[HN Gopher] RFC: Let's Disrupt Dating Apps
___________________________________________________________________
RFC: Let's Disrupt Dating Apps
Author : dvt
Score : 76 points
Date : 2020-02-24 18:10 UTC (4 hours ago)
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| caseysoftware wrote:
| I worked on a dating website for a while and while the market was
| fascinating, the motivations and alignment of the site/team vs
| the customer are completely broken.
|
| It's not in their best interest to give you a great match but
| someone who is just "pretty good" or - _at minimum_ - compelling
| because if you fail on the site, they lose one customer.. but if
| you 're successful, they lose two.
|
| It's the only business model worse than cigarettes.
|
| I lay out some more detail in a post here:
| https://caseysoftware.com/blog/working-for-a-dating-website
| lowercased wrote:
| Have the 'dating app company' organize small group dates, and
| broadcast on FB live or similar. Turn it in to a reality show.
| Well... not FB live - you could only watch if you're a service
| member (or perhaps paid?)
| crooked-v wrote:
| Suddenly I'm imagining a 'Peloton for dating' VC pitch deck.
| soylentcola wrote:
| Thankfully not on dating apps anymore but this sounds
| horrifying (to someone like me at least).
|
| Between the narcissists and attention seekers of the "reality
| TV" crowd and the thought of having a potentially stressful and
| awkward (or, at best, intimate and personal) meeting broadcast
| on freaking Facebook sounds like something out of Black Mirror.
| generalpass wrote:
| How about the first meeting not be any sort of date, and no
| chatting options ahead of time.
|
| You sign into an app to indicate you are available for a
| spontaneous introduction.
|
| If two matched users are within the vicinity of one another, then
| each receives a notification that someone they have been matched
| with is nearby. If both agree, the introduction is arranged at
| some public space. This does away with all the stress of an
| actual date, plus no actual time commitment.
|
| (Note that I'm not addressing the matching process.)
|
| One point I didn't see or missed in the article is that for men
| who have no problems getting dates offline, why would they go
| through the huge PITA of online dating? What does that do to the
| pool?
| 8f2ab37a-ed6c wrote:
| I'm actually surprised it took so long for companies like Tinder
| to start monetizing their male audience more.
|
| With a 9:1 ratio, it seems like a ripe opportunity to enable
| progressively more pay-to-play options for men with disposable
| income (or despair) to try to stand out, by paying their way to
| the front of the profile advertising queue. They recently
| introduced the super boost, which is $50, I believe, but IMO
| that's not going far enough.
|
| You have cities of many frustrated, but wealthy bachelors like
| San Francisco where men would gladly pay their way into a date.
|
| Ethics and morality aside, there should a platform out there that
| allows men to bid hundreds, or thousands, on going out with
| someone, and the highest bidder wins the first spot in line. Of
| course the woman should not be obligated to take the offer, but
| it would send the signal that 1. the man is affluent and
| successful and 2. the suitor is truly committed to getting to
| know her. This gets somewhat close to the Seeking Arrangement
| turf, which may or may not be a good thing.
| tom_mellior wrote:
| > allows men to bid hundreds, or thousands, on going out with
| someone, and the highest bidder wins the first spot in line
|
| Women might not be happy about being "bought" in this way, it
| might feel too close to prostitution. Also, some men might feel
| entitled to "get something for their money", leading to
| situations of emotional pressure up to outright rape. I would
| not expect the women I know to be interested in a platform that
| makes them feel like a product that's bought and also putting
| them at potentially more risk than other platforms. I could
| very well be wrong.
| 8f2ab37a-ed6c wrote:
| Agreed, prostitution aside, there's a whole grey area here of
| what's societally acceptable to pay for and what's not, and I
| don't believe anybody is a true moral arbiter of where that
| line is.
|
| For example, buying "ad space" (basically Tinder Highlights
| or Bumble Spotlight, or beyond) with your face on it would be
| considered not "buying" someone, it would be acceptable. It's
| just you paying to put your face on a digital billboard, in
| the hopes to be seen by someone.
|
| Sending someone super-likes, that's again paying for
| signaling interest, in the hopes that she matches with you.
|
| Paying 20 bucks for extra digital flowers in Coffee Meets
| Bagel, when liking someone, isn't buying that person, that's
| again paying to signal interest.
|
| Sending someone $1000 worth of actual roses with your number
| on a card. That's paying to get someone's attention and
| signal your interest.
|
| None of that is forcing anybody to do anything, but of course
| the more you pay, the more they're likely to feel like they
| need to reciprocate.
|
| And yes, of course some men will feel entitled to get
| something in return, just like some men will feel entitled to
| get sex because they paid for lobster dinner. There will
| always be a scummy, entitled and exploitative portion of the
| male dating population that will require education or flat
| out avoidance. They're there, with or without dating apps.
|
| Maybe the key here is that the money doesn't go to the woman.
| Maybe someone can bid $1000 on a date with someone they
| really desire, but the money would go to a charity if she
| accepts and actually shows up. Make the patriarchy pay for
| important charitable causes :)
| meristem wrote:
| whatsyourprice.com Also asymmetric market.
| 8f2ab37a-ed6c wrote:
| I believe it's from the same founder who did seeking.com,
| right?
| nexuist wrote:
| Is this not just prostitution with extra steps?
| 8f2ab37a-ed6c wrote:
| At no point you're paying for sex, no?
| fenwick67 wrote:
| Okay, assuming your information is correct (women are a hot
| commodity on dating apps and get lots of attention, and
| conversely men have a hard time getting any attention), if you
| put out a hetero-only dating app with a 1:1 men:women ratio, why
| would women choose to use it, when on Tinder they would have men
| clamoring over them?
| crooked-v wrote:
| There could well be an untapped market of women who aren't
| interested in the atmosphere that comes with the unbalanced
| gender ratio, even if it means being at a personal disadvantage
| in the process.
| coralreef wrote:
| Considering that we can't come up with a good reason or show
| how this alternate app is better/more useful, I'm going to
| cast some doubt that there is an untapped market of women who
| want to give up value for some intangible factor.
| AndrewKemendo wrote:
| Even with a 1:1 ratio, 20% of the men would attract 80% of the
| women. In any dating pool, online or otherwise, the math is
| just generally bad for the vast majority of men attempting to
| attract a partner. See:
|
| https://quillette.com/2019/03/12/attraction-inequality-and-t...
| philwelch wrote:
| Easy: the dating app pre-screens the men.
| toohotatopic wrote:
| Not only that. How does he select the men who are allowed to
| use the app?
| philwelch wrote:
| If the app does a good enough job selecting the men, that
| screening process delivers value to the women.
| saagarjha wrote:
| What does "good enough" even mean in this case?
| philwelch wrote:
| Filtering out the same men the women themselves would
| choose to filter out.
| saagarjha wrote:
| But women don't filter out the same people.
| zweep wrote:
| The wildly unbalanced gender ratio makes men frustrated, which
| causes them to invest very little in reaching out to women so
| that they can reach out to dozens/hundreds/thousands, which
| makes an experience for women of thousands of dick
| pics/"hey"/etc, along with earnest high-investment outreach
| from men who are too ugly/poor/short/whatever to capture their
| interest.
|
| If there was a system for people in the 25th to 75th
| percentiles of desirability to have a dating market where the
| men were only allowed to contact 3 women per month, I think it
| would be very popular among women.
| fenwick67 wrote:
| I'm skeptical that an atmosphere where men generally get more
| attention will make them put more effort forward.
| sokoloff wrote:
| Well, it may well get them to put effort into using VPN or
| other means to circumvent the per-account limits.
| balls187 wrote:
| The problem is no one in the 25th-75th percentile thinks of
| themselves as being in that band.
|
| And those that do, don't want to date someone in that band.
|
| Said more crassly: if I'm a 7/10 on the looks scale, why
| would I want to date someone who is a 3/10?
|
| Another point--you stated desirability. Other than good
| photos and well crafted bio, how do you indicate your
| desirability?
| hug wrote:
| Thank goodness you are completely incorrect on all of your
| points.
|
| As a self-admitted solid 5/10 average-as-it-gets human, not
| only do I acknowledge my own existence, but I've _also_
| managed to, somehow, get dates.
|
| Said more crassly: Perhaps not everyone is as shallow as
| you.
| tpetry wrote:
| Theres a dating app kind of like the idea you are proposing:
| Once. You get one (!) suggestion per day and you can decide
| whether to like or dislike. The basic idea is quality over
| quantity. But as such an app is not good at guessing what you
| like, you mosten often just press the dislike button.
| vsareto wrote:
| I'm actually on board with the idea of boutique dating apps
| that limit population and interactions in this way. I would try
| one that gave discounts and date ideas ("-$5.00 discount at
| this particular restaurant, oh, and there's 4 tables left for
| tonight, reserve a table for your date now through our app").
|
| If you want to get creepy, do analyses of where people might
| want to go based on preferences or chat content and give
| discounts/suggestions for those categories. Other broad filters
| could be "find some place with lots of people". The less
| intrusive version is just giving a map of places nearby that
| have discounts available. Make it convenient to share map and
| website pointers within the app, so people aren't tabbing over
| to Google maps to look up the place.
