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I paid for OkCupid to get advanced filters to find my wife, shortly after this article was written. I paid for a single month of premium back in the day. So this article is odd.
EDIT: the purchase was Feb 2011 [1] and the post was removed sometime between Jan 2011 [2] and Mar 2011 [3]. The rest of the blog was still up at the time [4].
[1] https://www.npr.org/2011/02/03/133456140/The-Last-Word-In-Bu...
[2] https://web.archive.org/web/20110113034228/http://blog.okcup... up
[3] https://web.archive.org/web/20110301161329/http://blog.okcup... down
[4] https://web.archive.org/web/20110301161329/http://blog.okcup... different post up
I paid for OkCupid to get advanced filters to find my wife, shortly after this article was written. I paid for a single month of premium back in the day. So this article is odd.
The article though gives details of what they see as the problem: forcing people to pay to allow communicating means that well over 90% of profiles on their systems are just filler and unable to communicate with you.
You, as a user of a dating app, are forever in a Nash Equilibrium with the dating app. When you find the love of your life, you delete the app forever. Therefore, everything the app does to help you find that person works directly against their own goals (user growth, “engagement”. subscriptions).
That's why when you first start on any dating service, you're (typically) inundated with activity, so that you can always chase that high, and when you can't get it, you try to pay for it.
Online dating is a tough problem to solve, tougher still when profit incentives misalign with user success incentives! I'm not even sure what an equitable but also successful dating service would look like, because there's this fundamental mismatch in values.
You, as a user of a dating app, are forever in a Nash Equilibrium with the dating app. When you find the love of your life, you delete the app forever. Therefore, everything the app does to help you find that person works directly against their own goals (user growth, “engagement”. subscriptions).
Could you put a lien against someone's marriage, such that in order to marry someone you meet on HappyDating.com you had to pay the outstanding debt?
Anything less extreme?