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The Tyranny of the Marginal User

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Re: The Tyranny of the Marginal User

#441

Post by scoofy »

wbobeirne wrote: post #349

I worked at OkCupid from 2013-2017 and totally resonate with the author that mid-2010s OkCupid was a really special product, and that it took a steep decline as the decade went on. It's not entirely fair to say that the Match acquisition immediately caused that decline; I started a couple years after Match got the company in its hands, and only two of the original founders were still focused on OkCupid full time. But…

OkCupid had the best damn blog on the internet. They were obviously extremely thoughtful folks. I was genuinely sad when it was discontinued.

Re: The Tyranny of the Marginal User

#442

Post by geraldwhen »

switchbak wrote: post #382
lr4444lr wrote: post #369

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I met my wife on OkCupid. The original format attracted a much smarter and more worldly crowd of women, to put it bluntly, than the other services. I exited the dating game before Tinder, but if OkCupid lost that quirky, artsy, college educated crowd in the chase to compete, that's a real shame.

As did I! OkCupid was a shining star of a product that treated its users with respect and provided a really valuable service. I didn't realize that it's no longer. I feel old pining for the internet of yesteryear. As is obvious only in retrospect, you don't realize when the golden years are!

I also met my wife on okcupid. I wonder how many of us their are.

Re: The Tyranny of the Marginal User

#443

Post by seizethecheese »

selectodude wrote: post #339
bsenftner wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a good point. I think you're referencing a Present Value calculation? My big issue with a lot of valuation techniques is they are based on exponential growth. That strikes me as overly optimistic, leading to decisions that overlook profitable businesses that do not grow exponentially.

They're based on constant growth. I guess over a long enough time frame, constant growth is exponential, but not in the windows that an investor expects to be paid back. Exponential growth is only expected in software because the development costs are so high and the marginal costs are so low. There's zero cost to growth, which makes it a winner-take-all market.

Both of these points are wrong.

A business that’s shrinking but throwing off cash is with a lot still. Only the valuation multiple is based on growth.

Exponential growth is expected in startups of all industries, software only makes the margins and distribution easier.

Re: The Tyranny of the Marginal User

#444

Post by memefrog »

LorenPechtel wrote: post #181
Kapura wrote: post #20

Feels like this is tyranny of easily measured metrics. If your north star metric is something more focused (number of fun dates!) that incentivizes features and experiments that push that number up, but if the number is DAU, suddenly you've decoupled "success" from the actual intention of the website or app. Obviously, "number of fun dates" is a lot harder to measure, relying as it would on surveys with low response…

And note that the incentives for the user and the company are at cross purposes with dating apps. Users use dating apps with the intent of not needing dating apps. A dating app that works well destroys it's user base. Their desired user base is people looking for hookups. Is it any wonder the apps have degraded into stuff pretty much only useful for hookups?

[dead]

Re: The Tyranny of the Marginal User

#445

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

lifty wrote: post #330
npsimons wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's that they are catering to the worse impulses in all of us and encouraging us to become those people. That is incredibly unsettling, and not just because it makes me uncomfortable. Dumbing down should never be a deliberate goal, especially of people.

It’s not deliberate. It’s the tragedy of the commons. They are tapping into a shared resource (our well being) and everyone else is doing it.

If you listen to Frances Haugen's testimony, you see that it is very much deliberate.

There are probably thousands of psychology grads that went to school, hoping to help people, that are, instead, designing dark patterns.

But they are probably making a lot more money than they would, helping people.

Evil pays cash.

Re: The Tyranny of the Marginal User

#446

Post by oxfordmale »

wbobeirne wrote: post #349

I worked at OkCupid from 2013-2017 and totally resonate with the author that mid-2010s OkCupid was a really special product, and that it took a steep decline as the decade went on. It's not entirely fair to say that the Match acquisition immediately caused that decline; I started a couple years after Match got the company in its hands, and only two of the original founders were still focused on OkCupid full time. But…

Almost all internet algorithms seem to converge around maximising time spend on the app in question. A dating website simply doesn't want to be too effective, as you would lose two customers every successful match. Similar to the approach used in slot machines, you want to give the illusion of winning, but I'm reality only provide moderately succesful matches rather than perfect ones.

Of course there is a human element too. Dating sites give the illusion of choice, and a result a lot of potential matches aren't realised on, as the partner is good looking enough.

Re: The Tyranny of the Marginal User

#447

Post by kromem »

wbobeirne wrote: post #349

I worked at OkCupid from 2013-2017 and totally resonate with the author that mid-2010s OkCupid was a really special product, and that it took a steep decline as the decade went on. It's not entirely fair to say that the Match acquisition immediately caused that decline; I started a couple years after Match got the company in its hands, and only two of the original founders were still focused on OkCupid full time. But…

I feel a twinge of guilt whenever I see things about how OKC got crappy.

Not that long before the acquisition a certain jackass brought in as a consultant (ahem) happened to point to OkC as the leading competitor against the acquiring company's properties specifically for mobile.

Sorry everyone...

If it makes it any better, I've had to use the product since then too, and suffered alongside all the rest of you.

Re: The Tyranny of the Marginal User

#448

Post by lolinder »

dspillett wrote: post #437
raisedbyninjas wrote: post #401

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anybody else remember the data blog posts? Those were interesting and satisfying. It was another confirmation that I'd found the right dating site and probably a like-minded userbase.

Particularly the one that was a tare-down of why paid dating sites like match.com where a mug's game for almost everyone. That somehow went AWOL fairly soon after the match.com take-over…

This one, Why You Should Never Pay For Online Dating:

http://web.archive.org/web/20100725135309/http://blog.okcupi...

Re: The Tyranny of the Marginal User

#450

Post by raisedbyninjas »

AlbertCory wrote: post #235
efitz wrote: post #31

The article doesn’t mention a number of contributing problems such as monopoly power. I want to highlight growth as such a problem. Perhaps Ycombinator is the wrong place to bring up such a point, but the idea of constant growth in user base as the source of value in a company almost certainly contributes significantly to the problems discussed in the article. What happened to community? The businesses I like to deal…

As I said, my anti-growth example is the local family restaurant, that's hugely successful and profitable, popular, provides steady employment to new family members, and is not trying to take over the world. If it throws off profits, those can be invested in other businesses, not in growing the restaurant.

If local familiy restaurants worked like apps and had no virtually no marginal costs to feed another user or serve a new entree, then it would stop being an anti-growth example. Cheesecake Factory+ would scale up and then the market would clone and chase them.
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