|
| For joining, I'd probably keep it application only or by
| referral. Egregious complaints and police reports get you
| thrown right out. Balancing how much identity verification
| against a creepy factor would be difficult.
|
| These kinds of things are a lot more palatable the more of them
| that there are. There can be other flavors of boutique apps,
| and you just shop around and apply to ones you like. Did you
| already go through all 500 potential matches on this 1k user
| app? Just download another one.
| smogcutter wrote:
| Not sure "let's go to this restaurant, I've got a coupon!" is
| a great look for a first date.
| anthonypasq wrote:
| There already are plenty of exclusive dating apps.
|
| You just arent cool enough to have been invited to one yet.
| shakura wrote:
| Badoo and Bumble are made by the same company, lol
| solatic wrote:
| It's impossible to build a good dating experience on an app at
| scale. Let me explain why.
|
| Dating markets are lemon markets. The classical example of a
| lemon market was the used car market - most people who bought
| "lemons" (unreliable cars) would exploit information asymmetry
| and sell them on the used market, and over time the reputation of
| the used car market deteriorated to the point where it was
| affecting the value of new cars. The car manufacturers solved the
| problem by introducing gatekeepers - certified used car programs,
| that certified that the cars weren't lemons.
|
| So who are the "lemons" on dating markets, which bring down the
| reputation of dating markets for the rest of the players? People
| who aren't in an emotionally healthy place to make commitments;
| people who are "players"; people who are violent; etc. It is our
| experience dealing with the lemons who stay on the dating market
| that ruins the reputation of the entire dating market and makes
| dealing with the market difficult.
|
| So the solution is to introduce a gatekeeper. What does a
| gatekeeper look like? A clinically trained psychologist-cum-
| matchmaker (pun not intended) who can certify that the matches
| you are set up with are people with a track record of dealing
| honestly (for your personal definition of honest) in the dating
| market. Don't like your gatekeeper? Pick a different one.
|
| So far as I can tell, healthy dating markets are limited to scale
| by the need to hire such competent human gatekeepers. If anyone
| has an idea how to automate the gatekeeping in a humane way -
| you're sitting on a gold mine.
| blang wrote:
| I think that's what dating ring tried to do.
|
| https://techcrunch.com/2014/02/13/the-dating-ring-sf/
|
| They were featured on a season of the startup podcast
| https://gimletmedia.com/shows/startup/kwhxma
|
| They shut their doors in 2018
| Jonovono wrote:
| Can't say I am apart of it but doing it the way
| https://rayatheapp.com/ does make sense. Essentially, referrals
| from existing members. + looking a how many Instagram followers
| you have.
| meristem wrote:
| Using another app such as Instagram as gatekeeper seems to
| make a value judgement about people not interested in the
| gatekeeping app's business proposition.
| alexgmcm wrote:
| I wonder if having a public invitation tree like lobste.rs [
| https://lobste.rs/about#invitations ] would help?
|
| That way people would be less likely to give referrals to
| people they didn't know well - as you are vouching for them,
| and it makes it easier to identify sets of bad actors.
| groby_b wrote:
| Because the number of instagram followers says so much about
| emotional maturity and mental stability.
|
| Instagram influencer, paragons of healthy behaviors.
| OldFatCactus wrote:
| using instragram followers as a measurement of datability
| feels incredibly dystopian
| slowmovintarget wrote:
| Unless you used it as an inverse correlation. +15% if
| you're not on Instagram at all.
| brianhorakh wrote:
| Lemon Market would be a great name for a dating app.
|
| Gatekeeping could be done at scale with a web of trust model.
| cbhl wrote:
| Part of me wonders whether dating is an education problem.
|
| If we could make men* not be lemons, then maybe society as a
| whole would have better outcomes.
|
| But how do you scale up "dating coaches"? (Would you even want
| to? People will pay easily pay four or five figures for such
| services right now.)
|
| [* Gender is not binary, etc., but painting with broad strokes
| to make the example more concrete.]
| balls187 wrote:
| I think rather than "lemons" dating apps have a very low signal
| to noise ratio.
|
| Which isn't necessarily due to "players", violent men, etc.
| jayd16 wrote:
| > people with a track record of dealing honestly
|
| A track record is also a red flag. In theory, the ideal partner
| shouldn't need to date for very long.
| FabHK wrote:
| The lemon problem, as you highlight, is due to asymmetric
| information. The mechanisms you mention fix that: mechanics
| check a car before it is certified, the warranty as well as the
| value of the brand (reputational damage) shift incentives
| against cheating on that check. Similarly, in matchmaking,
| usually the matchmaker knows both parties, warrants that they
| are ok, and his reputation suffers if they aren't.
|
| A real innovation would be to solve this problem of asymmetric
| information in dating in a similarly robust, yet scalable
| fashion.
|
| For example:
|
| * Credible testimonies from ex-partners
|
| * Certification of claimed characteristics (photos, age,
| weight, income, educational achievement, ...)
|
| * ???
|
| * profit
|
| I don't know how to achieve these - I'm pretty sure blockchain
| is not the solution, but something might be possible in that
| space.
| fiblye wrote:
| Credible testimony is a big problem. People who've moved on
| won't want to really talk about it much. Meanwhile those who
| haven't moved on will replay every bad moment in their head
| and do their best to make that other person look like a
| demon, and some just outright lie because they want to take
| the other person down.
|
| It's hard to know if that person really was an asshole, or if
| the person writing the review was the asshole. The only way
| to know is to accumulate a bunch of separate reviews and
| maybe try some complicated ML algorithm on the intricacies of
| the messages/find trends in a person's reviews (if everyone
| around them is negative, it's probably not other people),
| but...if you start to get to a point where someone has an
| obvious trend, they've probably been through loads of
| partners, and people looking for dating and not hookups
| generally don't want someone who's churning through new
| partners constantly.
|
| If you have a solution to this problem, divorce attorneys
| around the world would pay you for it. It's way more valuable
| than a dating app.
| zamalek wrote:
| Self-disclosure seems like easy low-hanging fruit. I
| respectfully ended a relationship with a poly individual long
| before she did anything that I would have considered
| cheating. It became a question I asked on every first date,
| and I am now engaged to a mono individual. You might be
| surprised how many individual would openly admit that they
| are mono, poly, casual or what-have-you, provided that they
| are not discriminated for admitting it. I'm incompatible with
| non-mono sexualities and being open about that spectrum
| allows me to avoid "cheaters" and them to avoid "clingy."
|
| Apps can then _strictly_ filter according to those
| preferences (some allow disclosure, all have fuzzy filtering
| at best).
|
| I don't think the core idea in the post would work, though.
| Scarcity would only be present in the app, genders that enjoy
| a natural abundance of choice would probably open the other
| apps after swiping left on everyone in this one.
| leetcrew wrote:
| this may be a low emotional intelligence take, but I've often
| thought that dating and hiring are fairly similar problems.
| you're almost suggesting that people submit dating resumes
| and cover letters for consideration. on the one hand it seems
| strange that we don't use even the weakest signals used by
| hiring managers when we search for potential matches. on the
| other hand, this would obviously take a lot of the "humanity"
| (for lack of a better word) out of the process.
|
| for what it's worth, I've never really encountered issues
| with people outright lying or seriously misrepresenting
| themselves on dating apps. the people I've met up with were
| more or less "as advertised". I think the problem is more
| that a couple pictures and a short bio just aren't a lot to
| go on for judging compatibility. also in my experience,
| people tend to have a list of things they definitely don't
| want in a partner, but don't actually know what they _do_
| want. all my successful long-term relationships have been
| with people I knew for a while before I ever considered
| dating them. I never considered them an obvious match upon
| meeting them.
| snarf21 wrote:
| I don't think it is impossible but it is definitely hard to do
| it "everywhere". A lot of the sites allow for free users to
| create profiles and this simply attracts scams and bots. You
| need to make it expensive. You need to make messages cost above
| X per month. I think you need to start like Uber did at first,
| it is only people who make $Y+ and maybe it requires a W2. I
| imagine it like what The Ladders tried (unsuccessfully) to do.
| You can later slowly move down market but you will need the
| density of a large city for any matching to work.
|
| Personally, the best part of dating apps/site for me was
| meeting people outside of my social circles or people 30
| minutes away. It also let me filter dates based on some kind of
| criteria besides "cute".
|
| Your other point is valid though, most people just want sex.
| That isn't a new phenomenon but these apps make new targets
| easy to find and those targets feel more isolated emotionally
| than they did in the past.
| Muuuchem wrote:
| Wouldn't a simple rating system for dates help a ton?
| aflag wrote:
| It's hard to have a reliable rating system for non fungible
| goods. Unless a person dated a hundred other people, it'd be
| hard to tell if the rating is accurate. I think it'd work if
| you want to find people to have sex with one night. I doubt
| its usefulness to find a partner
| zacharycohn wrote:
| No. If someone was great, but not for me, do I rate them 0
| stars? 5 stars? Am I feeding the algorithm or helping others?
