4 ms·
The company incentives aren't aligned with the user incentives. It is in the company's best interest to keep dinging people for $20/mo indefinitely and not hav
by rogerbinns 12y ago
The company incentives aren't aligned with the user incentives. It is in the company's best interest to keep dinging people for $20/mo indefinitely and not having them match, but dangling the prospect of one (eg near misses). See the allegations against match for fake/zombie profiles.
It is in the user's interest to pay their money, 20 seconds later get a perfect match that works out, and never use the service again.
Restaurants are not a good analogy. There are many to choose from, you can leave at any point in a meal, it is a well defined product, there are numerous reviews, you can browse the menus beforehand etc.
It would be far more interesting if you could find a way to get paid on success, and not much on failure.
- throwaway_abc 12y agoI agree with you about the incentives thing. Therefore, the question you posed has been sitting in the back of my mind: how do you align the incentives of the customer and company in this case? The answer that I came up with: the company will charge less each failed date. This way, after a certain amount of dates, they will theoretically lose money by having you as a customer. This incentivizes them to get you a good match before then. On the flip side, the initial price should be high enough such that it is in the users interest to see if it will work out rather then giving up easily. Lastly, if the previous date request is months before the current one, the company can say that the previous date was a success and start over. The only problem that I dont know how to deal with is the user whose goal isnt to get a date, but to harm the company. My guess is that some sort of feedback from the dates can asses whether or not this is indeed happening.