50 ms·

Never pay for online dating (2010)

355 points by skanderbm 4y ago

geraldwhen 4y ago
I paid for OkCupid to get advanced filters to find my wife, shortly after this article was written. I paid for a single month of premium back in the day. So this article is odd.
- bryan0 4y ago
  Yup I paid for online dating around when this article was written and it was one of the best decisions of my life!
  - soylentcola 4y ago
    I also used OkC and some others around that time period, and they struck me as both less expensive and a little less cynically "pay to win" (to use the gaming terminology). I recall it was more like paying $5-8 for a month's worth of better filters and being able to see who checked out your profile - something fairly useful since it may show you someone who's already at least somewhat interested and hadn't already come across your radar. When I did online dating again a year or so ago, it seemed both more expensive and more blatantly creepy (pay to "like" the most in-demand people! yech...) The one nice thing was realizing quickly that what they were charging for in 2021 wasn't something I wanted to pay for, so I could safely skip it. Even without paying a dime, I found Hinge to be a useful way to meet people and go on dates that were largely fun and a mostly decent experience. Currently involved with someone I met there a year ago and haven't used the apps since then.
  - georgeecollins 4y ago
    I am happy for you but I think if you met your wife in a car crash (I knew a person this happened to for real!) I don't think you would say a great way to meet people is car crashes. Also, maybe OKC was better than some. I think dating apps would be creepy, but to be fair I am a person who married before they were that popular. I have a college age son who is in a committed relationship with someone he met through friends so I believe IRL meeting is still possible. The important thing is to build strong relationships so do what works for you.
    - geraldwhen 4y ago
      The world has moved online. Many people move for work and recreating strong social spheres is near impossible. At any rate it’s easier to find someone nice with things in common online.
- 300bps 4y ago
  You have a great response to the headline! The article though gives details of what they see as the problem: forcing people to pay to allow communicating means that well over 90% of profiles on their systems are just filler and unable to communicate with you.
  - geraldwhen 4y ago
    And had those filler profiles not existed maybe I wouldn’t have joined. But at least when I paid, specifically for OkCupid, the premium filters let me find real people.
- aliqot 4y ago
  n=1
  - xiphias2 4y ago
    n > 0 (never)
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- bombcar 4y ago
  I like to read this that you were already married when you found your wife, and were trying to see what you needed to do to get OkCupid to recommend her.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
par 4y ago
Amazing how, even 12 years later, this is even more true than it was back then.
- fifticon 4y ago
  This is partly explained by match.com buying and removing competitors, to keep active dating sites in this pattern.
aliqot 4y ago
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.
- troupe 4y ago
  I'm not sure I understand what you are saying about A/B or how hallways fit into online dating.
  - k__ 4y ago
    My girlfriend once got a message on OKCupid, that she was categorized into the group of especially popular people. I contacted the staff, but never found out what this meant in the end.
    - Seattle3503 4y ago
      Was this a poly/open relationship? I've heard women in those arrangements are perceived as easy. Doesn't really make sense when you consider the fact they already have someone and aren't in any rush.
  - harvey9 4y ago
    I take it to mean people so different in socio economic status that they would never be in the same building in real life.
    - aliqot 4y ago
      it was data that indicated to them that there were two groups, an attractive group and the remainder.
- tsumnia 4y ago
  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"
teeray 4y ago
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).
- travisporter 4y ago
  Isn’t hinge addressing this
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - chrisseaton 4y ago
    How are they doing it? Is it a poly app?
    - sillysaurusx 4y ago
      Nah, that’s Open.
  - changoplatanero 4y ago
    can you explain more?
    - lake_vincent 4y ago
      Their motto is that their app is "meant to be deleted." They don't want to you stay on it, but they DO want you to tell all your single friends about it. Hinge's free tier is absolutely excellent and I have gotten multiple dates, as well as a girlfriend, without paying a cent. What's the catch, you may ask? As with most dating apps, let's just say that if you don't have a "highly competitive" profile, you will struggle if you don't pay for high-volume swiping.
      - 4y ago
unsupp0rted 4y ago
... unless you live in a place in which your dating prospects are few or non-existent, in which case you pay for the "travel mode" feature.
- lopis 4y ago
  Or just use a GPS mocking app on your phone.
jefftk 4y ago
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]. [1] https://www.npr.org/2011/02/03/133456140/The-Last-Word-In-Business https://www.npr.org/2011/02/03/133456140/The-Last-Word-In-Bu... [2] https://web.archive.org/web/20110113034228/http://blog.okcupid.com/index.php/why-you-should-never-pay-for-online-dating/ https://web.archive.org/web/20110113034228/http://blog.okcup... up [3] https://web.archive.org/web/20110301161329/http://blog.okcupid.com/index.php/why-you-should-never-pay-for-online-dating/ https://web.archive.org/web/20110301161329/http://blog.okcup... down [4] https://web.archive.org/web/20110301161329/http://blog.okcupid.com/ https://web.archive.org/web/20110301161329/http://blog.okcup... different post up
- houstonn 4y ago
  More Orwellian still, they edited articles that contained data inconvenient to the politically correct narrative and elite ideology. 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.okcupid.com/the-big-lies-people-tell-in-online-dating-a9e3990d6ae2#.i8r88zg8x 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."
  - CodeSgt 4y ago
    Where was this?
  - wavefunction 4y ago
    Any examples? Their blog post on the dating economy being skewed away from black women seemed to match with economic and social realities.
idealmedtech 4y ago
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.
- jimbokun 4y ago
  > 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.
  - robertlagrant 4y ago
    Only two industries call their customers "users" (-:
    - gnicholas 4y ago
      I'm so tired of this line. The reason they're called "users" in tech is because unlike in many industries, they don't pay anything for access to the platform/app. If they all paid, they'd be called "customers". Implying that tech companies and drug dealers are birds of a feather based on this is silly. If you want to say tech companies make addictive products, say that. But don't pretend that calling people "users" is evidence in furtherance of this argument.
      - robertlagrant 4y ago
MonkeyMalarky 4y ago
If you liked this article I recommend the book Dataclysm by the same author.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
pranit10 4y ago
oof maybe they should have taken their own advice
russianGuy83829 4y ago
(2010)
- joelfried 4y ago
  Over 60% of the way past the filter on /r/AskHistorians . . . Agreed we should be a touch more timely!
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
sillysaurusx 4y ago
There’s a good TikTok addressing why it’s impossible to escape paying for online dating. Basically, it comes down to the reward cycle. When you first sign up, you get a bunch of matches and success. Then it tapers off, giving you the option to pay for the initial success, which it happily gives you. Repeat. That’s the core reason these apps print money.
sbf501 4y ago
This may have been true 12 years ago, but years later OkCupid added "last active", which was a search criteria to weed out old profiles. At least, was there in 2015 when I met my current partner. The gist of the article seems to be combining two different things: why you should pay for online dating, and false advertising. I don't think the OP joins those arguments very well. Plus, again, this was 12 years ago. I think today OKC might be guilty of the same thing they are pointing fingers at back then.
