Online dating is fundamentally a hard problem because there's both incentive misalignment and reverse network effects. The goal of most dating app users is to

Online dating is fundamentally a hard problem because there's both incentive misalignment and reverse network effects. The goal of most dating app users is to find somebody and stop using the app. The goal of the app makers is to keep the user on the app for as long as possible, to serve them ads / sell their data / charge them for a subscription. These two stand in direct opposition to each other, and companies optimize for the latter as much as they can. This is the incentive misalignment problem. After a given app exists for a while, the most desirable users[1] will pair off and leave, while the most undesirable and desperate users will stay. The less attractive you are, the longer you'll be on the app. This means that as time goes on, it's harder and harder for the tide of new users to balance out the growing pile of undesirable matches. This is what I call the "reverse network effect". It's the opposite of normal network effects, which is what happens with normal social networks and messaging apps. A normal messaging app gets more useful as more people join it. It's worth noting that apps designed for finding hookups and not finding spouses don't suffer from this problem. The more hookups you find, the more likely it is that you'll want to keep paying for the app, and the more desirable you are, the more hookups you will find.