| If I met someone, instantly fell in love, but they decided it
| wasn't a good match and didn't want to go on a second (or
| 5th, or 10th) date... then I can revenge-rate them to sink
| their future chances of being happy?
| throwaway55554 wrote:
| You mean like Amazon's rating system that's gamed and
| manipulated? :)
|
| Edit: Now that I think about this more, I am not sure how a
| rating would work. "He's a 5 star! Would totally date him
| again!" Wait, what? Why would you stop?
| TrackerFF wrote:
| I think a rating system would be highly exploitable. Other
| than that, people seem to think in extremes. Either it's
| close to 10, or close to 0. Middle-tier doesn't move anyone,
| even though most are there...for example, how many times do
| you watch movies with 5.0 rating on IMDb
| pwinnski wrote:
| Any rating system consumed by others is more useful for
| disinformation than information.
|
| aka trolls and spammers will use this feature more than
| honest people will
| philwelch wrote:
| If you rate someone positively enough you end up in a
| relationship with them and stop opening your dating app.
| JohnFen wrote:
| Rating systems don't really provide much value elsewhere for
| various reasons, so I wouldn't expect it to work well for
| dates, either. _Especially_ not for dates, now that I think
| of it.
| Kalium wrote:
| If you assume honest usage, a high number of ratings becomes
| a _negative_ signal. That is, it signals someone who doesn 't
| want to stop using the app or is excessively selective.
|
| So a good signal is probably someone with few ratings. Which
| would seem to defeat the point of a rating system, as a five-
| out-of-five rating is now a bad sign.
|
| Anecdotally, this does comport with my experience back when
| OKCupid would tell you how old someone's account was. It was
| _far_ easier to make contact and have a conversation with a
| new account than with one months to years old.
| ada1981 wrote:
| An app that matches people, gets feedback on dates, and
| then if they couple up, gets regular feedback on how they
| are in relationship / during a break up. Then that score
| comes with them back into the dating app.
|
| Truth is, an app isn't going to solve for people's insecure
| attachment styles and malAdaptive coping strategies.
|
| Perhaps an app that matches based on symmetrical childhood
| traumas would be a hit.
| JoshTriplett wrote:
| > An app that matches people, gets feedback on dates, and
| then if they couple up, gets regular feedback on how they
| are in relationship / during a break up. Then that score
| comes with them back into the dating app.
|
| What incentive does anyone have to keep using the service
| to provide such "feedback" if they find their match,
| leaving aside the creepiness factor of a service asking
| for such information? (And please, don't _create_ such an
| incentive.) If they find their way back into the service,
| then (ignoring relatively rare cases) something didn 't
| work out.
| JoshTriplett wrote:
| > If you assume honest usage, a high number of ratings
| becomes a negative signal. That is, it signals someone who
| doesn't want to stop using the app or is excessively
| selective.
|
| If someone is looking for a long-term relationship, two
| selective people who both find who they're selecting for in
| each other seems like a _good_ thing.
|
| (That said, ratings in this area would have a _huge_ number
| of problems. Not least of which that outcomes would
| strongly influence ratings, and if both people are happy
| then they stop needing the service, so any rating will come
| from a match in which one or the other person wasn 't
| happy.)
| rchaud wrote:
| I don't think it would, because you can't rank against a
| standard level of service, like "driver took me from point A
| to Point B successfully".
|
| What's the standard when it comes to a date? People's
| expectations will vary greatly.
| jjtheblunt wrote:
| i wonder if churches are historically one way of vetting
| matches
| lukifer wrote:
| I think churches have often fulfilled this role historically;
| but now that job is served largely by colleges (especially
| those with a high-cachet brand-name). They're a modern 4-year
| debutante ball: the dating pool is filtered both by age and
| socioeconomic status, and most students are packed into tight
| living quarters, maximizing random social interactions and
| leading to emergent trust/reputation networks. There's a
| reason that "we met in college" is such a common answer from
| married couples.
|
| Bryan Caplan and Robin Hanson make sharp critiques against
| secondary-education institutions, arguing that signaling of
| grit and conformity is primary, while learning is secondary;
| but IMO the dating-pool petri-dish aspect of college (often
| subsidized by parents starting to think about grandchildren)
| goes under-examined.
| heartbeats wrote:
| That sounds like a damning indictment of STEM.
| monocasa wrote:
| Considering churches heavily encouraged people getting
| married for life before they were fully cognitively
| developed, I'd lean towards 'no'.
| xyzzyz wrote:
| Humans are never fully cognitively developed.
| monocasa wrote:
| And yet, there's distinct differences in around pre 25yo
| and post 25yo on average, to the point where childhood
| development psychologists use that as the current
| baseline.
|
| https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-24173194
| jjtheblunt wrote:
| i thought the same!
| bloodm wrote:
| Definitely!
|
| Actually, just a recent observation with Jehovah's witnesses.
| There were always ladies that looked like they passed 100
| years, giving out free advertisements in European train
| stations. Recently they use girls with tremendous
| fuckability!
| ssully wrote:
| As someone raised and practiced Catholicism for a large
| portion of my life, this is hilarious.
| bloodm wrote:
| catholic girls, you know how they go after the show...
| murph-almighty wrote:
| There _are_ social outlets in the church and sometimes
| ancillary to the church (e.g. Knights of Columbus)
| depending on how social your church is and how hard you're
| looking for social opportunities. However, I also get that
| Catholics can get weird about dating (at least anything on
| the premarital side).
| xyzzyz wrote:
| Where I grew up, the Catholic Church (the only religion in
| town) didn't really play the community-building role the
| Americans tend to ascribe to their churches, so I too find
| it baffling myself. However, I can't help but notice that
| both my father and my best friend have met their wives on
| religious pilgrimage to holy site.
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| I don't think I completely agree with the conclusion though I
| did chuckle at the analogy.
|
| Still, taking the analogy to its conclusion, there is a market
| for used cars at reasonable value ( as in, not all used cars
| are lemons; some are driven to church on Sunday only ).
|
| This is the space Carmax fills fairly well. They do their
| vetting though. That might be the secret. I have no doubt there
| is a market for a decent way to date.
|
| Full diclosure: me and my wife met online ( eharmony I think ).
| bloodm wrote:
| "who can certify that the matches you are set up with are
| people with a track record of dealing honestly ("
|
| Mate, good observation with the market of lemons. My thinking.
| Actually the same in the official job market.
|
| But otherwise you are nuts. "All warfare is based on deception"
| [Sun Tzu] and "all is fair in love and war" [Proverb]. And,
| since all relationships sooner or later end in lies, why not
| start with it? [Lord of War]
| JohnFen wrote:
| Both when dating and when buying used cars, I prefer to deal
| directly with the owner/person. There's no need to bring a
| middleman into either activity.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Clearly there is, as people like to buy certified pre owned
| used cars and meet people via acquaintances.
|
| Perhaps some people don't have the time or ability to
| evaluate a used car, or a life partner. Or they feel the
| broker reduces risk as they might offer some guarantee of the
| product.
| floatingatoll wrote:
| Both when dating and when buying used cars, I require an
| intermediary to introduce me, as otherwise I am not willing
| to trust in the owner/person directly. My safety is paramount
| and requiring a 'middleman' drastically reduces the chances
| of malicious behavior by the owner/person.
| wjessup wrote:
| Could you please explain this line of reasoning? It's not
| immediately clear why a middleman reduces chances of
| malicious behavior. Do you think the risk of malicious
| behavior could be reduced through individual confidence,
| judgement or leadership in the same way or differently?
