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How Tinder's “feedback loop” forces men and women into extreme strategies

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Re: How Tinder's “feedback loop” forces men and women into extreme strategies

#21

A couple of my guy friends have told me they swipe "Yes" on every single girl. I suspect that this isn't too uncommon.

I do exactly this because it's informative. I don't actually follow through with anything, but it's interesting to find out types that find you attractive.

Re: How Tinder's “feedback loop” forces men and women into extreme strategies

#23
post #20

A couple of my guy friends have told me they swipe "Yes" on every single girl. I suspect that this isn't too uncommon.

It's the digital equivalent of the stereotyped 'bar/club tactic' of trying to pick up every girl in a bar. Most will decline, but after a week's worth of attempts, their chance of still not having succeeded will approach 0%.

I guess I'm the outlier then... :/

Re: How Tinder's “feedback loop” forces men and women into extreme strategies

#24
post #22

21% of women sending a message first seems surprising. I only skimmed the paper, but it doesn't seem like they removed bots from their data. Back when I was single, the vast majority of women messaging first were bots.

Yeah, this is definitely the case. I swipe right on everyone. It's an extreme rarity to find a woman who texts first. I'd put it at easily less than 5% (if they aren't a bot).

Re: How Tinder's “feedback loop” forces men and women into extreme strategies

#25
I wrote a Tinder bot a couple of years ago and ran some interesting studies:

1) I placed a male profile in ~10 different cities, auto-swiped for a few days, and waited for matches and messages to flow in. I found the match/message rates to be significantly different for each city. Sample size of ~34,000 right swipes.

2) A/B test two female profiles with exact same photos and bio except 1 was a CEO and 1 was Graphic Designer. Swiped on 1000 men in NYC and 1000 men in SF.

3) A/B test two female profiles with exact same photos and bio except 1 was listed as 29 and 1 was listed as 31. Swiped on 1000 men in NYC and 1000 men in SF.

Through my experience in this, I can see the methodology they used in this study could be flawed. Specific concerns:

* While I don't have any real inside knowledge into Tinder's "recommendation" algorithm of who they show to you, I assume there is a strong preference to show active users first. So if they are swiping on hundreds of thousands of profiles, they are probably burning through the legitimately active users in a region pretty quickly... that's one reason why they get a lot of matches quickly and not as many matches over time and end up with a 0.6% match rate.

* The number of messages that guys send (at least as of 2 years ago when I ran my studies) is wildly more than women. The male profile was seeing an 11.8% match rate, and a message rate of 15.3% from the matches for an effective message rate of 1.8%. Whereas the women were getting an 81.5% match rate, with 63.9% message rate from those matches for an effective message rate of 52.1%.

* I believe there is now rate-limiting on the right swiping, so after ~100 or so right swipes, you have to wait 12 hours until right-swiping again. Really not sure how they could have made it through hundreds of thousands of profiles unless they paid for the premium membership.

Anyway, interesting stuff regardless, happy to release more data when I have time, if there is interest.

Re: How Tinder's “feedback loop” forces men and women into extreme strategies

#26

A couple of my guy friends have told me they swipe "Yes" on every single girl. I suspect that this isn't too uncommon.

Do they realize they are being throttled? Just because one end sends a swipe doesn't mean the other end receives it right away or at all.

Men who send a lot of swipes get their outgoing swipes throttled. Women who receive a lot of swipes get those swipes throttled, too.

Think about if you were the programmer working on Tinder. The first thing I would build is swipe spam detection.

Re: How Tinder's “feedback loop” forces men and women into extreme strategies

#27
post #3

Finally, a topic I can consider myself some kind of expert in! For the record, here are my credentials: I've tinder-valeted multiple guy friends, selecting women and conversing with them and warming things up for them. My friends happen to be across a wide variety of attractiveness and success spectrum. Observations: 1. As is obvious, attractive/successful men get a lot more likes than women. 2. Guys who get lesser m…

What I found interesting is that I (a straight, male) get a far higher match percentage in the D.C. area than in the S.F. Bay Area. This happens every time I travel back to D.C. I imagine that there are a lot of interesting variables that go into this, making this research not applicable for the "real world."

I was traveling a good bit when I gave Tinder a shot (several months). Different cities gave me very different results. Hometown - nothing, not enough users so a lot of bots. Atlanta - tons of responses. LA - not quite as many, I probably didn't look as interesting compared to the other guys on there? Rome - Decent number, better than LA, not as much as Atlanta.

Then I met someone and we've been dating for 6 months so hopefully I don't get to test it out much more.

Re: How Tinder's “feedback loop” forces men and women into extreme strategies

#28
post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's the digital equivalent of the stereotyped 'bar/club tactic' of trying to pick up every girl in a bar. Most will decline, but after a week's worth of attempts, their chance of still not having succeeded will approach 0%.

I guess I'm the outlier then... :/

Because that's a shitty strategy and just doing what you like and talking to people while there works much better. I'm pretty sure I've gotten more dates sitting by myself reading at cafes and quiet bars that rowdy bars and clubs.

Re: How Tinder's “feedback loop” forces men and women into extreme strategies

#29
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like they need a 'selectivity rating' so you can tell they aren't serious. Like your seller rating on EBay.

Oh, they are serious. That's just what a lot of people have to do to get anywhere with anyone. The alternative for most guys is being picky and getting nothing.

Personally, I'd rather be picky and get nothing if the alternative is having to sleep with someone I'm totally not attracted to. Porn is more satisfying, and with porn I don't have to worry about hurting the girl's feelings.

That said, however, you do have to be realistic about what kind of woman you can attract.

Also, if you get distracted by someone you're really not into, that can keep you from meeting someone who's a better match for you.

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