hooked.
  - dibujaron 5y ago
    Tinder is crap, but others are better. I've had quite a few high-quality dates from Hinge recently.
    - pm90 5y ago
      Can confirm. Hinge is great.
    - idontwantthis 5y ago
      That's interesting because they're both owned by Match Group.
      - maest 5y ago
        It makes sense for Match Group to specialise their offerings based on the types of people they think might want to date - e.g. quick flings vs more serious relationships.
    - MeinBlutIstBlau 5y ago
      Hinge has been my best one too. I hate the $20 price tag per month though. Basically extortion. Tinder is a joke now tbh. Bumble is like tinder but saves the guys time. OkCupid is bloated and nobodies on it.
      - indigo945 5y ago
        Okcupid used to be the only good option, but it got increasingly worse since match.com bought it. They recently did another overhaul and now it's so bad that it feels like they're deliberately trying to kill their userbase. Which might actually be true - it's probably better for match.com from a business perspective to kill off some of their less popular offerings and force the users to migrate to Tinder. The network effects and hence the potential monopoly are nothing to scoff at.
    - jimbob45 5y ago
      The strategy seems obvious: make an account on the top 5 dating apps, use mostly the same profile if you want to save time, and have access to virtually the entire population of dating app users rather than one subset. Trying to get my single friends to do this is absolutely impossible. The elephant in the room is masturbation removing the desperation to find a partner. They say necessity is the mother of invention and porn keeps their sights aiming higher and higher as they spend less and less time working on themselves.
caseyross 5y ago
Dating apps are in a weird place because they invariably use a subscription model, which means they're incentivized to provide a long-term drip of temporary and mediocre matches rather than finding each user a single good long-term partner. Incentives could be better aligned through a "reverse subscription" model, in which a user pays nothing until the app finds them someone they'd like to date, whereupon they must then "subscribe" as long as that relationship continues.
- MeinBlutIstBlau 5y ago
  I have to disagree on that model. That may work for dudes who aren't confident and can barely make a decent profile. But for guys who can, it would be extremely annoying that I have to pay to attempt to date someone I'm not really that interested in. Vice versa for the women as well. Now you're giving them another reason to not consider you because they have to pay money too. The solution exists. It's natural selection. Unfortunately a lot of guys (especially in the midwest where I'm in) just do not understand how to game the system. I've been on enumerable dates. I am by all means a loser who peaked in high school then bounced back 9 years later and never even had a real relationship. So how was I successful? Pictures. With friends, in public, signaling social intelligence, and showing hobbies that interest women. Most guys take just cringy pictures that scream "Not only am I a loser, but I'm so depressed I'm embarrassed to do things in front of other people." That is why no girls want to date them. Even the very low status ones. Also, being confident and just being capable of holding a conversation is basically required.
  - indigo945 5y ago
    You don't understand the problem the parent commenter is talking about. This isn't about who is or isn't successful, it's about incentive structures, and the degree to which dating service providers have an interest in having more or less people find love. Currently, people finding partners and being happy means that dating service providers lose money, which means that they will deliberately show you partners that are less interesting to you, to make sure you keep feeling unhappy and come back to the app for another try. Your experience actually corroborates this, as most people do not want to do a lot of serial dating, and your advice is all about serial dating.
jeffreyrogers 5y ago
I think the current generation of tinder style apps are probably worse for this than previous generations of dating sites.
- scotty79 5y ago
  It's such a shame, how much devastation was done to okcupid over the last few years.

colechristensen 5y ago

Dating apps have gotten worse as there has been consolidation and attempts are being (successfully) made to extract more money out of customers.

idontwantthis 5y ago
My last experience with Tinder over 3 years ago was that it's a carefully controlled dopamine drip. You get a lot of matches at first on the free tier then it slowly decreases until it convinces you to pay then you get a lot of matches again to justify the price and then it decreases again to keep you hooked.
- dibujaron 5y ago
  Tinder is crap, but others are better. I've had quite a few high-quality dates from Hinge recently.
  - pm90 5y ago
    Can confirm. Hinge is great.
  - idontwantthis 5y ago
    That's interesting because they're both owned by Match Group.
    - maest 5y ago
      It makes sense for Match Group to specialise their offerings based on the types of people they think might want to date - e.g. quick flings vs more serious relationships.
  - MeinBlutIstBlau 5y ago
    Hinge has been my best one too. I hate the $20 price tag per month though. Basically extortion. Tinder is a joke now tbh. Bumble is like tinder but saves the guys time. OkCupid is bloated and nobodies on it.
    - indigo945 5y ago
      Okcupid used to be the only good option, but it got increasingly worse since match.com bought it. They recently did another overhaul and now it's so bad that it feels like they're deliberately trying to kill their userbase. Which might actually be true - it's probably better for match.com from a business perspective to kill off some of their less popular offerings and force the users to migrate to Tinder. The network effects and hence the potential monopoly are nothing to scoff at.
  - jimbob45 5y ago
    The strategy seems obvious: make an account on the top 5 dating apps, use mostly the same profile if you want to save time, and have access to virtually the entire population of dating app users rather than one subset. Trying to get my single friends to do this is absolutely impossible. The elephant in the room is masturbation removing the desperation to find a partner. They say necessity is the mother of invention and porn keeps their sights aiming higher and higher as they spend less and less time working on themselves.

caseyross 5y ago

Dating apps are in a weird place because they invariably use a subscription model, which means they're incentivized to provide a long-term drip of temporary and mediocre matches rather than finding each user a single good long-term partner. Incentives could be better aligned through a "reverse subscription" model, in which a user pays nothing until the app finds them someone they'd like to date, whereupon they must then "subscribe" as long as that relationship continues.

MeinBlutIstBlau 5y ago
I have to disagree on that model. That may work for dudes who aren't confident and can barely make a decent profile. But for guys who can, it would be extremely annoying that I have to pay to attempt to date someone I'm not really that interested in. Vice versa for the women as well. Now you're giving them another reason to not consider you because they have to pay money too. The solution exists. It's natural selection. Unfortunately a lot of guys (especially in the midwest where I'm in) just do not understand how to game the system. I've been on enumerable dates. I am by all means a loser who peaked in high school then bounced back 9 years later and never even had a real relationship. So how was I successful? Pictures. With friends, in public, signaling social intelligence, and showing hobbies that interest women. Most guys take just cringy pictures that scream "Not only am I a loser, but I'm so depressed I'm embarrassed to do things in front of other people." That is why no girls want to date them. Even the very low status ones. Also, being confident and just being capable of holding a conversation is basically required.
- indigo945 5y ago
  You don't understand the problem the parent commenter is talking about. This isn't about who is or isn't successful, it's about incentive structures, and the degree to which dating service providers have an interest in having more or less people find love. Currently, people finding partners and being happy means that dating service providers lose money, which means that they will deliberately show you partners that are less interesting to you, to make sure you keep feeling unhappy and come back to the app for another try. Your experience actually corroborates this, as most people do not want to do a lot of serial dating, and your advice is all about serial dating.

jeffreyrogers 5y ago

I think the current generation of tinder style apps are probably worse for this than previous generations of dating sites.

scotty79 5y ago
It's such a shame, how much devastation was done to okcupid over the last few years.