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Because the middleman is not just any middleman, it's
| someone in your network, who is vested in you having a
| good experience so that you continue to be valuable to
| them and vice versa. The middleman will do some due
| diligence before recommending two people to each other.
| floatingatoll wrote:
| This article demonstrates the same failings as the dating apps
| its author wishes to disrupt.
|
| It does not discuss the safety concerns of dating, either
| online or offline. It does not discuss the cost of identity
| verification and other security measures. It does not discuss
| the revenue model at all.
|
| Craigslist and Tinder work because it's no more risky than
| chatting with a stranger at a bar, assuming you're smart and
| invite them to meet at a public place first.
|
| AM works [1] because it charges significant amounts of money
| and works very hard at background checks.
|
| All other sites in-between fail because they want to be the
| 'Amazon/eBay of dating', wherein they stand up a classifieds
| site with profiles, refuse to charge enough money to perform
| background checks, and promptly turn into a lemon market
| populated by malicious actors who are _represented_ as vetted
| and safe.
|
| There is no mistaking what you're getting on Craigslist or
| Tinder for "vetted and safe". You're getting a complete
| stranger who you haven't seen in person yet. If that's your
| bag, you're set.
|
| There is no mistaking what you're getting on AshleyMadison,
| either. It's what they say and they work very hard, and charge
| quite a lot, to ensure that you'll only meet safe and vetted
| people.
|
| If you want to play the in-between market, you need to charge a
| lot of money for accounts and use most of that money to vet
| people's identity. You can charge less money than a specialist
| site like AM ("affairs only"), but you can't have _any_ free
| users, or you 'll just become a lemon market like all the rest.
|
| It's unfortunate that AM is so focused on affairs, because
| their model is the only one that seems to be working as an
| alternative to the classified-ads approach. Safety and secrecy
| cost a lot more than Okcupid was ever willing to charge.
|
| [1] Not that AM is any more successful, and in fact might be
| more fraudulent than the rest! e.g. https://gizmodo.com/ashley-
| madison-code-shows-more-women-and...
| lostgame wrote:
| Hahaha, I used to work for the parent company of AM and it is
| largely bullshit. I'd love to do an AMA about it sometime.
|
| But, I mean, who would've guessed a company based on the idea
| of having affairs would have shady as fuck business
| practices? _eye roll_
| Avamander wrote:
| It might be a lemon market for older age categories, but that
| can't be the case for younger people. They've just entered the
| market, people born in 2000 are at least 19, if not 20.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| Sub-180 munchkins are lemons too.
| zelly wrote:
| > So the solution is to introduce a gatekeeper. What does a
| gatekeeper look like? A clinically trained psychologist-cum-
| matchmaker (pun not intended) who can certify that the matches
| you are set up with are people with a track record of dealing
| honestly (for your personal definition of honest) in the dating
| market. Don't like your gatekeeper? Pick a different one.
|
| The reason young people use dating apps is to avoid this old
| world formalism.
|
| I don't think your idea would get much traction outside of
| South Asia and the Middle East.
| benbristow wrote:
| I'm a young person (23) and I'd quite like the 'old world
| formalism'. Then again, I like going on traditional dates and
| getting to know a person. I don't really know any different.
| WorldMaker wrote:
| It's impossible to figure out real world numbers from hype,
| but my impression is that It's Just Lunch has made a ton of
| money in the US on exactly this business model.
|
| Interestingly, their reputation seems to be again at similar
| risk because as they've scaled up across the country they've
| relied more and more on high cost being their gatekeeper over
| more direct contact with matchmakers. Or at least that's they
| way it seems from the many emails and calls I see to rejoin
| with "discounts" jumping an order-of-magnitude every few
| years from tens of dollars to hundreds of dollars, to now
| thousands. It's rather extraordinary and it doesn't give me a
| lot of confidence to rejoin even if I was interested.
| zelly wrote:
| _Young_ people. For people in their 30s, it 's a different
| ball game. Lots of well-off career people panicking to pair
| up. I have no doubt there is a lot of money in that.
| Actually I'm bullish on 30+ arranged marriage apps. It
| seems like one of those megatrends that's going to hit like
| a tidal wave.
| WorldMaker wrote:
| It's not arranged marriage by any means, it's just Blind
| Date As A Service.
|
| I signed up in my 20s. They admitted I was young versus
| their median, but I wasn't _alone_ and had plenty of
| dates in the few months I was a member.
|
| There was a lot of appeal to the idea of not dealing with
| the usual grind of the average dating app, and getting
| something a bit more personal/high-touch.
|
| (Though even then it seemed apparent that it was less
| high touch than it seemed for the cost, and the real
| gatekeeper _was_ the cost.)
|
| There should be ways to sell human-moderated dating apps
| (Blind Dates as a Service) to young people just on how
| dumb and how much work even the "swipe left/right"
| systems are. Figuring out how to scale that cheaply
| definitely seems to be the impossible problem.
| [deleted]
| curiousllama wrote:
| That's... an arranged marriage. You've invented arranged
| marriages, sans coercion.
| capableweb wrote:
| Arranged marriages sans coercion is not an arranged marriage
| anymore, I guess it's a normal marriage?
|
| The whole thing with arranged marriages is that the people in
| the marriage doesn't actually chose who they marry.
|
| What solatic is describing sounds nothing like a arranged
| marriage. You can always say no and move on, no one is
| forcing you anything.
| triceratops wrote:
| You're thinking of "forced marriage", which is a subset of
| arranged marriages.
|
| There are arranged marriages where parents play the role of
| matchmaker and chaperones, with the kids having veto power.
| Or the converse, where the kids select partners from a
| professional matchmaker's rolls and the parents have veto
| power.
|
| 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arranged_marriage
| slowmovintarget wrote:
| Right. All the arranged marriages I'm aware of were ones
| where the expected norm was for the children to acquiesce
| to the arrangement, but didn't force them to accept. They
| did so either to honor their parent's selection (or that
| of the matchmaker hired by the parents).
|
| I also have colleagues that have declined the arranged
| matches. Their parents weren't happy, but they did it all
| the same.
| neogodless wrote:
| No, I would say an accurate and succinct phrase would be
| "curated first dates."
| saagarjha wrote:
| So arranged first dates?
| arkh wrote:
| That's what a lot of religious community do.
|
| > Alice and Bob are both bachelor and could start a
| family. Time for them to meet.
|
| If you want your community to grow you have to resort to
| this. If not, don't come complaining when most of your
| male population starts enjoying their life while cat
| ladies resent them.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Isn't that what any community does? If you know two
| people who might be a good match, then you might suggest
| it. It happened in college, at work, at temples, etc.
| philwelch wrote:
| Some communities do a better job of this than others.
| Spivak wrote:
| Well... yes? I mean isn't this pretty much _the_ feature
| of a dating app. I mean you still choose to go on the
| first date but you 're there because you want the
| algorithm to curate your matches, right?
| smachiz wrote:
| That's not an arranged marriage, it's an arranged pool of
| potential dates.
|
| Same as how if you're on tinder, you're not going to
| magically swipe to a person not on Tinder.
|
| It just so happens there's someone saying "This person isn't
| allowed to sign up for Tinder, they're emotionally scarred".
| Which will probably scar them more.
| klyrs wrote:
| Add machine learning and it's eharmony
| wefarrell wrote:
| I think there's an opportunity to build a dating app that treats
| dating as an assignment problem[0], rather than a browsing
| experience. Assume we have a heterosexual and monogamous dating
| pool of 50 men and 50 women. If they were to rank or rate each
| other some people will be objectively attractive, but there will
| also be subjective differences based on individual preferences.
| Using an algorithm it should be possible to come up with the best
| combination of couples that maximizes each male/female's
| subjective attractiveness to each other.
|
| Of course an actual dating app would need to be a bit more
| complicated than this, but I do think there's the potential to
| build a something around this concept.
|
| [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assignment_problem
| meristem wrote:
| ...Maybe 'hetero singles who want a monogamous partner' is not
| the best group for a dating app.
|
| Based on discussions with therapists, 'consensually non-
| monogamous, regardless of orientation' seems to be the market to
| go for specially if the app found ways to emphasize the
| 'consensually' part and women's safety in general.
| JoshTriplett wrote:
| That sounds like a dating service selecting for the market that
| best benefits _the dating service_ : people most likely to keep
| using the service rather than stop when they find someone.
| Kalium wrote:
| Not to be negative, but isn't this the current positioning of
| OKCupid?
|
| It's my understanding that "consensual non-monogamy" may
| currently be experiencing some concerns of the addressable
| market size persuasion. I would love to be wrong. Can you help
| me with anything I may have overlooked?
| meristem wrote:
| My understanding of OKCupid is that it caters to 'free for
| all'. The site choices they made was to increase TAM by
| stating their addressable market is 'YES' (this is not a dig
| on the choice).
|
| I have not heard about consensual non-mog/poly/name du jour
| had a TAM problem-- can you point me to sources? My sources
| of 'not a problem' suffer from geographic and socioeconomic
| biases.
| Kalium wrote:
| https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs10508-018-1178
| -...
|
| 4% seems like it could be a difficult market to function
| in, especially since that cannot be assumed to be a random
| sampling from the background population. I'll assume that
| anyway, for the sake of simplicity. That limits you to a
| TAM of ~12 million Americans, of which you would do well to
| get 10% as users and 1% as paying customers.
|
| 120,000 paying customers isn't a vast customer base. That's
| an upper bound, meaning any app is going to come in well
| below that for a variety of geo-demo-socio-economic
| reasons. Or just because getting high market penetration is
| difficult.
|
| Again, I would love to know if there's something I've
| overlooked that changes this significantly.
| aussieguy1234 wrote:
| This study was done 8 years ago. The numbers have
| probably changed alot since then
| [deleted]
| hnewsshadowbans wrote:
| There is nothing to fix or disrupt. The vast majority of women
| don't need or care about dating apps the vast majority of men
| won't get anything out of them. Women want the fittest men, men
| will bang anything that moves. Thats the root issue and how to
| fix it or if it even should be fixed is far beyond the purview of
| a better engineered dating program. At most you'll make it
| slightly less predatory or more monetarily profitable. A lot of
| people (men) will still be left out in the cold.
| balls187 wrote:
| From female profiles, and speaking with my friends, it seems that
| no one is happy with online dating apps.
