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What really happens inside a dating app

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Re: What really happens inside a dating app

#201

Post by AnthonyMouse »

eloisius wrote: post #198
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> many women won't end up liking anyone. The implication being that the 60th percentile women who don't like 60th percentile men would have liked 95th percentile men. But that's useless, because finding matches for those men was never your problem to begin with. And those men are also going to match with 95th percentile women and then choose them over the 60th percentile women anyway unless they're only looking for a…

> And those men are also going to match with 95th percentile women and then choose them over the 60th percentile women anyway unless they're only looking for a hookup That’s exactly what happens. Those guys have plenty of hookup opportunities, and the women have the mirage of being able to get any guy, just for some reason all these jerks only want sex, but somehow someday one will stick

Which is why you need to take away the mirage so they stop chasing it and go find actual water.

Having them leave the app isn't any worse than having them never like anyone they could actually land. Having the ones with impossible standards go malign your competitors could even be to your advantage, because then the competing apps get a higher proportion of the women who never reply, whereas the thing you need to make your app work is to have the women who do reply.

Re: What really happens inside a dating app

#202

Post by AnthonyMouse »

eloisius wrote: post #197
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It does imply a potentially interesting algorithm though: Show all of the women to all of the men. From this you get numbers on which women are the most highly rated. Then, show women a) men who are at the same percentile as them or below and b) the smaller number of men who have already liked them. The result is that 60th percentile women end up primarily liking 60th percentile men and so on, because they're the hig…

This only works in a vacuum. In the real world women will just close your app and open the one that has hot guys. I do wonder what would happen if you told people their own ranking and the ranking of their recommendations plainly though.

The only way to find out if it will show them hot guys is by using it for a while, at which point they'll already have liked some normal guys. Who then reply to them and aren't all pickup artists and make them want to keep using this app instead of the one that only matches them with polygamous himbos.

Re: What really happens inside a dating app

#204

Post by kylehotchkiss »

jumploops wrote: post #118

We built a dating app and saw these same metrics. Our "twist" was that anyone could be a matchmaker, pairing other people (in addition to our recommendation engine). An interesting thing happened: lot's of people just like using dating apps in a voyeuristic way, with no intention of dating. Tinder eventually launched this feature, but it fell flat. I still think there's merit to human-based recs over "AI" matchmakers…

That makes me think of the in-person introductions my older friends have tried to arrange for me. It was a thoughtful gesture but really not a lot of consideration of what I would consider attractive.

Re: What really happens inside a dating app

#205

Post by kylehotchkiss »

bawolff wrote: post #95

Equal parts fascinating and dystopian. I'm even more convinced now that online dating has reached a local optima, but eventually someone is going to find a solution that is less shallow and predatory and blow it out of the water.

Living by yourself is becoming increasingly regular and marriage is sharply declining amongst people who didn’t attend college. I don’t think software is gonna fix this.

Re: What really happens inside a dating app

#206

Post by dash2 »

ggm wrote: post #189
dash2 wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the advice had been "Boys: lower your standards, girls: pay a photographer" I wonder if you'd have said "guys just get to be dawgs, women have to spend money to beautify themselves".

I very much might have. Everyone brings their own bias to the table. But, remember the asymmetry in this space is large. The asymmetry of risk, of expectations, of outcome. It doesn't go to what you project as a hypothetical, it goes to the one I responded to. If you can show me a dating app with the right dynamics to demand the response you hypothesized, we can see how the numbers pan out. The one we have, it's the…

My view is it's mostly human nature not cultural bias. Sex differences in mating are cross-cultural (Donald Buss has done a lot on this). Whether either side can be said to be "disadvantaged" is a bit of a hard one. Compared to what hypothetical, and what's the measure of disadvantage? Having to hire a photographer seems like a bigger disadvantage than just lowering your standards: it costs money.

Re: What really happens inside a dating app

#207

Post by surfpel »

jameslk wrote: post #21

> The likelihood to like and exchange inside homosexual groups is much higher than in heterosexual ones. > The like ratio of a girl is almost independent of the profiles she sees. For example, if a girl has a like ratio of 5% and you remove 50% of the profiles, even if you remove only the profiles she will not like, her like ratio will still be 5% These two statements sound like they would be at odds. It seems either…

> I will mostly ignore homosexual interactions.

Re: What really happens inside a dating app

#208

Post by eloisius »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #201
eloisius wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And those men are also going to match with 95th percentile women and then choose them over the 60th percentile women anyway unless they're only looking for a hookup That’s exactly what happens. Those guys have plenty of hookup opportunities, and the women have the mirage of being able to get any guy, just for some reason all these jerks only want sex, but somehow someday one will stick

Which is why you need to take away the mirage so they stop chasing it and go find actual water. Having them leave the app isn't any worse than having them never like anyone they could actually land. Having the ones with impossible standards go malign your competitors could even be to your advantage, because then the competing apps get a higher proportion of the women who never reply, whereas the thing you need to mak…

Yeah I guess. If we could get Trump to nuke Tinder or something I don’t know that I’d loudly oppose it. It would be better for all of us for that mirage to go away, but the fact is women choose it. They do land the guy occasionally. Only it turns into a situationship, hot-cold, disappearing and coming back later, the illusion of him just slipping through her grasp (even if there was no chance at a real relationship from the start). I’ve watched as female friends have gone through it over and over. You wanna say something, but at the same time, we all have our delusions, and it’s especially hard to be real with yourself when an addictive slot machine makes money from your remaining deluded.

Re: What really happens inside a dating app

#209

Post by wavemode »

dash2 wrote: post #185

Turns out even highly motivated professionals don't understand that correlation is not causality: > For girls, it is the number of likes sent; the number of likes received has no impact on retention, maybe a little bit but less than 1%. The number of likes sent has a huge impact; a user that liked no profile in her 100 first scrolls has a d30 of 12%, and 19% for girls that like 10 profiles and 16% for girls that like…

If you read the article, it is very clear that the author understands that this correlation is not causation. He points out numerous times that the thing which causes girls to send likes is that their feed contains attractive men.

Re: What really happens inside a dating app

#210

Post by surfpel »

dash2 wrote: post #206
ggm wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I very much might have. Everyone brings their own bias to the table. But, remember the asymmetry in this space is large. The asymmetry of risk, of expectations, of outcome. It doesn't go to what you project as a hypothetical, it goes to the one I responded to. If you can show me a dating app with the right dynamics to demand the response you hypothesized, we can see how the numbers pan out. The one we have, it's the…

My view is it's mostly human nature not cultural bias. Sex differences in mating are cross-cultural (Donald Buss has done a lot on this). Whether either side can be said to be "disadvantaged" is a bit of a hard one. Compared to what hypothetical, and what's the measure of disadvantage? Having to hire a photographer seems like a bigger disadvantage than just lowering your standards: it costs money.

> Having to hire a photographer seems like a bigger disadvantage than just lowering your standards: it costs money.

The opportunity cost of entering a relationship with someone lower in your ranking system is to forego a relationship with someone higher in that system down the line. It makes sense to err on the side of picky if there's a tangible 'gain' to it, purely strategically speaking.

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