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The Tyranny of the Marginal User

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Re: The Tyranny of the Marginal User

#691

Post by boxed »

kromem wrote: post #447
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.

If match didn't understand this already they were pretty stupid. I think the blame lies 100% on the people at OKC who sold out.

Re: The Tyranny of the Marginal User

#692

Post by lr4444lr »

friendzis wrote: post #576
tspike wrote: post #557

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn’t the parent comment saying the opposite of this? That despite rating most men as ugly, it didn’t affect their messaging behavior nearly as much?

No, they are saying a bit tangential things. Tinder's data shows "chance of approach", which is brutal for men who are not too good looking. IIRC, OkCupid's data shows a bit different thing. The distribution of ratings determines chance of messages/likes - the larger stddev the better chances. IIRC, the most messaged men were ones with ratings characterized by bimodal distribution. Therefore, the most messaged men we…

Just read the original article[0]. I apologize if I misstated anything in it.

[0]http://web.archive.org/web/20100725135309/http://blog.okcupi...

Re: The Tyranny of the Marginal User

#693

Post by volkk »

hbn wrote: post #343
volkk wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i work at a dating app and number of fun dates (worded slightly differently) is our north star metric! it's one of the major ones, and it has helped it stay relatively non predatory :)

But doesn't that inherently imply you try to keep users from making long-term connections? Users having lots of fun dates are not doing them with the same person and continuing to use your app. It's a bunch of dates that ultimately went nowhere. That's the thing with dating apps/sites. If you succeed too well, you've lost 2 users.

i won't speak on behalf of my company, but as someone who was on dating apps for a while until i found my current fiancee, I will say that a lot of it is a numbers game.

also, the company i work for is focused on more serious relationships. we are focusing heavily on reducing ghosting, lowering treating people like they're disposable, etc.

Re: The Tyranny of the Marginal User

#694

Post by TimPC »

roel_v wrote: post #674
seoulmetro wrote: post #506

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nope. It's not specific to their height and obviously not specific to their race. The same way men on average prefer big boobs, women on average will prefer taller men. Both can't really be changed by the person but exist as attractiveness scores against a person. It matters to people who it matters to. Not many in the grand scheme and definitely not related to race.

I have literally not once in my entire life heard a woman in real life say 'oh he's so tall, that's so attractive'. That's only an internet thing. Or an outside-Western Europe thing, maybe.

No but, I've seen plenty of women say: I want to wear heels and still have my man be taller than me when we are dancing.

Re: The Tyranny of the Marginal User

#695

Post by volkk »

genewitch wrote: post #487
hbn wrote: post #343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But doesn't that inherently imply you try to keep users from making long-term connections? Users having lots of fun dates are not doing them with the same person and continuing to use your app. It's a bunch of dates that ultimately went nowhere. That's the thing with dating apps/sites. If you succeed too well, you've lost 2 users.

this is usually where i get frustrated with capitalism. Not everything has to be about retaining customers. If i hire someone to build a brick outbuilding, i probably won't need another brick outbuilding. I'd rather a "pay for 3-6 months of full access upfront, a 3 day trial option" than a subscription model for anything where there's a chance i won't be using it in 3-6 months. when i see a dating site ask for a year…

> when i see a dating site ask for a year upfront i know they're not going to actually help me.

the longest i've seen is 6mo (at least thats OUR longest) and while fewer people use this, it captures the demographic that is either self aware and think they'll need it for a long time, or folks that are happier with dating around. the point of these longer subs isn't because we're willingly creating dark patterns to avoid helping our users, i promise

Re: The Tyranny of the Marginal User

#696

Post by volkk »

Nimitz14 wrote: post #385
volkk wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i work at a dating app and number of fun dates (worded slightly differently) is our north star metric! it's one of the major ones, and it has helped it stay relatively non predatory :)

Comeon tell us what the app is!

i would, but i don't want to dox myself

Re: The Tyranny of the Marginal User

#697

Post by afarrell »

anigbrowl wrote: post #109
afarrell wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A dating site could work sustainably if it was a site for planning date nights. Make profiles based on activities and swipe right or left on the activities you want to do. Revenue sources would include: - Ads for local businesses, classes, and events. - Annual subscription which is cheaper after the first year and gives you discount codes to events and restaurants. Once you get the site to work for date nights, let p…

Would this solve the problem of finding people to have sex with? No, but computers are bad at sex. Are they? I thought hookup sites like Tinder and Grindr were very popular.

So is alcohol.

Re: The Tyranny of the Marginal User

#698

Post by afarrell »

com2kid wrote: post #83
afarrell wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A dating site could work sustainably if it was a site for planning date nights. Make profiles based on activities and swipe right or left on the activities you want to do. Revenue sources would include: - Ads for local businesses, classes, and events. - Annual subscription which is cheaper after the first year and gives you discount codes to events and restaurants. Once you get the site to work for date nights, let p…

I ran a startup making something similar to this pre-covid, it wasn't just date night, it was "find something to do in under 5 minutes". Groups of 4 to 6, partnering with local businesses who hosted the events. You opened the app, said what you wanted to do and when, and you were automatically put into a group. You could select how many people you already had going with you (date, or just a group of 2 friends who nee…

Perhaps then it is better run as a feature of a city’s local newspaper. They already have the advertising department side of the marketplace. Does anyone at the Boston Globe want to buy your code?

Re: The Tyranny of the Marginal User

#699

Post by cdogl »

fingerlocks wrote: post #612
Retric wrote: post #586

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Undergraduate degrees are becoming a stronger signal just not in the same way. It’s even more obvious with high school degrees. Most people cross that threshold, so the people who didn’t now represent a usual group of under achievers. The threshold is far below what FAANG’s are looking for, but requiring a HS/collage degree can effectively presort applicants for jobs with lower thresholds. Unfortunately, such methods…

Paradoxically, if you have an undergraduate degree but don’t have a high school degree, it can be even stronger signal than having both. “I actually dropped out of high school and went straight to college.”, sounds impressive. Of course you have to omit the part about taking a gap year and being a community college transfer student.

I can’t even imagine being asked about this part of my life in a career context. I’m 35 and for the better part of a decade I’ve just been asked about my previous roles. Seems like most organisations simply couldn’t care less where I’ve come from. Maybe it’s an Australian cultural thing.

Re: The Tyranny of the Marginal User

#700

Post by titzer »

munificent wrote: post #29

> We’ve all been Marl at one time or another This, to me, is the key line in this quite good article. It's not that software companies are catering to those other people who are infinitely stupid and deserving of our scorn. It's that they are catering to the worse impulses in all of us and encouraging us to become those people.

Well put. And everyone plays along. When the big, popular apps become idiocracized, then the smaller apps follow suit. It really seems that there's a race-to-the-bottom effect going on.

Case in point: Guitar tuner apps. Back in 2005 a good friend of mine had a startup that made the best-in-class guitar tuner app in the feature phone / flip phone era, before Android. Back then, they had to deal with all manner of constraints from vendors and the hardware of the day. They figured it out and shipped a featureful app that had a per month. Their UIs suck, too. I have no idea what their revenue aspirations are, but this is totally driven by capturing consumer surplus from the orders-of-magnitude larger Android market. We all lose.

I do not pay for these apps; I would gladly have back that $6 app, but can't have it. The market is absolutely saturated with enshittified Android apps. Instead, I intentionally spend significantly more than that on dedicated tuners (like the excellent but somewhat fragile Snark clip-on ones).

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