|
| > dating apps have created an environment where women are hyper-
| selective and where men are hyper-indiscriminate.
|
| I believe this is the key point, and ironic because it's viscous
| cycle.
|
| This behavior encourages worse behavior that is counter intuitive
| to the goal of it's users.
|
| The entire premise is flawed from the start, as a dating profile
| starts with a snap judgement based on pictures, a biography, and
| key details--such as height, job, education.
|
| At this point, the competition for dates using an app is so high,
| and the experience is so mediocre, that I am better off spending
| my effort meeting women in real life.
| marcell wrote:
| Tinder's big innovation was the double opt in for messaging. Both
| parties have to "like" the other profile before they can exchange
| messages. This helps a lot with the problem of women getting
| overwhelmed with low quality messages.
|
| I was surprised to learn that Tinder has patented this technique.
| No other dating app can use it, unless that app is owned by
| Tinder's parent company, the Match Group.
|
| I think not having access to this technique will make it very
| hard for new apps to compete with Tinder and friends.
| dx87 wrote:
| The "both people have to like" feature was on Hot-or-Not close
| to 15 years ago, Tinder didn't create it.
| stagger87 wrote:
| The parent did not say that Tinder created this, only
| patented it.
| sib wrote:
| The parent literally called it "Tinder's big innovation"...
| Reelin wrote:
| Prior art (ie publicly published examples) invalidates
| patents, at least in the western world. To that end, if you
| invent something that you don't intend to patent you should
| publicly write about it if possible.
| dvtrn wrote:
| Hot or Not had a matching feature? I legitimately never knew
| this.
|
| Then again I only spent enough time on the site to grok "ok
| this exists" and never going back.
| PavlovsCat wrote:
| Facebook (or anything with these particular features) set to
| "everybody can send me a friend request" and "only friends can
| message me" already has that.
| Jonovono wrote:
| So, every other dating app is owned by the Match Group?
| (Bumble, Hinge, Hily, etc)
| [deleted]
| WorldMaker wrote:
| The Beehive (Bumble) hasn't yet been swallowed by Match
| Group, but Match Group sure is trying.
| pageandrew wrote:
| Hinge doesn't follow the double-opt-in pattern. When you
| "like" someone, you can immediately send them a message, even
| if they haven't yet liked you back. I guess that's a big
| enough differentiator to not violate Tinder's patent.
|
| I think Bumble might be differentiated in that once the
| double-opt-in has occurred, only one party (the women) can
| send a message.
| Jonovono wrote:
| Ah, true, it's been awhile.
| zachkatz wrote:
| However, Hinge is owned by Match Group :)
| parliament32 wrote:
| No, you definitely can't. You can attach a comment to your
| "like" but then it disappears into the ether, and only
| reappears in your messages section if they "like" you back.
| dag11 wrote:
| That's not true, we can the comment people leave when
| they like before we like/match them back. The thing is
| that they can only leave a singular comment/message.
| Invictus0 wrote:
| The claims of the patent [0] are extremely specific. I doubt a
| competing company would be unable to get around this patent.
|
| [0]: https://patents.google.com/patent/US9733811
| Muuuchem wrote:
| Great... And I can't use Tinder because of one joke I made
| about the developers shipping code on drugs because of a weird
| bug I was getting...
| stronglikedan wrote:
| They (Bumble, but all same company) threatened to ban me
| because I called them dirty thieves, after I pointed out some
| dark patterns that they introduced as new features, and they
| told me they had no plans to revert them. It sucks when
| there's no stiff competition.
| WorldMaker wrote:
| So _far_ , The Beehive (Bumble's company) has managed to
| avoid being swallowed into the black hole that is Match
| Group (Match.com, Tinder, OK Cupid, PoF, more...). Though
| yes, the point stands that competition is rare and thus far
| every competitor eventually gets swallowed into the black
| hole. (The assumption for Bumble is not _if_ but _when_.)
| KurtMueller wrote:
| What are some of these dark patterns? I have a subscription
| to them but am thinking about canceling. They often tell me
| somebody's matched with me, but when I go to open the app,
| there are no matches in my queue. I always wonder if it's
| just a bug or a dark pattern to get you to open the app.
| raziel2p wrote:
| Pretty sure this is just crappy microservice engineering
| where the microservices disagree with each other. I
| always see the match counter being wrong, matches I
| declined linger anywhere between an hour and a day...
|
| I just disable all notifications from these apps.
| netsharc wrote:
| In an effort to disassociate Tinder with my Facebook, I use
| my phone number to create an account on it.
|
| I wonder if it matters, since apparently they use Facebook's
| SMS verification system.
| Reelin wrote:
| I question the enforceability of such a patent - it seems like
| a mere technicality of phrasing. For example, on Facebook you
| send someone a friend request which has to be agreed to by them
| before additional functionality is unlocked. I don't see how
| applying such a standard interaction mechanism to a dating app
| in particular is in any way innovative; it seems analogous to
| the online shopping cart patent that Newegg invalidated back in
| 2013.
|
| More likely, Tinder intends to use the mere threat of court
| proceedings to stifle any potential competition.
|
| Edit: Another comment linked to the patent
| (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22408610), and it's...
| really verbose and complicated (as usual). It seems to revolve
| around having the aforementioned request-response procedure,
| while simultaneously using the requests and responses to
| determine other likely matches to present to the participants.
| I would summarize it as "Netflix ranking applied to dating app
| user requests", and remain highly skeptical of any supposed
| innovation. One thing is for certain though: paying a law firm
| to dissect this thing and argue it in court would cost you a
| small fortune.
| philwelch wrote:
| > Does not limit sign-ups to keep a balanced M:F ratio. You see
| this in Vegas all the time: to make sure the ratio isn't skewed
| too far female or (more likely) too far male, the hottest club in
| town is going to have a line.
|
| This isn't just a balancing mechanism, it's also a revenue model.
| I'm really surprised that "free for women, men must pay a weekly
| fee" isn't more common.
| parliament32 wrote:
| Women would leave fast, because it turns into "that dating app
| filled with guys desperate enough to pay for matchmaking". Even
| with Hinge/Tinder there's a _huge_ stigma associated with
| paying for premium; very few people will openly admit to doing
| it on a date.
| philwelch wrote:
| Hmm, interesting.
| tom_mellior wrote:
| > free for women, men must pay a weekly fee
|
| Would this be allowed in the US? In the EU it would probably be
| forbidden as discrimination.
| Kalium wrote:
| Depends on the state. It's barred in California, for example:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unruh_Civil_Rights_Act
| JohnFen wrote:
| I believe this would be allowed in the US. At least, I know
| that there are real-life clubs that charge covers to men, but
| women get in free...
| philwelch wrote:
| Particularly in Vegas, which was the original analogy.
| yuhao wrote:
| There was a YC company in W12 called Grouper that basically
| implemented all of the grab-bag of ideas. It was a 3-on-3 blind
| date at a pre-determined spot. Each person had to pitch in $20 to
| participate, which meant $120 revenue for each date. It seemed to
| be going well - I wonder what happened to them.
| chrissnell wrote:
| I love your "RFC" post. I'm a SRE by day who dabbles in code at
| night (Go). I've long wanted to find a co-founder to moonlight on
| a project together. I am a remote worker, far away from the Bay
| Area and it seems really hard to meet others interested in this
| given where I live. I would love to see more "co-founder dating"
| here on HN (pardon the pun...)
|
| That said, for your app, I'm kind of a doubter because I never
| had any luck with dating websites for many of the reasons you
| mentioned. I went on lots of dates and nothing ever connected but
| finally got some good advice from a friend:
|
| "Take care of yourself and do what you love and she will find
| _you_."
|
| I did exactly this: started running every day after work...
| learned how to cook and started making my own food...spruceded up
| my apartment with some nice furnishings...and lo and behold, my
| future wife literally (nearly) ran into me. I was out running one
| night and she almost hit me at a stop sign when I ran across the
| road. She turned out to be my neighbor and fast-forward 11 years:
| we have two kids and 10 years of marriage under our belts.
|
| In retrospect, I should have spent the hundreds of dollars on a
| life coach instead of eHarmony.
| jetpackjoe wrote:
| There have been a few attempts at a life coach kind of app.
| None of them done well I think.
| rchaud wrote:
| Let's talk brass tacks: what kind of money is this going to make,
| compared to industry margins?
|
| It's all well and good to talk about "disrupting" dating, but for
| the consumer, dating is a personal thing. It isn't like buying
| clothes or a new gadget, where you're not buying the product so
| much buying into the lifestyle you think the product will give
| you.
|
| No dating app is going to solve whatever issues, traumas,
| predilections etc brought them there in the first place. No
| amount of in-app engineering is going to change a person's inner
| mindset regarding dating. That mindset is often the root cause of
| why dating apps suck; the "hi, how are you?" intro messages, the
| ghosting, the cookie-cutter profiles, etc.
|
| So why would people pay for this?
| Ancalagon wrote:
| How will a zero tolerance policy for harassers be enforced?