- bradlys 4y ago
  OKC was bought by Match - they were no longer the same company after being acquired as they were before. All these articles were written before they were acquired.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - sbf501 4y ago
    Ah, good point. Didn't know that. The second paragraph still holds tho: mixing two arguments.
salzig 4y ago
This reminded me about a fun talk done by Amy Webb - how she played with dating. Just posted it for everyone to - enjoy https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dt3LAaq8XKY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dt3LAaq8XKY - discuss https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33164287 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33164287
robcohen 4y ago
If you take the view that users should be paid for viewing ads via microtransactions (like through a browser like Brave), then isn't it reasonable to expect the same rewards for users using dating apps? Wouldn't it make sense to pay the user instead of the service for their time and attention? It seems to me that microtransactions and dating apps are a perfect match, and I wonder why no one has done this yet? Is it because it's too closely associated with ideas of prostitution? It's only a stone's throw from the concept of OnlyFans, but instead you pay for attention instead of exhibitionism. Why should Tinder/OkCupid get paid for "boosts" when you're really just buying the attention from your target demographic? Seems like crypto would fit nicely into this sector.
- codethief 4y ago
  Interesting idea but already now people swipe purely out of boredom or, even worse, get addicted to swiping – what would that look like if they also got paid for swiping?
  - robcohen 4y ago
    Yes, this is an issue that needs to be addressed. On some level, people do get paid for seeing ads in the sense that the real content they want is being subsidized, so on some level, even if someone is "bullshit" swiping, they are still giving their time and attention so there is some benefit for the person be swiped in the aggregate. That said, I imagine the actual thing that would need to be paid for is someone's time, so posting a kind of smart contract crypto bond that someone gets for showing up in person to a coffee date or something like that. Yes it would still be abused, but there would be a equalibrium reached between price and time sacrificed. Maybe you make it so that you can only go on a certain number of coffee dates per week or something like that.
user_named 4y ago
You absolutely should pay for dating apps. They barely work otherwise.
- OgAstorga 4y ago
  You're probably better off without them.
- Double_a_92 4y ago
  Do they work any better after you pay though?
  - user_named 4y ago
    Yes. If you don't pay they barely show your profile so you won't get matched much.
photochemsyn 4y ago
Here's an interesting probable side effect of the spread of dating apps: > "According to Rhode Island's Department of Health, the numbers for STDs rose drastically between 2013 and 2014. Syphilis cases increased by 79 percent, newly identified HIV infections increased by 33 percent, gonorrhea cases increased by 30 percent — and it's mostly young adults (along with African-Americans and Hispanics) who are becoming infected at these higher rates." https://www.techtimes.com/articles/55888/20150527/tinder-dating-apps-increasing-spread-stds.htm https://www.techtimes.com/articles/55888/20150527/tinder-dat... Now if we look at the majority shareholder ownership of say, Gilead Sciences (a major provider of STD pharmaceuticals) and Match Group (owner of Tinder) on Yahoo Finance, the overlap is fairly large. (This of course is true for most corporations in the USA, so it's perhaps not as much of a plot as it might seem). But still... it makes one wonder about investment capitalism. It's always finding a way to create value and improve people's lives. A nice square deal. Make money promoting risky sexual behavior when they come in the front door, make more money treating the resulting STDs when they leave via the back door. Rather similar to pushing the soft drinks and junk food on the kids, and then reaping profits from the high hospital bills a few decades later. Gifts that keep on giving, right?
EmilyHughes 4y ago
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.
- 535188B17C93743 4y ago
  Seems like a waste of tax-payer money to me. Why can't people just... meet others offline like they did 10+ years ago.
  - ratww 4y ago
    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.
  - lotsofpulp 4y ago
    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.
  - acuozzo 4y ago
    > Why can't people just... meet others offline like they did 10+ years ago. 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.
  - 4y ago
aabbcc1241 4y ago
One way to make it align is to run dating platform voluntarily instead of for profit. This way you really want your effort to be helpful to the community.
k__ 4y ago
I think, OKCupid did rather well. They question approach was a bit broad, but if you just answered around 100 very niche questions, you'd get good matches. But to be honest, I did online dating for almost 20 years and got like 10 dates from it, 2 of which turned into a relationship. Some of my friends did much better, though. You know, the tall, buff guys with beards, etc. Had at least one date a month. So, even with the "show personally via questions" kind of stuff, looks are still king in online dating. I did much better with offline dating. Talking to a interesting person is more exciting than just reading about it, I guess. So, if you wanna go the online route, hit the gym and eat well. If you're prepared to meet people offline and date at parties, meetups, etc. Then you can get away with a less helathy lifestyle, haha.
magic_hamster 4y ago
This was brutal. What a teardown.
romankolpak 4y ago
Related personal anecdote: 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.
- Cloudef 4y ago
  - Carrok 4y ago
    > meet people in real life like you are meant to be Keep this gatekeeping nonsense to yourself. I met my wife of many years on a dating app. We probably never would have met by chance.
    - Cloudef 4y ago
      Good for you. Doesnt change the fact they are shady and made to mainly exploit people's weakness for money.
      - SketchySeaBeast 4y ago
        > exploit people's weakness for money Weakness?
        Cloudef 4y ago
        Loneliness
bschne 4y ago
Aside: I'm in my late twenties and have used various of the currently popular dating apps on/off over the last few years. Whenever I see one of the old OKC blogposts around the internet, it's kind of striking how different the pictures look from what you'd see on the apps today. It's possible/not unlikely I'm overinterpreting based on the different style/fashion alone here, but it just all seems a lot less posed & staged, and like there's much more variance than with the pictures you see today, and even the extremely attractive examples seem much more natural.
- jugg1es 4y ago
  If you are saying that the profile photos on dating sites seem a lot less staged, than you are right. Good quality cameras on cell phones were not nearly as ubiquitous in 2010 as they are now. I think it was better back then because you could get a good sense of the person's personality from their photos than you can now.
  - soylentcola 4y ago
    Also, it wasn't a given that you were only/primarily using it via a mobile app. I remember frequently browsing OkC and chatting with people on my computer during lunch. It was a lot more focused on saying things before they turned into another swipe/mobile-centric platform.
    - bschne 4y ago
      I just recently saw a documentary excerpt where two women were browsing and discussing profiles on a dating site in the early aughts — there sure seemed to be more info and more engagement with a given profile. Whether that actually led to better outcomes, I don't know, but the difference is pretty big.
- AyyWS 4y ago
  Article from 2010. Instagram was created on October 6, 2010. I bet it's related.
- globular-toast 4y ago
elzbardico 4y ago
Apps like Tinder and Happn kind of escaped this by being places more suited to hookups and One Night Stands than the place someone goes to find a long-term partner. By focusing on quick relationships too, both Tinder and Happn can be more liberal about message limits for free tier users, at the same time making sure that man derive value from a paid subscription.
