Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Greensboro Man Creates Dating App Where He's the Only Guy Allowed

wfmynews2.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

181–190 of 416 posts

Re: Greensboro Man Creates Dating App Where He's the Only Guy Allowed

#181

Post by mgamache »

LudwigNagasena wrote: post #52
vbtemp wrote: post #34

I had an idea for a dating app a while back, in which the basic idea is that you pay the service to message someone (above a free weekly limit of say 1 msg). The pricing would be reactive - as popular attractive people get more messages, the more it would cost to message them, growing exponentially in order to limit incoming messages to approx a few a day. Unpopular people who got few messages would have a price that…

Desperate ugly men will crowd out handsome guys who can get laid on Tinder without paying for anything, and you will basically have a service for finding a sugar daddy.

Women still have absolute standards so, no matter how much the desperate ugly guy pays, his odds of success are still low, so the optimal strategy would still be to date around your level, right? Also, maybe the messaging cost goes down for men with high response rates (proving they are attractive).

Re: Greensboro Man Creates Dating App Where He's the Only Guy Allowed

#182

Post by uniquelygeneric »

brenden2 wrote: post #8

I've thought about making a new dating app. The existing apps suck for 2 reasons: in most markets men are at a significant disadvantage because of how men and women differ in the way they approach dating (and there's also a significantly unfair male:female ratio in many markets). Additionally, none of them are really designed to get people off the app, but rather they're built to increase engagement and keep people o…

This already exists in NYC: https://trybounce.com/

Re: Greensboro Man Creates Dating App Where He's the Only Guy Allowed

#183

Post by jessaustin »

mcv wrote: post #102
jdironman wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ironically, that's the opposite effect that it is supposed to have.

There's sadly a big difference between capitalism in theory and in practice. Concentrating a lot of wealth and power in a single entity is going to skew the power balance. I think capitalism might be better off without corporations.

Capitalism, and also every other aspect of human life. People get riled up about peripheral issues like Citizens United, but they're uncomfortable considering the basic problem. Corporations are creations of the state. Their every quality, including their existence, is contingent upon continuous government action to protect and sustain them. Some government somewhere should try just not doing that anymore.

Re: Greensboro Man Creates Dating App Where He's the Only Guy Allowed

#184

Post by tachyonbeam »

mewpmewp2 wrote: post #175
chroem- wrote: post #36

Dating apps are extremely broken, and yet they're almost all owned by a single company: Match Group. I have a suspicion that these apps are left intentionally broken to keep users fruitlessly searching and boost engagement metrics. I can't find a complete list of the companies they've acquired, but last time I checked, Match owns over 20 different apps and dating sites, including Tinder, OkCupid, and Hinge. We really…

What could they do they make them not broken?

Sometimes I don't get notified when people message me on OkCupid and Tinder. That means conversations that may lead to me actually getting a date might end prematurely because of software failure. The question would be whether that's a bug or a feature.

Re: Greensboro Man Creates Dating App Where He's the Only Guy Allowed

#186

Post by firefoxd »

I've been writing a piece on dating apps, friendship app and such, looking deeper into what apps do for their users. The tldr is that we used all the tricks in the box, but we taught users nothing about relationships.

Apps let you swipe, or send messages, or add cool pics. But they don't tell you how to handle another person.

Re: Greensboro Man Creates Dating App Where He's the Only Guy Allowed

#187

Post by user5994461 »

vbtemp wrote: post #34

I had an idea for a dating app a while back, in which the basic idea is that you pay the service to message someone (above a free weekly limit of say 1 msg). The pricing would be reactive - as popular attractive people get more messages, the more it would cost to message them, growing exponentially in order to limit incoming messages to approx a few a day. Unpopular people who got few messages would have a price that…

Besides the challenges mentioned in other comments. This will probably have troubles with ranking new users, how to rank new users before they get tens or a hundred messages?

Little known fact about dating apps is that the churn is pretty high. Users try and leave within a few weeks, or a few months for the most persistent.

Re: Greensboro Man Creates Dating App Where He's the Only Guy Allowed

#188

Post by vbtemp »

tachyonbeam wrote: post #176
abstractbarista wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I absolutely love this idea. Do it. Ignore the grumpies suggesting objectification or privilege. It's a market for attention. Nothing more, nothing less.

Don't you think women would just not use the dating app though? I think most of them enjoy not having to risk approaching guys. It's also known that many women like the ego boost of getting all the attention. I have a hard time seeing how you could convince them to pay to get less attention and force them to make the first move.

They would not have to make the first move -- at least not the attractive ones anyway. They would just be fewer, higher-quality messages. All the cruft and messages that came from guys "firing from the hip" would disappear.

Re: Greensboro Man Creates Dating App Where He's the Only Guy Allowed

#189

Post by adamlett »

hrktb wrote: post #127
derialstrazus wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can see where you're coming from, but I think in practice this is not a great idea. Even if it's not intentional, it's not going to be great publicity when you have an app that shows different women with different price tags. I imagine it's not great either if, on current dating apps, the number of messages women receive becomes public information. The problem here is less that different women cost different prices…

On the other side it must be weird to think that the people reaching to you have gone through an auctioning system and were the ones willing to pay the most. It would be all the weirder for first contact messages for instance.

Yes, I think this is by far the biggest problem here. I’m sure there are some women who would enjoy knowing that only those willing to pay the most, would be able to court them. But I would wager that most women would feel differently. Presumably a dating service finds potential mates who are good personality match, not just who are more willing or able to pay.

Re: Greensboro Man Creates Dating App Where He's the Only Guy Allowed

#190

Post by Pxtl »

derialstrazus wrote: post #50
vbtemp wrote: post #34

I had an idea for a dating app a while back, in which the basic idea is that you pay the service to message someone (above a free weekly limit of say 1 msg). The pricing would be reactive - as popular attractive people get more messages, the more it would cost to message them, growing exponentially in order to limit incoming messages to approx a few a day. Unpopular people who got few messages would have a price that…

I can see where you're coming from, but I think in practice this is not a great idea. Even if it's not intentional, it's not going to be great publicity when you have an app that shows different women with different price tags. I imagine it's not great either if, on current dating apps, the number of messages women receive becomes public information. The problem here is less that different women cost different prices…

There are probably ways you could make it manageable and less morally repugnant.

1) Let people set their own price. Then it's not the platform valuing you, it's how much you value your own time.

2) Provide "auto-pricing" as an optional feature. Use an imaginary unit - call it "stamps" and provide ways to earn "stamps" on the platform besides just buying them.

"How many stamps should it cost for somebody to send you a letter? Or you can use one of our auto-managers - do you want to receive lots of letters or only a few?"

You could still have some kind of invisible credit score under the hood even for users that don't use the auto-pricer - people with good credit get plentiful free stamps.

Then you'd have to get into a whole Google-style graph-based-ranking but for people, which I assume sites like Twitter are already doing under the hood.

Of course, the problem here is that you'd have a plethora of alts to farm free stamps, which would clutter the search list...

Everything is hard.

Post reply on HN