| seek3r00 wrote:
| Identity verification + Taking in consideration the tickets
| sent by users being harassed ?
| Ancalagon wrote:
| legitimately don't understand why this comment is being
| downvoted. Is this not a fair question? Help me understand.
| moosey wrote:
| While David Brooks and I don't agree on much, his discussion of
| "relationism" vs. "individualism" and his "weave" program is the
| ultimate disruption to the way families and communities are built
| today. IMO it is the actual disruption for dating and
| relationships in the US.
|
| I'd go further than what Mr. Brooks offers in his assessment of
| the situation, but like all things ideas exist on a continuum. I
| would much rather try to build a tribal group than try to find
| dating partners.
| devit wrote:
| The problem is that current dating apps consist of choosing
| people whose in-person behavior (as well as resources in some
| cases) you care about based on self-selected photos and their
| ability to write text messages, so it's pretty obvious it doesn't
| work very well.
| AlphaWeaver wrote:
| I'd like to highlight: this is a problem that's on topic for us
| at VC3 (https://vc3.club). We're a group of contributors seeking
| to produce actionable research in the area of technology for
| social connection.
|
| If this sort of thing interests you, we would love to have you
| join the discussion!
| jakequade wrote:
| >> Let's Disrupt
|
| Already vomiting in my mouth.
| onetimeusename wrote:
| > on Tinder, men outnumber women by 9 to 1.
|
| > Women just aren't using these apps
|
| Couldn't it be that women just don't need to use a dating app to
| find partners? Was this a problem they faced before the apps
| existed?
|
| Meeting people through work, school, friends, parties, etc. seems
| to have worked fine for women so far. The bottle neck here might
| be the preferences women have, not being unable to meet men
| without an app. The app would have to address that to solve their
| problem rather than purely trying to get people to meet which may
| again be limited by their preferences if they only like 20% of
| men as cited.
| jfengel wrote:
| My anecdata was that I found a great many women on Tinder and
| other sites where I live (Washington, DC). Not fake profiles; I
| had plenty of dates. I like to think that I'm a good catch, but
| I don't think I'm exceptionally physically attractive, and am
| certainly not wealthy. (I was working for a startup and often
| made no money at all.) I don't believe I was doing anything
| other men couldn't replicate.
|
| I can't vouch for the male-to-female ratio, but I never failed
| to find somebody interesting on Tinder within a few days. I did
| hear a lot of horror stories from women about men on such apps,
| many of whom behaved very badly and others who were quite
| obviously unsuitable partners (boring, inarticulate, cheating,
| etc.)
|
| Maybe it's just where I am, or there's something else
| confounding my observations. But from what I saw, there were a
| lot of women on Tinder, and if men were failing to connect with
| them, the problem may not have been the numbers.
| bsder wrote:
| > Washington, DC
|
| DC-NoVA area is known for having a surplus of women relative
| to men.
|
| Basically, _every_ dating mechanism works for men in that
| area.
|
| This, of course, points out that it's simply the availability
| ratio that changes the behavior of women.
| fossuser wrote:
| DC is a great place (for heterosexual men) to find dates - I
| found the ability to get dates via apps to be highly variable
| depending on the city (maybe M/F ratio, but probably a bunch
| of factors).
|
| If you want to see this for yourself just change your city in
| the apps from SF to NYC or DC and swipe. It's pretty obvious
| and dramatic.
| maximente wrote:
| well, that is awfully low bandwidth in an internet-connected
| world. you may only be exposed to 500 potential mates that way.
| in a market like NYC, merely being on tinder would probably
| expose you to orders of magnitude more than that! makes sense
| to leverage tech to parlay your assets (e.g.
| attractiveness/mating value) to reach a wider audience in order
| to get highest possible match you can.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| I believe this is the root problem of all dating "apps" or
| websites, assuming the goal is for two people to find each
| other and settle down.
|
| Without computers, databases, and the internet, you might
| only have so many chances to meet someone, and so you are
| mentally ready to accept someone that may be a few bands
| "below" you. And you might grow to like them.
|
| But with so much of the cost and friction gone, and a
| seemingly infinite number of chances to meet someone,
| especially in bigger cities, that mentality is gone. Why
| accept someone who might be okay for you when you can aim
| higher? And if everyone has this mentality, then you can see
| where the market goes.
|
| I also think there is an issue with wealth/income gap and
| easy availability of data rendering certain people who aren't
| seen as able to be economically viable mates to have a value
| so low as to not be worth dating period.
| sokoloff wrote:
| If one's goal is to settle down, why spend time dating
| someone who has any deal-breaker (whether religious,
| smoking/drugs, economic, or any other)?
| fossuser wrote:
| This gets a little into the 'things you can't say' territory,
| but online dating just isn't very good for most heterosexual
| men due to selective pressures (it's probably better when the
| population is closer to an even split, but even then there are
| problems). This does change as men get older and there's less
| competition (online dating is bad for men in their 20s and good
| in their 30s).
|
| Dataclysm - Christian Rudder's book (cofounder of okcupid) has
| a ton of data you can look at to see some of the problems.
|
| One is solved by Tinder, Hinge etc. which is women getting too
| many messages (making things better for heterosexual women) but
| the other issue is the response graph itself.
|
| There's a graph in that book that shows number of messages
| received based on attractiveness, for women there is a massive
| spike at the right end of the attractiveness scale and it gets
| lower at the lower end, but is still around 4-5 messages a
| week. This means there are opportunities to at least go on
| dates if interested and get better at selection/what you like
| and don't.
|
| For men it's a flat line at zero until the extreme right of the
| attractiveness scale where it goes up to 1-2 messages.
|
| For men not in the top 10% of attractiveness online dating is
| not viable so things trend towards a broken state where women
| select the same group of highly selected men (which tends to
| lead to less long term interest on the side of the highly
| selected men). I think large amounts of men ~80% get very few
| dating opportunities and so are generally bad at the social
| skills required for success.
|
| For most heterosexual men (those not in the top 10% of
| attractiveness) you're better off meeting people in real life
| where you can make a better impression. These issues are
| compounded in the bay area where there is a large imbalance of
| men and women (things are less broken in DC and NYC).
|
| If I had a suggestion for a new type of dating site it would be
| less about the matching part and more about how to help men get
| better at the prerequisites for success (social skills,
| dressing better, fitness etc.). The pairing part is less
| important.
| JohnFen wrote:
| I don't know... I'm absolutely nowhere near the top 10% of
| male attractiveness, but I've had good luck getting dates on
| dating sites. From talking with many women about their
| experience on such sites, I think that attractiveness is far
| less important than behavior -- the vast majority of men that
| women hear from, it seems, are very poorly behaved.
| sokoloff wrote:
| Similar here. Nowhere near the top in attractiveness; had
| pretty good experiences on match; ended up meeting my wife
| playing beer league level softball, but match absolutely
| "worked".
|
| In spending time with female friends who were doing online
| dating, it became fairly clear to me how easy it was to be
| in the top 10% of articulate and interesting in
| correspondence.
| KurtMueller wrote:
| How do you know you're not near the top in
| attractiveness? Maybe you actually are since your
| experience tends to be good/positive.
| KurtMueller wrote:
| How do you know you're nowhere near the top 10%?
| fossuser wrote:
| Where do you live? I think city is highly variable. It also
| gets easier as you get older (for heterosexual men) which
| could be a factor.
|
| This is the kind of thing where you can't trust what people
| say since what they say and how they act are very different
| (the dataclysm book is good for this).
|
| For the matching case if you get zero matches you can't
| progress to dates (or even chat). The selection happens
| prior to that.
|
| You're probably right though that it's not _only_
| attractiveness, there 's also a selective pressure where
| men are generally okay dating 'down' economically and women
| are generally not. While more women become economically
| successful (good thing) it further constrains the
| availability on the dating market. The only reason I
| focused on the attractiveness stat first is that on apps
| like Hinge/Tinder it's a prereq to even getting to the
| economic piece.
|
| Diana S. Fleischman (evolutionary psychologist) and Julia
| Galef discuss some of this and other things on this podcast
| which I thought was pretty good:
| http://rationallyspeakingpodcast.org/show/rs-216-diana-
| fleis...
| JohnFen wrote:
| My experience has covered a number of different areas (in
| the US), and I've used such sites occasionally for a
| couple of decades now. I've not noticed a significant
| difference between areas or age ranges.
|
| But I'm working with male sample size of one (me), and a
| female sample size (women I've talked about this stuff
| with) of a few dozen, so this isn't anything like a
| reliable study. It's just anecdotal.
| onetimeusename wrote:
| So from that data, which I have no reason to doubt, women
| have the edge, especially more attractive women. Men have a
| distinct disadvantage which was also apparent from the gender
| skew.
|
| If women have an edge there, especially more attractive ones,
| I would expect more would join to gain that advantage.
| Likewise, men having such unfavorable odds, I would expect
| they would drop out. But AFAICT, the gender skew has remained
| pretty static across time and across apps.
