Unrelated, but I'm thinking about using one or more dating sites. Which ones do people here use, and what are your thoughts/observations?
Match.com Used Fake Ads to Swindle Users, F.T.C. Says
201–210 of 508 posts
Re: Match.com Used Fake Ads to Swindle Users, F.T.C. Says
#202Years ago, I briefly consulted for a dating website and fundamentally their business model is broken and their incentives are completely misaligned with the users': https://caseysoftware.com/blog/working-for-a-dating-website
That was a good read. > Even when you are paying for the product, you may still be the product.. Damn ... can you think of any other segment where this works as well? From my experience, most fraudulent businesses seem to be with one time customers.
Re: Match.com Used Fake Ads to Swindle Users, F.T.C. Says
#203First and foremost: No matter how hard they try to hide it, the male/female balance on all straight dating sites is completely off. I'd say it's about 80% male. So most of them fill with fake accounts to get the balance backs.
The matching algorithms don't really exist, they are extremely primitive and usually optimised for engagement. All services show you a whole load of super attractive people on the first use (either fake or just popular profiles), only at the second day of use you get to the real profiles.
Due to the imbalance and fake accounts, as a male you rarely get response on messages. Most men just give up after a while and start to spam generic pickup lines to just about every profile. Woman get loads of messages per day and stop responding. It's vicious circle. As a male, it becomes very difficult to stand out if you are actually interested in someone.
The marketing is optimised badly towards your emotions (loneliness or sexual drive), I regularly got email messages where they "urgently need men to sign up for the next dating event, because only woman have applied so far". One of the services send me a total of 8 (!) reminder emails after I cancelled my subscription, that suddenly all these photo models were trying to send me a match request but couldn't because my account was closed.
I like meeting new people but online dating just raises my anxiety and frustration. I don't think this can be 'disrupted' either, it's just a terrible business to be in since the incentives are completely misaligned.
Re: Match.com Used Fake Ads to Swindle Users, F.T.C. Says
#204Earlier quoted context omitted.
It would be nice to have a dating site where potential matches were verified, including height, weight, and photo. Perhaps have them visit a kiosk in a participating business to get a photo taken from a standard angle (no "myspace" angles) along with a verified height and weight (stand on a scale!)
potential matches were verified, including height, weight I am happily married now (met my wife through a mutual friend, the old fashioned way) so my experience of online dating may be obsolete but women on dating sites tend to be very specific about their partner’s height. And income, and what car he drives and a big shopping list of mainly physical and materialistic traits. If you could verify all of that you might…
but its so bad now because women are competing for the top 5% of men who are like models and everyone else gets no response
Re: Match.com Used Fake Ads to Swindle Users, F.T.C. Says
#205Earlier quoted context omitted.
It would be nice to have a dating site where potential matches were verified, including height, weight, and photo. Perhaps have them visit a kiosk in a participating business to get a photo taken from a standard angle (no "myspace" angles) along with a verified height and weight (stand on a scale!)
I see you're getting downvoted, which is funny because I've proposed the same idea on HN a few times and a lot of people thought it was a good idea. Maybe the weight thing isn't necessary with everything else in play, but otherwise I think this is something that should be tried. Yet nobody has bitten. Perhaps that means it's either not viable or of interest to investors.
Re: Match.com Used Fake Ads to Swindle Users, F.T.C. Says
#206Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is people misrepresenting themselves something you encounter frequently? Seems like a short sighted move.
There was a really good OkCupid blog post that analyzed their member profiles and found that men that were 5’10” and 5’11” would round up to 6’. It was a pretty significant portion of them, too.
Re: Match.com Used Fake Ads to Swindle Users, F.T.C. Says
#207I've tried a number of dating websites in the past year, and all of them are like this. First and foremost: No matter how hard they try to hide it, the male/female balance on all straight dating sites is completely off. I'd say it's about 80% male. So most of them fill with fake accounts to get the balance backs. The matching algorithms don't really exist, they are extremely primitive and usually optimised for engage…
It's more like most women will go for 20% of the men. If you're part of the 80% you'll feel alone. As an experiment just make a fake profile with some model's picture to discover how many women are around.
Re: Match.com Used Fake Ads to Swindle Users, F.T.C. Says
#208I've tried a number of dating websites in the past year, and all of them are like this. First and foremost: No matter how hard they try to hide it, the male/female balance on all straight dating sites is completely off. I'd say it's about 80% male. So most of them fill with fake accounts to get the balance backs. The matching algorithms don't really exist, they are extremely primitive and usually optimised for engage…
Tinder disrupted the online dating scene by introducing the feature that you can only write someone after you've liked their profile, AND they've liked yours.
That makes a huge difference, and solves the spam problem.
Re: Match.com Used Fake Ads to Swindle Users, F.T.C. Says
#209I've tried a number of dating websites in the past year, and all of them are like this. First and foremost: No matter how hard they try to hide it, the male/female balance on all straight dating sites is completely off. I'd say it's about 80% male. So most of them fill with fake accounts to get the balance backs. The matching algorithms don't really exist, they are extremely primitive and usually optimised for engage…