bearjaws 4y ago
They also had an amazing blog post about how dating profiles came down to ~85% how attractive you are (both men and women). Most people look at 3-4 images and pass, this probably was the inspiration for Tinder. One example of this was personality score, which they ended up removing. "In short, according to our users, “looks” and “personality” were the same thing". In this example it was just a profile picture with no text... Whole bunch of interesting knowledge from this: https://archive.ph/QNCbf#selection-513.0-513.79 https://archive.ph/QNCbf#selection-513.0-513.79
- Bakary 4y ago
  A profile picture with no text implies confidence and knowing how attractive you are (other than being a bot of course)
  - ThalesX 4y ago
    This is funny, I recently created a new Tinder profile and for lack of inspiration I didn't fill anything in except some pictures. I'm getting a lot more swipes than when I nerded up my profile. Unfortunately, I'm looking for interesting conversation which 80% of pic-based 'swipes' don't really provide.
  - ryeights 4y ago
    >After we got rid of the two scales, and replaced it with just one, we ran a direct experiment to confirm our hunch — that people just look at the picture. We took a small sample of users and half the time we showed them, we hid their profile text. That generated two independent sets of scores for each profile, one score for “the picture and the text together” and one for “the picture alone.” Here’s how they compare. Again, each dot is a user. Essentially, the text is less than 10% of what people think of you. Further down the page.
    - Bakary 4y ago
      That's either pretty hilarious or pretty depressing
- 4y ago
tinyhouse 4y ago
Nice article but not sure I follow the argument here. The problem of messaging into the void can be solved by changing the settings to only show you paid members. If they don't give the option then don't use them. Paying members are more serious so it makes sense to not spend your time on non-paying members. BTW, at least on Tinder I know that everyone can message back regardless if they are paid members. Maybe in 2010 things were different and the article made more sense then.
boringg 4y ago
Does anyone know if this applies to Child Care matching sites as well?
haskellandchill 4y ago
Actually with Seeking paying works out to filter low income men. You can pay $100-300 a month and the quality and responsiveness of women there is superior to any other platform right now.
Dawnyhf5 4y ago
bradlys 4y ago
Relatedly: Has there been any new dating apps that haven't been acquired by Match and are trending upwards? I feel like just as Hinge was getting popular and people were talking of its success - it fell off hard due to acquisition by Match in the following couple years. It seems like you have to always go to a newer app to find success before Match ruins it.
seydor 4y ago
Why don't we have dating AI? well, it would be unprofitable, but maybe ..
chatterhead 4y ago
OkCupid was awesome. Can someone please make another one? We need a site dedicated to Test Taking! OkCupid wasn't just about dating; it was about the tests you could create and take. It was awesome. The dating was also based on tests and archetypes OkCupid created and they were pretty good. We need something pure like that from the early 2000s.
- codethief 4y ago
  Could you elaborate on what OkCupid was like in the early 2000s? I've only known it for a few years.
  - chatterhead 4y ago
    You started off by taking these matching profile tests that grouped you into an archetype based on your responses. The archetype test was also optional it wasn't required to use the site. (Not sure if it was based on orientation but it was certainly gender based.) There were a series of archetypes that were your ideal matches and you could search by peoples archetypes if they shared it. (I believe you could keep it private, too.. I can't totally remember.) Otherwise, the entire site was geared towards creating tests and taking tests. Their test creation system was awesome. I had several tests on tv shows and entertainment. You could get really detailed with the response types and question structures. OkCupid themselves, as outlined in this thread, shared their data freely and collected it without a bunch of invasive coding. People were literally creating data collection tests and we took them for fun. That's how you collect data! The entire site had a much more mellow approach to dating then the alternatives at the time, yet it was still geared towards matches not just sex.
    - codethief 4y ago
      Thanks for the insights!
  - coupdejarnac 4y ago
    In my experience, Okcupid's match percentage was a very good estimate for how good of a match you were with someone. So there was that. Plus, the whole OKCupid experience wasn't a game of deception to trick you into buying subscriptions or IAP.
nohankyou 4y ago
Don't pay, network! Livejournal was free for me (early 2000s, what do I know about it today), and via friends of friends feature I met my wife. Of course those relations came from people I met on IRC...
phpthrowaway99 4y ago
I once googled the screen name of a Plenty of Fish date I had setup. Exact match comes up on a 'weird' forum, with city and state matching in the info under the username. One fake account later (required to view attachments), I saw pictures of her dog doing her in... Uh... various ways. I stopped online dating for like 5 years after that.
- danjoredd 4y ago
  That's a nightmare. She should be sent to prison for that, tbh. Not nearly as extreme, but last time I tried Online dating I messaged someone and found out she was only looking for someone to get her pregnant and be a father. Straight up, first thing, not interested in a first date unless I was interested in getting her pregnant. I'm Christian so sex outside of marriage is a huge no-no for me anyway, so unmatching was not a hard decision even though she was attractive.
  - phpthrowaway99 4y ago
    Be VERY glad she was upfront about it. That is a decently common tactic for women over 25. My last relationship was practically begging to get her pregnant from the first 6 months. Eventually it didn't work out after 2 years. Next guy met her, and got her pregnant within 2-3 months. Married 3 months later. He's set to inherit an 800 acre ranch on the coast of California very soon. He has no idea who he just married. The girl was a nightmare. I'm 38 and have serially dated for 20+ years, and I've never met a girl so mean and cold and unpleasant. I'm not sure if he's seen that side yet, and he's about to be a dad next month.
ChicagoDave 4y ago
I honestly view online dating as a low-yield random effort. My last gf was on Match. I’ve been on dates from the other sites, though Hinge seems to trend too young. The cost isn’t prohibitive to me so I just go with it. The one thing that should be clear to everyone is that no matter what, the most important aspect of dating is to be as geographically close to your perceived dating pool as possible. So figure out the two or three basic requirements you have (politics, culture) and try to live where those things are common. No amount of effort online or not is going to improve your chances of meeting viable partners if you live too far away. I think you really need to be within 15 minutes or less. As a man, I firmly believe this is a top filter for women when looking at profiles.
Ajedi32 4y ago
So the main complaint here seems to be that eHarmony and Match.com only let subscribers talk to other subscribers? Is that still true? If so, that does indeed sound like a pretty terrible way of doing things. If I'm a paying customer I should be able to initiate a conversation with anyone who's willing. I don't want my prospective date to have to pay money just to talk to me! In terms of the larger point about the overall incentive structure of dating sites, it seems to me there are a few possible solutions: 1. Sites should only allow "lifetime" subscriptions, eliminating the perverse incentive to keep people from having successful relationships. 2. Some sort of system for paying per successful match. Something like "I'll pay you $1k if I meet my wife through your service." That seems way harder to enforce, but would align the incentive structures almost perfectly if it could be achieved.
svnt 4y ago
I think the unstated issue is that there are predominantly hook-up apps that people also use to find life partners because good alternatives don’t exist. With the assimilation of the ecosystem into Match some sort of alignment was inevitable, and a hook-up service is a ‘good’ SaaS service by classic metrics, while a matchmaking service does not fit the model well (at least yet).