|
| So why don't women (especially more attractive ones) join to
| get the advantage and why do men keep joining if the odds are
| against them? Do the apps repel (attractive) women? Do they
| even need the advantage? I would expect attractive women
| don't have the problem of needing to find dates but maybe
| not.
|
| Maybe attractiveness is just a relative thing and you need to
| have such a gender skew for women to filter out who is
| attractive and who isn't.
| fossuser wrote:
| Purely speculative and something I haven't thought that
| much about, but my immediate answer is that men are more
| desperate and trying everything they can.
|
| Women have an easier time getting attention/dates in
| general so fewer of them bother with online dating at all.
| [deleted]
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| > The bottle neck here might be the preferences women have, not
| being unable to meet men without an app.
|
| I would say there is a quite a bit of evidence that would
| corroborate this thesis.
|
| The majority of dating is moving online:
|
| https://news.stanford.edu/2019/08/21/online-dating-popular-w...
| (Meeting online has become the most popular way U.S. couples
| connect, Stanford sociologist finds)
|
| But female participants aren't finding what they want:
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2015/nov/10/dating-...
| (The dating gap: why the odds are stacked against female
| graduates finding a like-minded man)
|
| https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/jomf.12603
| (Mismatches in the Marriage Market) referenced by:
|
| https://nypost.com/2019/09/25/women-are-struggling-to-find-m...
| (Women are struggling to find men who make as much money as
| they do)
|
| > "There are shortages of economically attractive men," lead
| study author Daniel T. Lichter tells The Post. Although we like
| to think marriage is based on love, he says, it "also is
| fundamentally an economic transaction," and women want partners
| whom they can call their equals.
|
| https://www.irishtimes.com/news/social-affairs/better-educat...
| (Better-educated women 'find it harder' to meet partner)
|
| > While women in their mid-to-late 30s perceive a dwindling
| pool of prospective partners, men at this age perceive an
| "endless supply" of possible partners as it is more usual for
| an older man to choose a younger partner than it is for an
| older woman to, the study says.
|
| https://americanaffairsjournal.org/2020/02/the-cost-of-thriv...
| (The Cost Of Thriving)
|
| > While Americans see traits like "be caring and
| compassionate," "contribute to household chores," and "be well
| educated" as of nearly equivalent importance to being a "good
| husband" or a "good wife," they are far more likely to describe
| "be able to support a family financially" as a very important
| trait for a good husband. This finding holds across education
| level, race, and gender: 72 percent of men and 71 percent of
| women say being able to support a family financially is very
| important for a man to be a good husband, compared to 25
| percent of men and 39 percent of women saying the same about
| being a good wife. (My note: Money shot; what society says and
| what people are doing are two different things)
|
| The high level TLDR is (based on the data) men are content to
| date down, women are not, and economically disadvantaged men
| (which there are more of due to globalization and other macro
| factors) are exiting the dating marketplace, creating a market
| imbalance. Toss in data showing men online target ~20-25 years
| old for a partner, while women prefer to date around their age
| as they age, and here we are.
| wwweston wrote:
| > While women in their mid-to-late 30s perceive a dwindling
| pool of prospective partners, men at this age perceive an
| "endless supply" of possible partners
|
| _Possible_? Maybe. _Interested_? Hardly.
| [deleted]
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| That's not what the data shows.
|
| https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/why-bad-looks-
| good/2...
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/science/2003/mar/02/evolution.g
| e...
| golemiprague wrote:
| Two things he downplays but I think should get more attention. As
| someone who has been there way before dating apps it was pretty
| obvious to everyone that the 80/20% is pretty accurate. Every
| group of guys had those guys who would get most of the women, it
| is just the way it is. Dating app just made it even more extreme,
| maybe 90/10.
|
| The second thing is what he calls 2nd and 3rd tier apps. For all
| those 80% those apps give some alternative. If you don't get
| matches in Tinder you can still message people in POF for free
| and if you got good text skills it works much better than tinder
| for people who are average looking. So I wouldn't call it second
| tier but rather the solution to some of his complains.
|
| The solution he suggest is what society in more conservative
| societies always did, vetting by parents and family and a
| matching system that gave a chance to every male in society to
| find a woman by matchmaking with end result of one to one. All of
| that only works when you accept the scarcity of marriage and it
| is enforced socially by people, legally by the state and
| sometimes also by religion. I am afraid this is not going to work
| in our society of today unless we all accept on ourselves more
| conservative values.
| zelly wrote:
| The author misunderstands the business model here. It is
| precisely this market asymmetry that makes the platform any $$$.
| Otherwise what incentive do guys have to spend money on
| advertising their profiles.
|
| If anything, the evidence presented would suggest that the market
| is _skewed in the favor of men_ already. Otherwise women:men
| would be 1:1.
|
| I propose disrupting the space with even more aggressively
| Darwinian design. Who wants to join me? (only half joking--
| seriously reach out)
| ravenstine wrote:
| > Don't call it a "dating" app. The app should be labeled as a
| "singles" app.
|
| Not a bad idea from a marketing perspective, but I'd put this
| last.
|
| > Focus on having a good time. The "conversion" shouldn't be a
| match, it should be having a fun night out.
|
| This is where you'll limit your audience. Unfortunately, in my
| opinion, a lot of people today are timid about going out to meet
| strangers. This is partly because it's so easy to escape reality
| into Netflix and Reddit or Discord, but we're becoming more and
| more of a risk-averse culture. When I was growing up, adults
| would often overemphasize the dangers of adulthood, and I can't
| imagine things have gotten better since.
|
| > Enforce a 50:50 ratio. This might bring DAUs down, but without
| enforcing a M:F ratio, you end up with asymmetric markets.
|
| I think I like this.
|
| > Organize occasional group events. Without becoming a meetup
| app, the app should push events -- concerts, hikes, movie nights
| -- with groups of 6-10 people.
|
| I like this, too, and I think that something like this might be
| made possible programmatically. I'm thinking the kind of
| matchmaking used in multiplayer games but used to organize
| meetups.
|
| > Avoid ELOs and other ranking algorithms.
|
| At the very least, don't go down the road of MBTI and other forms
| of fake psychology.
|
| > Have a vetting process with a zero-tolerance policy for bad
| apples (harassers, catfishes, etc.).
|
| I wonder what the abuse rate would be for something like this.
|
| ---
|
| Here are some ways I think this could be made better:
|
| - People can only be discovered if they are online. If they
| haven't been active in 30 days, their account is kicked out and
| they have to reapply and wait in line if there's a waitlist to
| maintain the 50:50 ratio.
|
| - The photos you use must be taken at a designated photography
| studio. Users cannot upload their own photos. They're free to
| wear makeup and nice clothes, but no filters or obnoxious facial
| expressions are allowed.(obviously the studio can airbrush out
| zits and simple things like that) The studio can also be a place
| where random singles can meet in person. Accounts are activated
| upon completing this, and I think that will help prevent bots,
| making them nearly impossible.
|
| - If you don't initiate any conversations within a period of
| time(not sure what that should be), this should result in a
| warning, and if the warning isn't heeded by a certain point, the
| user is kicked back into the waitlist or is suspended for a short
| period of time.
| smogcutter wrote:
| > Organize occasional group events. Without becoming a meetup
| app, the app should push events -- concerts, hikes, movie
| nights -- with groups of 6-10 people.
|
| I'm not convinced group dates solve anything useful (setting
| aside just making new friends). No reason they wouldn't just
| replicate the same imbalance people are complaining about all
| over this thread (80% of the women chasing 20% of the men),
| except in person. If you're the kind of guy who can easily turn
| a group meetup with total strangers into a "real" date, you
| probably don't need much help meeting people to begin with. And
| if you aren't that guy, a group of strangers is probably not
| where you'll shine (romantically, at least).
|
| That said I can see how a group setting could be more appealing
| to women, mostly from a safety point of view. That's definitely
| a plus.
| juped wrote:
| >The photos you use must be taken at a designated photography
| studio. Users cannot upload their own photos. [...]
|
| This is probably the top idea in this whole thread so far.
| crooked-v wrote:
| While it's an interesting idea, that's a pretty big up-front
| cost per user.
| the-pigeon wrote:
| Kinda the point though.
|
| Granted I was married slightly before Tinder became big but
| from my reading it seems like the biggest issue with these
| apps is bots.
|
| Making people jump through a hop bots can't fixes that
| problem.
| [deleted]
| ravenstine wrote:
| Admittedly, the problem is that this limits the app to being
| regional. Either the company would need to open offices in
| major cities, or studios could contract with the company. I
| think it's feasible, but would limit the audience.
|
| The benefits for the user would be incredible, in my opinion.
| One of the reasons I quit online dating years ago was because
| I was already wasting tons of time on them, but I felt like I
| was having my face spat in every time I scrolled/swiped
| through photos and half of them were annoying instagram
| filters, or duckface, or people sticking out their tongues,
| etc. Of course there's people who don't look like their
| photos. Moderating this in-person eliminates these issues.
| It's also a revenue model for the dating service, as I'm sure
| there could revenue could be shared between studios and the
| service.
