alt Hacker NewsI think the author missed an important factor: misaligned incentives.
Dating apps make money when users spend time (and money) on the platform. Users who find a partner tend to leave the platform, so dating companies are incentivized to prevent that from happening. Those companies then have more opportunities to up-sell those users on premium features, which they're more likely to purchase due to repeated failure and/or feelings of inadequacy.
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This is often parroted, but the reasoning is flawed. The vast majority of the platform's growth will come from new users, who are entering the dating scene. If they fail to capture that audience (say, by having a reputation of not performing as advertised), then no amount of upsells or string-alongs of existing users will sustain them, as their user base will only ever decrease, and investors will see that and withdraw accordingly.
This is exactly why I always make it a point to discourage my friends from using dating apps.
A dating app that is effective at solving the problem it is ostensibly designed to solve will never make money as people will be matched quickly and will have no need to pay for the service. So clearly no profitable dating app is good at matching people.
I'm of the opinion that using a tool that is constantly setting you up for romantic failure and rejection in the name of keeping you on its platform is a really good way to wreck your mental health.
This is pretty obviously addressed in the article. The premise of the article is why don't users migrate to better platforms when the large ones are extracting as much money as possible (because the incentives are misaligned)
Bingo. This is the effect that keeps (a) incumbent platforms in place, (b) users on those platforms, (c) and potentially new platforms from coming online and offering a "superior" experience.
I'm not sure it's purely malicious. It might just be the result of optimizing for engagement metrics
Users who find a partner
Tinder is not Match is not Grind. People partner for various reasons and durations.
This is exactly why a dating app should be developed and provided by the government. Side note: If this gives you the heebie jeebies, you are part of the problem.
By far absolutely _not_ true:
- i have worked in the space for some years for two of the biggest platforms in my country
- dating sites track a lot KPI and discuss them and test them thoroughly
- the KPI "do-more-users-leave-our-platform-earlier-if-our-matching-algo-is-just-too-good" - I promise: In alle the years, this question WAS NEVER - NEVER!!!!!!! - raised, regardless wich Manager or which Exec. This metric isnt even debated.
And here comes why: the most important thing to form a relationship are "technicals" which can NEVER be introduced into an app. There may be some advances in genomic matching, but no body deployed this so far and it wont happen unless Apple watch as a gene encoding module.
There are one night stands, there some marriges (we had a "winners board" in our office), but 99% of all cases when people met, its going to be "failure" (in a sense "no match")
Regardless how good your algo is - it doesnt matter when it comes to a reality check.
Therefore, Dating apps have absolutely no fear of you signing off because you fond someome - its very likely that you will come back soon, second: From operators perspective it would be a good thing if people would tell "i found my match on XYZ", but sine this does happen only super rarely, there are only few such stories.
So - NO: Dating sites do fear someone deleting the account.
(except: you are a startup and have to keep every profile to gain some size)