jjulius 4y ago
>As a founder of OkCupid I'm of course motivated to point out our competitors' flaws. So take what I have to say today with a grain of salt. I really appreciate this kind of self-awareness, and find it incredibly lacking from a lot of things that founders, CEOs, et. al. post, whether it's on a blog, an HN comment or on Twitter.
- evouga 4y ago
  I used to be play Magic the Gathering with Christian back in NYC. He was a smart, down-to-earth guy. I didn't realize he was an OkCupid cofounder until several months after meeting him. He got canceled a few years ago for saying off-color things at an academic conference... hope he's doing OK these days.
captainthrow 4y ago
cblum 4y ago
Paying for online dating was the reason I met my wife. I had been using several dating apps and had paid subscriptions to all of them. I was getting burned out by the experience and decided to let my subscriptions expire and take a break from dating, so I wasn’t actively checking the apps anymore. A paid feature of one of the apps I was paying for (Coffee Meets Bagel, for the curious) was that it notified me whenever someone liked my profile. One day I got one of those notifications, checked her profile and arranged a first date. And now here we are, happily married :)
codethief 4y ago
The fact that incentives of online dating platforms and their users are not aligned is anything but new. But it makes me wonder: Maybe a not-for-profit organization would be a better model to run an online dating platform?
dang 4y ago
Related: Never Pay for Online Dating (2010) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26945413 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 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25055501 - Nov 2020 (265 comments) Why You Should Never Pay for Online Dating [cached] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15260785 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15260785 - Sept 2017 (1 comment) Cached OkCupid Article: Why You Should Never Pay For Online Dating - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2170998 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 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1842557 - Oct 2010 (32 comments) Why You Should Never Pay For Online Dating - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1277626 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1277626 - April 2010 (9 comments)
khalilravanna 4y ago
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.
dennis_jeeves1 4y ago
Remaining single is actually a realistic and wise option for many men out there.
UI_at_80x24 4y ago
To add my own personal experience (and to echo the headline), I met my wife while using PlentyOfFish. We have been married for 12+ years. I would never pay for a dating app/site. If you can't find somebody on the free sites, join a forum where you might find somebody with similar interests/hobbies/skills. Be a kind, polite person and once you have developed a friendship, then see if it can expand into more. Most of these other apps are more geared to hook-ups, (hump-and-dump); and not towards long-term relationships anyway.
coupdejarnac 4y ago
If someone reproduced what OKCupid was before the Match acquisition, that would disrupt the dating app market. Dating apps as a whole have been a race to the bottom thanks to Match.
- btbuildem 4y ago
  I think onboarding users is the biggest problems. How does one approach that?
  - coupdejarnac 4y ago
    If I could have come up with a cheap solution, I would have done it already. It would probably be worth it to pay Kim Kardashian her $250k featured post fee to get a bunch of women to join. Something along those lines.
    - Nextgrid 4y ago
      I'd be worried that the change in people's attention spans means that a OKC clone (which as I understand relied on lots of personality questions) wouldn't work today as most people just wouldn't actually complete it. A promotional post by an "influencer" would probably make those people self-select too.
      - coupdejarnac 4y ago
        I think there is a lot of fatigue from the type of low effort, low value interactions that Tinder et al facilitate. I have no marketing data available, but I would guess there is demand for an app that at least makes an effort to create higher value connections. The social media influencer idea solves the problem of onboarding a lot of people fast, particularly women. I disagree that the audience self selects to have low attention span- I doubt that matters if there is sufficient demand for a non-Tinder dating app experience.
metalliqaz 4y ago
so this begs the question... in 2022, are there any apps/sites actually worth using?
- kilroy123 4y ago
  meetup.com internations.org Facebook Events Go out and talk to people with similar interests in real life.
maerF0x0 4y ago
My fair warning / PSA is[1] never pay for "roses" (super likes, other premium ways of indicating you like them "more"). They don't work. And the worst of it as an antipattern they essentially work against you (because the app lets the recipient know they received a rose). Here's why -- On average, matches are essentially trying to maximize the ELO score they match with, someone with a maximized score across many variables like social aptitude, wealth, future prospects, looks, (and many other attributes). Now, obviously people have their own weighing function for each aspect but some of them are simply universally valued -- for example healthy is near-universally preferred to someone who is critically ill. So What do you indicate to a match that you most likely _needed_ to use a rose to attempt to match with them ? You reveal that the app generated Elo score is actually too low to be presented them in normal swipes. (Especially in hinge which has a weekly rotation of people you cannot swipe/match with except if you rose, perhaps in other apps but I'm less well versed in their mechanics). [1]: at least as a man, idk if a woman would ever send a rose to a man, and if they'd work even if they did. Women will get a match >50% of the time w/o a rose, so why pay?
recon517 4y ago
Personal anecdote: Bought a Bumble Premium with a one time payment of ~120 EUR. In three months got only one match which led to a date. But what a date! We are in love now and I am quitting all dating apps I have used before. My match was ONLY possible due to a Premium subscription. These 120 EUR were the best spent money of my live.
crmrc114 4y ago
Met my wife on OKCupid, we have kids now and have been happily married. I thank God for OKC and it's impact on my life. eHarmony told me I was unmatchable and match.c was worthless- I agree with this article reply rate was nil. OKC reply rate was awesome and people were much more chill to just IM for a bit and have real exchanges. I met my wife in under two months on the OKC platform.
amir734jj 4y ago
Who wants to build a better dating website? Free and open source without any bots run by donations. Dating website is a human right. People are lonely and this dating websites are taking advantage of the situation.
thomastjeffery 4y ago
The biggest problem with current dating apps is that they limit swipes behind a paywall. Sure, you can pay to get the opportunity to swipe on more profiles, but you can't pay to give everyone else the opportunity to swipe on yours. That means paying for more swipes doesn't really get you more matches. Dating is a numbers game, and Tinder/etc. are rigged not to play.
edem 4y ago
A funny anecdote: back in the day there was an app called Flamite that used the now defunct tinder api and you could use it to automate matchmaking. what i did is to yes everyone and then i waited a week. i had 200 matches. I then checked all profiles and removed 120 that i didn't like. i wrote to the remaining 80. i had good chats with 20 of them, met 3 of them and now I'm happily married to one.
tongpu 4y ago
app idea: if anyone watches Indian Matchmaking, the matchmaker gets "paid' during the wedding (or through other gifts and influence). so there is a huge incentive to marry (if that was the only end goal to dating). also you don't really get many choices (maybe only 3 over a few months) so there is a lot of hopefulness, openess, compromises (and expectations, that makes for the drama in the show. ) if traditional matchmaking has worked, why not just apply new tools to what humanity has been doing?