|
| I also like the idea because it would reduce the number of
| users who aren't serious. You'll always get people who use
| online dating because of ego-stroking or because they think
| it's "funny", but fewer of those people will bother if they
| have to get their photos taken.
| juped wrote:
| It's only gotten worse since.
| parliament32 wrote:
| >The photos you use must be taken at a designated photography
| studio.
|
| That'd be Hard but it's probably easiest to just require
| passport-compliant photos as your top photo in your profile.
| Users can upload their own photos lower down, but make the main
| one follow a standard set of rules. Yeah they're going to be
| ugly, but everyone will look ugly, so it's a level playing
| field.
|
| > If they haven't been active in 30 days, their account is
| kicked out
|
| I'd lean more like 7 days, but good idea regardless.
|
| >If you don't initiate any conversations within a period of
| time
|
| Just lump it into the same timer as "active" above.
| scottlocklin wrote:
| Imagine thinking the answer to a vast societal problem involves
| making yet another app for your ipotato. A vast societal problem
| more or less directly attributable to apps on the ipotato.
|
| Put your imbecile phone down, leave the house and talk to people,
| you gibbering goons. Pay attention to others, not your nerd
| dingus: you might notice things. Better yet, leave your dystopian
| shit hole American city hellscape and find people who don't
| require a nerd dildo for self validation.
| draw_down wrote:
| Woof.
| jdelsman wrote:
| Why has nobody mentioned Grindr?
| zelly wrote:
| The gay community has flawlessly foreshadowed the culture of
| the general populace for hundreds of years. People ignore this
| for stupid ideological/emotional reasons. If you want to see
| what the future Tinder looks like, look at Grindr today.
| aWEfjaWefj wrote:
| Care to elaborate?
| nerdjon wrote:
| I really really don't think that's going to work...
|
| Women have enough issues being harassed on the dating apps as
| it is...
|
| Grindr conversations are very... forward (and would be seen
| as harassment by most Woman I have chat with about Grindr)
|
| In reality the only reason the Grindr way "works" is because
| there is no societal power difference between everyone on it
| vs a hetero focused dating app.
| _lacroix wrote:
| It has always amazed me how well Grindr works, and yet
| every dating app catering to lesbians is a complete
| trainwreck. No hetero power dynamics on Her either but
| everyone on there seems more than a bit unhinged (as
| compared to the crowd on Tinder/Bumble) and the entire user
| experience is terrible. But on apps that allow hetero
| dating there are sooooo many men posing as lesbians by
| changing their gender settings or "bicurious" women who
| aren't actually looking to date women but changed their
| settings to show their profile to women just for fun
| because they like swiping and there's such a low barrier to
| entry. In case anyone reading this works there: I know I'm
| not the only one who really wishes Grindr would create a
| women-only clone of their app!
| zelly wrote:
| If we were in the 1970s and I described Instagram & Tinder
| to you, you would be saying the same thing.
| nerdjon wrote:
| I mean... maybe.
|
| I just don't see societies impressions about gender roles
| changing anytime soon.
|
| Woman are still taught that they have to be hard to get
| and can't come off as "easy".
|
| And Men are largely taught that getting a Woman is a
| conquest or somehow contributing to them "being a man".
|
| Also I do feel the need to point out that on Grindr much
| of the same things that would be considered harassment on
| other apps is still there, it is just assumed to be part
| of the Grindr experience and not seen as harassment (by
| most at least).
|
| (Purposefully not throwing in Trans here since that
| further complicates what I am trying to say and makes the
| assumed power differences even more problematic)
|
| Also btw, if it isn't clear by now. I am saying this as
| someone on Grindr and other gay apps.
| nerdjon wrote:
| The article did say that it as a straight male he was not going
| to talk about LTBTQ+ apps.
|
| That being said, Grindr by its very nature removes the balance
| issue in this particular sense. But Grindr is also a "dating"
| app by App Store description alone and is really not its
| primary use.
|
| Have I had dates off of Grindr? Yes... But they are the
| exception. So looking at Grindr as a fix is not the way to go,
| it was very clearly not designed with that in mind (If when I
| talk to any of my straight male friends about Grindr is any
| indication)
|
| That and... Grindr has its own major issues fueled by how its
| designed to be very much not a dating app.
| dag11 wrote:
| Grindr has been moving more and more into the "dating app"
| territory. As of last month they introduced the ability to
| pin multiple Spotify songs to your profile just like on
| Tinder. That doesn't aid hooking up, that aids self
| expression and find other users you relate to.
| nerdjon wrote:
| Yeah they have added some features that are more tied to
| friends or dating. But those are by far the exception after
| of years calling themselves a dating app.
|
| It wasn't that long ago that they added the "Accepts NSFW"
| profile option. Expiring photos (if you do ultimate).
|
| The Spotify one actually took me off guard when I saw that
| added, struggled with seeing the point until I remembered
| that some people do actually use it for another purpose.
|
| My biggest issue with calling Grindr a dating app though is
| its focus on superficial (great for hooking up). But your
| profiles have a severe limitation on how much information
| you can put on them. Compared to something like OKCupid
| that makes me think of old myspace pages which could have a
| near unending amount of information.
|
| An update or 2 ago they finally added tags which has been a
| bit helpful, but still only good for quick things.
| saagarjha wrote:
| I don't think it fits with the narrow focus mentioned here.
| paulie_a wrote:
| This whole "disruption" simply sounds like someone who can't get
| a date on the current apps.
|
| Apps are simply a number game. You get to contact a larger amount
| of individuals than you could in person.
|
| Steps to getting a date: 1 - match with someone 2 - ask a
| question related to their profile 3 - have non creepy casual
| conversation. Every answer or statement you give should be
| followed by a question 4 - ask to Meetup for a drink or coffee in
| the new 3 days
|
| I don't know if that counts as a true date but it's a start. Step
| 3 is incredibly important
| hnewsshadowbans wrote:
| Bumble is not a 'decent' app. Its whole schtick is taking a dump
| on the group that keeps it in business (men) and how horrible
| they are and how women need to be protected from them. Thats not
| fair to men or sustainable.
| [deleted]
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| The only idea worthy of pursuit IMHO opinion in this post is
| organizing in person events; this forces people to invest a bit
| more time in engaging with another human (an evening) vs a few
| seconds on a photo before a swipe to another human (or short
| conversations that die out in app). That in person time is the
| opportunity for organic chemistry, generating interpersonal
| closeness, to occur between two people.
|
| TLDR _The problem is the app_. People get Uber for dating, which
| results in the dysfunctional marketplace demonstrated by Okcupid,
| Bumble, etc because chemistry, love, and relationships are not
| the same as on demand ride or food delivery services.
| djsumdog wrote:
| I've tried speed dating probably 3 or 4 times. It's one of
| those horrible things I really shouldn't keep doing, but when
| there's nothing else out there...
|
| Even in such events, I've only had one time where it wasn't 0
| out of 0. With that one person we only went on two days. I
| dunno if meeting out in meatspace has that much of an impact
| really.
| JohnFen wrote:
| Speed dating is a horrible thing, but social events don't
| have to be speed dating.
| crooked-v wrote:
| I would second that. The only value I've ever gotten out of
| dating apps was back in the more freewheeling days when OkCupid
| and the like would promote in-person events. Enforcing a
| balanced gender ratio plus similar interests (to avoid purely
| scattershot approaches), and having an official host running
| each event, would go a long way.
|
| It also gives an obvious way to get users to pay for stuff in a
| way that directly corresponds to both the amount of work the
| company is doing and the number of singles the user is meeting:
| pay $X to get a spot at Y event. That could even include some
| simple cross-promotional bundling (get a ticket to the zoo /
| art museum / sportsball game / retro drive-in movie / whatever
| along with the group event).
| svachalek wrote:
| There's a rule, wish I could remember the name of it, that says
| people will consistently choose convenience over satisfaction
| even though those choices will tend to make them less happy.
|
| I think this explains a lot of our modern societal dysthymia,
| but dating apps are particularly illustrative.
| philwelch wrote:
| True, but hookups _are_ that way, and you get more repeat users
| by optimizing for hookups than for romance.
| [deleted]
| djsumdog wrote:
| I had a good friend who said he thought dating apps only work
| for people who are attractive. Looking at my own friends in
| my life who have had successful relationships from dating
| apps and those who are frustrated by them, I'd say my friend
| was wrong. Dating apps only work for _very_ attractive
| people, 7 out of 10 guys and up (6/10 and up for women).
|
| The market graphs in the article are really apt.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| "It was determined that the bottom 80% of men (in terms of
| attractiveness) are competing for the bottom 22% of women
| and the top 78% of women are competing for the top 20% of
| men."
|
| https://medium.com/@worstonlinedater/tinder-experiments-
| ii-g... (Tinder Experiments II: Guys, unless you are really
| hot you are probably better off not wasting your time on
| Tinder -- a quantitative socio-economic study)
| jeromebaek wrote:
| As a LGBTQ person this article is so creepy
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