355 points by skanderbm 4y ago

I paid for OkCupid to get advanced filters to find my wife, shortly after this article was written. I paid for a single month of premium back in the day. So this article is odd.

bryan0 4y ago
Yup I paid for online dating around when this article was written and it was one of the best decisions of my life!
- soylentcola 4y ago
  I also used OkC and some others around that time period, and they struck me as both less expensive and a little less cynically "pay to win" (to use the gaming terminology). I recall it was more like paying $5-8 for a month's worth of better filters and being able to see who checked out your profile - something fairly useful since it may show you someone who's already at least somewhat interested and hadn't already come across your radar. When I did online dating again a year or so ago, it seemed both more expensive and more blatantly creepy (pay to "like" the most in-demand people! yech...) The one nice thing was realizing quickly that what they were charging for in 2021 wasn't something I wanted to pay for, so I could safely skip it. Even without paying a dime, I found Hinge to be a useful way to meet people and go on dates that were largely fun and a mostly decent experience. Currently involved with someone I met there a year ago and haven't used the apps since then.
- georgeecollins 4y ago
  I am happy for you but I think if you met your wife in a car crash (I knew a person this happened to for real!) I don't think you would say a great way to meet people is car crashes. Also, maybe OKC was better than some. I think dating apps would be creepy, but to be fair I am a person who married before they were that popular. I have a college age son who is in a committed relationship with someone he met through friends so I believe IRL meeting is still possible. The important thing is to build strong relationships so do what works for you.
  - geraldwhen 4y ago
    The world has moved online. Many people move for work and recreating strong social spheres is near impossible. At any rate it’s easier to find someone nice with things in common online.
300bps 4y ago
You have a great response to the headline! The article though gives details of what they see as the problem: forcing people to pay to allow communicating means that well over 90% of profiles on their systems are just filler and unable to communicate with you.
- geraldwhen 4y ago
  And had those filler profiles not existed maybe I wouldn’t have joined. But at least when I paid, specifically for OkCupid, the premium filters let me find real people.
aliqot 4y ago
n=1
- xiphias2 4y ago
  n > 0 (never)
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
bombcar 4y ago
I like to read this that you were already married when you found your wife, and were trying to see what you needed to do to get OkCupid to recommend her.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

par 4y ago

Amazing how, even 12 years later, this is even more true than it was back then.

fifticon 4y ago
This is partly explained by match.com buying and removing competitors, to keep active dating sites in this pattern.

aliqot 4y ago

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.

troupe 4y ago
I'm not sure I understand what you are saying about A/B or how hallways fit into online dating.
- k__ 4y ago
  My girlfriend once got a message on OKCupid, that she was categorized into the group of especially popular people. I contacted the staff, but never found out what this meant in the end.
  - Seattle3503 4y ago
    Was this a poly/open relationship? I've heard women in those arrangements are perceived as easy. Doesn't really make sense when you consider the fact they already have someone and aren't in any rush.
- harvey9 4y ago
  I take it to mean people so different in socio economic status that they would never be in the same building in real life.
  - aliqot 4y ago
    it was data that indicated to them that there were two groups, an attractive group and the remainder.
tsumnia 4y ago
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"

teeray 4y ago

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).

travisporter 4y ago
Isn’t hinge addressing this
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- chrisseaton 4y ago
  How are they doing it? Is it a poly app?
  - sillysaurusx 4y ago
    Nah, that’s Open.
- changoplatanero 4y ago
  can you explain more?
  - lake_vincent 4y ago
    Their motto is that their app is "meant to be deleted." They don't want to you stay on it, but they DO want you to tell all your single friends about it. Hinge's free tier is absolutely excellent and I have gotten multiple dates, as well as a girlfriend, without paying a cent. What's the catch, you may ask? As with most dating apps, let's just say that if you don't have a "highly competitive" profile, you will struggle if you don't pay for high-volume swiping.
    - 4y ago

unsupp0rted 4y ago

... unless you live in a place in which your dating prospects are few or non-existent, in which case you pay for the "travel mode" feature.

lopis 4y ago
Or just use a GPS mocking app on your phone.

jefftk 4y ago

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]. [1] https://www.npr.org/2011/02/03/133456140/The-Last-Word-In-Business https://www.npr.org/2011/02/03/133456140/The-Last-Word-In-Bu... [2] https://web.archive.org/web/20110113034228/http://blog.okcupid.com/index.php/why-you-should-never-pay-for-online-dating/ https://web.archive.org/web/20110113034228/http://blog.okcup... up [3] https://web.archive.org/web/20110301161329/http://blog.okcupid.com/index.php/why-you-should-never-pay-for-online-dating/ https://web.archive.org/web/20110301161329/http://blog.okcup... down [4] https://web.archive.org/web/20110301161329/http://blog.okcupid.com/ https://web.archive.org/web/20110301161329/http://blog.okcup... different post up

houstonn 4y ago
More Orwellian still, they edited articles that contained data inconvenient to the politically correct narrative and elite ideology. 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.okcupid.com/the-big-lies-people-tell-in-online-dating-a9e3990d6ae2#.i8r88zg8x 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."
- CodeSgt 4y ago
  Where was this?
- wavefunction 4y ago
  Any examples? Their blog post on the dating economy being skewed away from black women seemed to match with economic and social realities.

idealmedtech 4y ago

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.

jimbokun 4y ago
> 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.
- robertlagrant 4y ago
  Only two industries call their customers "users" (-:
  - gnicholas 4y ago
    I'm so tired of this line. The reason they're called "users" in tech is because unlike in many industries, they don't pay anything for access to the platform/app. If they all paid, they'd be called "customers". Implying that tech companies and drug dealers are birds of a feather based on this is silly. If you want to say tech companies make addictive products, say that. But don't pretend that calling people "users" is evidence in furtherance of this argument.
    - robertlagrant 4y ago

MonkeyMalarky 4y ago

If you liked this article I recommend the book Dataclysm by the same author.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

pranit10 4y ago

oof maybe they should have taken their own advice

russianGuy83829 4y ago

(2010)

joelfried 4y ago
Over 60% of the way past the filter on /r/AskHistorians . . . Agreed we should be a touch more timely!

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

sillysaurusx 4y ago

There’s a good TikTok addressing why it’s impossible to escape paying for online dating. Basically, it comes down to the reward cycle. When you first sign up, you get a bunch of matches and success. Then it tapers off, giving you the option to pay for the initial success, which it happily gives you. Repeat. That’s the core reason these apps print money.

sbf501 4y ago

This may have been true 12 years ago, but years later OkCupid added "last active", which was a search criteria to weed out old profiles. At least, was there in 2015 when I met my current partner. The gist of the article seems to be combining two different things: why you should pay for online dating, and false advertising. I don't think the OP joins those arguments very well. Plus, again, this was 12 years ago. I think today OKC might be guilty of the same thing they are pointing fingers at back then.

bradlys 4y ago
OKC was bought by Match - they were no longer the same company after being acquired as they were before. All these articles were written before they were acquired.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- sbf501 4y ago
  Ah, good point. Didn't know that. The second paragraph still holds tho: mixing two arguments.

salzig 4y ago

This reminded me about a fun talk done by Amy Webb - how she played with dating. Just posted it for everyone to - enjoy https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dt3LAaq8XKY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dt3LAaq8XKY - discuss https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33164287 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33164287

robcohen 4y ago

If you take the view that users should be paid for viewing ads via microtransactions (like through a browser like Brave), then isn't it reasonable to expect the same rewards for users using dating apps? Wouldn't it make sense to pay the user instead of the service for their time and attention? It seems to me that microtransactions and dating apps are a perfect match, and I wonder why no one has done this yet? Is it because it's too closely associated with ideas of prostitution? It's only a stone's throw from the concept of OnlyFans, but instead you pay for attention instead of exhibitionism. Why should Tinder/OkCupid get paid for "boosts" when you're really just buying the attention from your target demographic? Seems like crypto would fit nicely into this sector.

codethief 4y ago
Interesting idea but already now people swipe purely out of boredom or, even worse, get addicted to swiping – what would that look like if they also got paid for swiping?
- robcohen 4y ago
  Yes, this is an issue that needs to be addressed. On some level, people do get paid for seeing ads in the sense that the real content they want is being subsidized, so on some level, even if someone is "bullshit" swiping, they are still giving their time and attention so there is some benefit for the person be swiped in the aggregate. That said, I imagine the actual thing that would need to be paid for is someone's time, so posting a kind of smart contract crypto bond that someone gets for showing up in person to a coffee date or something like that. Yes it would still be abused, but there would be a equalibrium reached between price and time sacrificed. Maybe you make it so that you can only go on a certain number of coffee dates per week or something like that.

user_named 4y ago

You absolutely should pay for dating apps. They barely work otherwise.

OgAstorga 4y ago
You're probably better off without them.
Double_a_92 4y ago
Do they work any better after you pay though?
- user_named 4y ago
  Yes. If you don't pay they barely show your profile so you won't get matched much.

photochemsyn 4y ago

Here's an interesting probable side effect of the spread of dating apps: > "According to Rhode Island's Department of Health, the numbers for STDs rose drastically between 2013 and 2014. Syphilis cases increased by 79 percent, newly identified HIV infections increased by 33 percent, gonorrhea cases increased by 30 percent — and it's mostly young adults (along with African-Americans and Hispanics) who are becoming infected at these higher rates." https://www.techtimes.com/articles/55888/20150527/tinder-dating-apps-increasing-spread-stds.htm https://www.techtimes.com/articles/55888/20150527/tinder-dat... Now if we look at the majority shareholder ownership of say, Gilead Sciences (a major provider of STD pharmaceuticals) and Match Group (owner of Tinder) on Yahoo Finance, the overlap is fairly large. (This of course is true for most corporations in the USA, so it's perhaps not as much of a plot as it might seem). But still... it makes one wonder about investment capitalism. It's always finding a way to create value and improve people's lives. A nice square deal. Make money promoting risky sexual behavior when they come in the front door, make more money treating the resulting STDs when they leave via the back door. Rather similar to pushing the soft drinks and junk food on the kids, and then reaping profits from the high hospital bills a few decades later. Gifts that keep on giving, right?

EmilyHughes 4y ago

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.

535188B17C93743 4y ago
Seems like a waste of tax-payer money to me. Why can't people just... meet others offline like they did 10+ years ago.
- ratww 4y ago
  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.
- lotsofpulp 4y ago
  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.
- acuozzo 4y ago
  > Why can't people just... meet others offline like they did 10+ years ago. 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.
- 4y ago

aabbcc1241 4y ago

One way to make it align is to run dating platform voluntarily instead of for profit. This way you really want your effort to be helpful to the community.

k__ 4y ago

I think, OKCupid did rather well. They question approach was a bit broad, but if you just answered around 100 very niche questions, you'd get good matches. But to be honest, I did online dating for almost 20 years and got like 10 dates from it, 2 of which turned into a relationship. Some of my friends did much better, though. You know, the tall, buff guys with beards, etc. Had at least one date a month. So, even with the "show personally via questions" kind of stuff, looks are still king in online dating. I did much better with offline dating. Talking to a interesting person is more exciting than just reading about it, I guess. So, if you wanna go the online route, hit the gym and eat well. If you're prepared to meet people offline and date at parties, meetups, etc. Then you can get away with a less helathy lifestyle, haha.

magic_hamster 4y ago

This was brutal. What a teardown.

romankolpak 4y ago

Related personal anecdote: 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.

Cloudef 4y ago
- Carrok 4y ago
  > meet people in real life like you are meant to be Keep this gatekeeping nonsense to yourself. I met my wife of many years on a dating app. We probably never would have met by chance.
  - Cloudef 4y ago
    Good for you. Doesnt change the fact they are shady and made to mainly exploit people's weakness for money.
    - SketchySeaBeast 4y ago
      > exploit people's weakness for money Weakness?
      - Cloudef 4y ago
        Loneliness

bschne 4y ago

Aside: I'm in my late twenties and have used various of the currently popular dating apps on/off over the last few years. Whenever I see one of the old OKC blogposts around the internet, it's kind of striking how different the pictures look from what you'd see on the apps today. It's possible/not unlikely I'm overinterpreting based on the different style/fashion alone here, but it just all seems a lot less posed & staged, and like there's much more variance than with the pictures you see today, and even the extremely attractive examples seem much more natural.

jugg1es 4y ago
If you are saying that the profile photos on dating sites seem a lot less staged, than you are right. Good quality cameras on cell phones were not nearly as ubiquitous in 2010 as they are now. I think it was better back then because you could get a good sense of the person's personality from their photos than you can now.
- soylentcola 4y ago
  Also, it wasn't a given that you were only/primarily using it via a mobile app. I remember frequently browsing OkC and chatting with people on my computer during lunch. It was a lot more focused on saying things before they turned into another swipe/mobile-centric platform.
  - bschne 4y ago
    I just recently saw a documentary excerpt where two women were browsing and discussing profiles on a dating site in the early aughts — there sure seemed to be more info and more engagement with a given profile. Whether that actually led to better outcomes, I don't know, but the difference is pretty big.
AyyWS 4y ago
Article from 2010. Instagram was created on October 6, 2010. I bet it's related.
globular-toast 4y ago

elzbardico 4y ago

Apps like Tinder and Happn kind of escaped this by being places more suited to hookups and One Night Stands than the place someone goes to find a long-term partner. By focusing on quick relationships too, both Tinder and Happn can be more liberal about message limits for free tier users, at the same time making sure that man derive value from a paid subscription.

bearjaws 4y ago

They also had an amazing blog post about how dating profiles came down to ~85% how attractive you are (both men and women). Most people look at 3-4 images and pass, this probably was the inspiration for Tinder. One example of this was personality score, which they ended up removing. "In short, according to our users, “looks” and “personality” were the same thing". In this example it was just a profile picture with no text... Whole bunch of interesting knowledge from this: https://archive.ph/QNCbf#selection-513.0-513.79 https://archive.ph/QNCbf#selection-513.0-513.79

Bakary 4y ago
A profile picture with no text implies confidence and knowing how attractive you are (other than being a bot of course)
- ThalesX 4y ago
  This is funny, I recently created a new Tinder profile and for lack of inspiration I didn't fill anything in except some pictures. I'm getting a lot more swipes than when I nerded up my profile. Unfortunately, I'm looking for interesting conversation which 80% of pic-based 'swipes' don't really provide.
- ryeights 4y ago
  >After we got rid of the two scales, and replaced it with just one, we ran a direct experiment to confirm our hunch — that people just look at the picture. We took a small sample of users and half the time we showed them, we hid their profile text. That generated two independent sets of scores for each profile, one score for “the picture and the text together” and one for “the picture alone.” Here’s how they compare. Again, each dot is a user. Essentially, the text is less than 10% of what people think of you. Further down the page.
  - Bakary 4y ago
    That's either pretty hilarious or pretty depressing
4y ago

tinyhouse 4y ago

Nice article but not sure I follow the argument here. The problem of messaging into the void can be solved by changing the settings to only show you paid members. If they don't give the option then don't use them. Paying members are more serious so it makes sense to not spend your time on non-paying members. BTW, at least on Tinder I know that everyone can message back regardless if they are paid members. Maybe in 2010 things were different and the article made more sense then.

boringg 4y ago

Does anyone know if this applies to Child Care matching sites as well?

haskellandchill 4y ago

Actually with Seeking paying works out to filter low income men. You can pay $100-300 a month and the quality and responsiveness of women there is superior to any other platform right now.

Dawnyhf5 4y ago

bradlys 4y ago

Relatedly: Has there been any new dating apps that haven't been acquired by Match and are trending upwards? I feel like just as Hinge was getting popular and people were talking of its success - it fell off hard due to acquisition by Match in the following couple years. It seems like you have to always go to a newer app to find success before Match ruins it.

seydor 4y ago

Why don't we have dating AI? well, it would be unprofitable, but maybe ..

chatterhead 4y ago

OkCupid was awesome. Can someone please make another one? We need a site dedicated to Test Taking! OkCupid wasn't just about dating; it was about the tests you could create and take. It was awesome. The dating was also based on tests and archetypes OkCupid created and they were pretty good. We need something pure like that from the early 2000s.

codethief 4y ago
Could you elaborate on what OkCupid was like in the early 2000s? I've only known it for a few years.
- chatterhead 4y ago
  You started off by taking these matching profile tests that grouped you into an archetype based on your responses. The archetype test was also optional it wasn't required to use the site. (Not sure if it was based on orientation but it was certainly gender based.) There were a series of archetypes that were your ideal matches and you could search by peoples archetypes if they shared it. (I believe you could keep it private, too.. I can't totally remember.) Otherwise, the entire site was geared towards creating tests and taking tests. Their test creation system was awesome. I had several tests on tv shows and entertainment. You could get really detailed with the response types and question structures. OkCupid themselves, as outlined in this thread, shared their data freely and collected it without a bunch of invasive coding. People were literally creating data collection tests and we took them for fun. That's how you collect data! The entire site had a much more mellow approach to dating then the alternatives at the time, yet it was still geared towards matches not just sex.
  - codethief 4y ago
    Thanks for the insights!
- coupdejarnac 4y ago
  In my experience, Okcupid's match percentage was a very good estimate for how good of a match you were with someone. So there was that. Plus, the whole OKCupid experience wasn't a game of deception to trick you into buying subscriptions or IAP.

nohankyou 4y ago

Don't pay, network! Livejournal was free for me (early 2000s, what do I know about it today), and via friends of friends feature I met my wife. Of course those relations came from people I met on IRC...

phpthrowaway99 4y ago

I once googled the screen name of a Plenty of Fish date I had setup. Exact match comes up on a 'weird' forum, with city and state matching in the info under the username. One fake account later (required to view attachments), I saw pictures of her dog doing her in... Uh... various ways. I stopped online dating for like 5 years after that.

danjoredd 4y ago
That's a nightmare. She should be sent to prison for that, tbh. Not nearly as extreme, but last time I tried Online dating I messaged someone and found out she was only looking for someone to get her pregnant and be a father. Straight up, first thing, not interested in a first date unless I was interested in getting her pregnant. I'm Christian so sex outside of marriage is a huge no-no for me anyway, so unmatching was not a hard decision even though she was attractive.
- phpthrowaway99 4y ago
  Be VERY glad she was upfront about it. That is a decently common tactic for women over 25. My last relationship was practically begging to get her pregnant from the first 6 months. Eventually it didn't work out after 2 years. Next guy met her, and got her pregnant within 2-3 months. Married 3 months later. He's set to inherit an 800 acre ranch on the coast of California very soon. He has no idea who he just married. The girl was a nightmare. I'm 38 and have serially dated for 20+ years, and I've never met a girl so mean and cold and unpleasant. I'm not sure if he's seen that side yet, and he's about to be a dad next month.

ChicagoDave 4y ago

I honestly view online dating as a low-yield random effort. My last gf was on Match. I’ve been on dates from the other sites, though Hinge seems to trend too young. The cost isn’t prohibitive to me so I just go with it. The one thing that should be clear to everyone is that no matter what, the most important aspect of dating is to be as geographically close to your perceived dating pool as possible. So figure out the two or three basic requirements you have (politics, culture) and try to live where those things are common. No amount of effort online or not is going to improve your chances of meeting viable partners if you live too far away. I think you really need to be within 15 minutes or less. As a man, I firmly believe this is a top filter for women when looking at profiles.

Ajedi32 4y ago

So the main complaint here seems to be that eHarmony and Match.com only let subscribers talk to other subscribers? Is that still true? If so, that does indeed sound like a pretty terrible way of doing things. If I'm a paying customer I should be able to initiate a conversation with anyone who's willing. I don't want my prospective date to have to pay money just to talk to me! In terms of the larger point about the overall incentive structure of dating sites, it seems to me there are a few possible solutions: 1. Sites should only allow "lifetime" subscriptions, eliminating the perverse incentive to keep people from having successful relationships. 2. Some sort of system for paying per successful match. Something like "I'll pay you $1k if I meet my wife through your service." That seems way harder to enforce, but would align the incentive structures almost perfectly if it could be achieved.

svnt 4y ago

I think the unstated issue is that there are predominantly hook-up apps that people also use to find life partners because good alternatives don’t exist. With the assimilation of the ecosystem into Match some sort of alignment was inevitable, and a hook-up service is a ‘good’ SaaS service by classic metrics, while a matchmaking service does not fit the model well (at least yet).

jjulius 4y ago

>As a founder of OkCupid I'm of course motivated to point out our competitors' flaws. So take what I have to say today with a grain of salt. I really appreciate this kind of self-awareness, and find it incredibly lacking from a lot of things that founders, CEOs, et. al. post, whether it's on a blog, an HN comment or on Twitter.

evouga 4y ago
I used to be play Magic the Gathering with Christian back in NYC. He was a smart, down-to-earth guy. I didn't realize he was an OkCupid cofounder until several months after meeting him. He got canceled a few years ago for saying off-color things at an academic conference... hope he's doing OK these days.

captainthrow 4y ago

cblum 4y ago

Paying for online dating was the reason I met my wife. I had been using several dating apps and had paid subscriptions to all of them. I was getting burned out by the experience and decided to let my subscriptions expire and take a break from dating, so I wasn’t actively checking the apps anymore. A paid feature of one of the apps I was paying for (Coffee Meets Bagel, for the curious) was that it notified me whenever someone liked my profile. One day I got one of those notifications, checked her profile and arranged a first date. And now here we are, happily married :)

codethief 4y ago

The fact that incentives of online dating platforms and their users are not aligned is anything but new. But it makes me wonder: Maybe a not-for-profit organization would be a better model to run an online dating platform?

dang 4y ago

Related: Never Pay for Online Dating (2010) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26945413 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 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25055501 - Nov 2020 (265 comments) Why You Should Never Pay for Online Dating [cached] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15260785 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15260785 - Sept 2017 (1 comment) Cached OkCupid Article: Why You Should Never Pay For Online Dating - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2170998 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 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1842557 - Oct 2010 (32 comments) Why You Should Never Pay For Online Dating - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1277626 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1277626 - April 2010 (9 comments)

khalilravanna 4y ago

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.

dennis_jeeves1 4y ago

Remaining single is actually a realistic and wise option for many men out there.

UI_at_80x24 4y ago

To add my own personal experience (and to echo the headline), I met my wife while using PlentyOfFish. We have been married for 12+ years. I would never pay for a dating app/site. If you can't find somebody on the free sites, join a forum where you might find somebody with similar interests/hobbies/skills. Be a kind, polite person and once you have developed a friendship, then see if it can expand into more. Most of these other apps are more geared to hook-ups, (hump-and-dump); and not towards long-term relationships anyway.

coupdejarnac 4y ago

If someone reproduced what OKCupid was before the Match acquisition, that would disrupt the dating app market. Dating apps as a whole have been a race to the bottom thanks to Match.

btbuildem 4y ago
I think onboarding users is the biggest problems. How does one approach that?
- coupdejarnac 4y ago
  If I could have come up with a cheap solution, I would have done it already. It would probably be worth it to pay Kim Kardashian her $250k featured post fee to get a bunch of women to join. Something along those lines.
  - Nextgrid 4y ago
    I'd be worried that the change in people's attention spans means that a OKC clone (which as I understand relied on lots of personality questions) wouldn't work today as most people just wouldn't actually complete it. A promotional post by an "influencer" would probably make those people self-select too.
    - coupdejarnac 4y ago
      I think there is a lot of fatigue from the type of low effort, low value interactions that Tinder et al facilitate. I have no marketing data available, but I would guess there is demand for an app that at least makes an effort to create higher value connections. The social media influencer idea solves the problem of onboarding a lot of people fast, particularly women. I disagree that the audience self selects to have low attention span- I doubt that matters if there is sufficient demand for a non-Tinder dating app experience.

metalliqaz 4y ago

so this begs the question... in 2022, are there any apps/sites actually worth using?

kilroy123 4y ago
meetup.com internations.org Facebook Events Go out and talk to people with similar interests in real life.

maerF0x0 4y ago

My fair warning / PSA is[1] never pay for "roses" (super likes, other premium ways of indicating you like them "more"). They don't work. And the worst of it as an antipattern they essentially work against you (because the app lets the recipient know they received a rose). Here's why -- On average, matches are essentially trying to maximize the ELO score they match with, someone with a maximized score across many variables like social aptitude, wealth, future prospects, looks, (and many other attributes). Now, obviously people have their own weighing function for each aspect but some of them are simply universally valued -- for example healthy is near-universally preferred to someone who is critically ill. So What do you indicate to a match that you most likely _needed_ to use a rose to attempt to match with them ? You reveal that the app generated Elo score is actually too low to be presented them in normal swipes. (Especially in hinge which has a weekly rotation of people you cannot swipe/match with except if you rose, perhaps in other apps but I'm less well versed in their mechanics). [1]: at least as a man, idk if a woman would ever send a rose to a man, and if they'd work even if they did. Women will get a match >50% of the time w/o a rose, so why pay?

recon517 4y ago

Personal anecdote: Bought a Bumble Premium with a one time payment of ~120 EUR. In three months got only one match which led to a date. But what a date! We are in love now and I am quitting all dating apps I have used before. My match was ONLY possible due to a Premium subscription. These 120 EUR were the best spent money of my live.

crmrc114 4y ago

Met my wife on OKCupid, we have kids now and have been happily married. I thank God for OKC and it's impact on my life. eHarmony told me I was unmatchable and match.c was worthless- I agree with this article reply rate was nil. OKC reply rate was awesome and people were much more chill to just IM for a bit and have real exchanges. I met my wife in under two months on the OKC platform.

amir734jj 4y ago

Who wants to build a better dating website? Free and open source without any bots run by donations. Dating website is a human right. People are lonely and this dating websites are taking advantage of the situation.

thomastjeffery 4y ago

The biggest problem with current dating apps is that they limit swipes behind a paywall. Sure, you can pay to get the opportunity to swipe on more profiles, but you can't pay to give everyone else the opportunity to swipe on yours. That means paying for more swipes doesn't really get you more matches. Dating is a numbers game, and Tinder/etc. are rigged not to play.

edem 4y ago

A funny anecdote: back in the day there was an app called Flamite that used the now defunct tinder api and you could use it to automate matchmaking. what i did is to yes everyone and then i waited a week. i had 200 matches. I then checked all profiles and removed 120 that i didn't like. i wrote to the remaining 80. i had good chats with 20 of them, met 3 of them and now I'm happily married to one.

tongpu 4y ago

app idea: if anyone watches Indian Matchmaking, the matchmaker gets "paid' during the wedding (or through other gifts and influence). so there is a huge incentive to marry (if that was the only end goal to dating). also you don't really get many choices (maybe only 3 over a few months) so there is a lot of hopefulness, openess, compromises (and expectations, that makes for the drama in the show. ) if traditional matchmaking has worked, why not just apply new tools to what humanity has been doing?