Never pay for online dating (2010) • Hacker News Board

Re: Never pay for online dating (2010)

#321

Post by Seattle3503 » Tue, Oct 11, 2022, 6:03 PM UTC

k__ wrote: post #54

troupe wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure I understand what you are saying about A/B or how hallways fit into online dating.

My girlfriend once got a message on OKCupid, that she was categorized into the group of especially popular people. I contacted the staff, but never found out what this meant in the end.

Was this a poly/open relationship? I've heard women in those arrangements are perceived as easy. Doesn't really make sense when you consider the fact they already have someone and aren't in any rush.

Re: Never pay for online dating (2010)

#322

Post by onetimeusename » Tue, Oct 11, 2022, 6:04 PM UTC

romankolpak wrote: post #82

Related personal anecdote: I am experimenting with Tinder subscription at the moment, and it feels incredibly exploitative. When you make a profile, matches are frequent and you can tell that you show up for people. However it gradually falls down with time, and the only predictable and obvious way to get back up is to pay for Boosts and/or Priority Likes. Right now my 6-month old profile gets ZERO likes outside of t…

ya. I pay about $100 per month over a few apps and if you read the sales pages it's clear they deliberately disable useful features if you don't pay so you are paying to have an "enhanced experience". That alone should suggest they don't really have a value proposition for your life. Maybe that's because they don't want to be sued by promising to sell relationship success. But they keep user statistics secret and I suspect that is because the statistics would tell the truth about what they sell. I have had a bad experience but I don't think HN is the the place to talk about it.

Re: Never pay for online dating (2010)

#323

Post by valarauko » Tue, Oct 11, 2022, 6:07 PM UTC

notch656a wrote: post #247

kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only if you've hit the genetic jackpot.

I've always wondered if online dating selects HARD (relatively to in-person invites) for looks. I don't look very pretty but when I was on the (IRL) dating scene I could get probably half the women I talked to out on a date if I really tried. Being fairly ugly I tried tender and OkCupid for a year or two and was lucky to have someone accept once every few months and I had a 100% no-show rate where the counterparty ba…

> I've always wondered if online dating selects HARD (relatively to in-person invites) for looks.

I think it does, since it's the primary determinant of selection. I also find that in-person personality can be more attractive, unlike profiles where you have fewer dimensions to go on. Likewise, I do think certain types of people do better online and some do better offline.

Re: Never pay for online dating (2010)

#324

Post by revolutukr » Tue, Oct 11, 2022, 6:09 PM UTC

jefftk wrote: post #12

OkCupid was bought by Match Group (who run almost all online dating sites, including Match, eHarmony, and Tinder) in 2011 and took down this post not long after. 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/we…

No post body was provided.

Re: Never pay for online dating (2010)

#325

Post by yamazakiwi » Tue, Oct 11, 2022, 6:10 PM UTC

bitwize wrote: post #150

bearjaws wrote: post #102

They also had an amazing blog post about how dating profiles came down to ~85% how attractive you are (both men and women). Most people look at 3-4 images and pass, this probably was the inspiration for Tinder. One example of this was personality score, which they ended up removing. "In short, according to our users, “looks” and “personality” were the same thing". In this example it was just a profile picture with no…

The inspiration for Tinder was Grindr, an app for gay men. Gotta hand it to gay men, they're pretty honest about what they're looking for.

I find the bad attitude of "Must be: 6 foot, 6 pack, 6 figures" very minimal on Grindr. I'm guessing because if that's what you actually want you can find it easily, and after being rejected enough you're more likely to adjust your bad attitude.

Most gays I know don't use grindr anymore however.

Re: Never pay for online dating (2010)

#326

Post by hackermailman » Tue, Oct 11, 2022, 6:14 PM UTC

Sohcahtoa82 wrote: post #89

cupofpython wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

only if they are the only dating app around. if not, then having a reputation for actually matching people well will bring more people to the app and generate more revenue than you would ever get from a small amount of desperate customers. Of course, matching people well is hard - so any model that isnt good at that will be better off trying to game their customers and brute force their marketing. (for example, if th…

> Of course, matching people well is hard I thought OKCupid did a great job. The second person I had a conversation with ended up becoming my wife. I really liked how OKCupid had a seemingly never-ending set of personality questions. You could answer none of them, or you could answer 100 of them, and the more you answered, the more confidence it had in its matching. You would even flag the importance of each question…

The questions were easily manipulated, so I would find someone I liked, changed all my answers so we would be either 96% match or lowest as possible because I would always get interest from them when they discovered who viewed them with the lowest score, usually they would send a message 'hey we are supposed to be enemies' which led to dates.

They were community made questions so often very vague and not very reliable, another attempt would work if someone remade that feature with user voting maybe on best questions

Re: Never pay for online dating (2010)

#327

Post by danjoredd » Tue, Oct 11, 2022, 6:15 PM UTC

phpthrowaway99 wrote: post #178

I once googled the screen name of a Plenty of Fish date I had setup. Exact match comes up on a 'weird' forum, with city and state matching in the info under the username. One fake account later (required to view attachments), I saw pictures of her dog doing her in... Uh... various ways. I stopped online dating for like 5 years after that.

That's a nightmare. She should be sent to prison for that, tbh.

Not nearly as extreme, but last time I tried Online dating I messaged someone and found out she was only looking for someone to get her pregnant and be a father. Straight up, first thing, not interested in a first date unless I was interested in getting her pregnant.

I'm Christian so sex outside of marriage is a huge no-no for me anyway, so unmatching was not a hard decision even though she was attractive.

Re: Never pay for online dating (2010)

#328

Post by tromp » Tue, Oct 11, 2022, 6:22 PM UTC

actionablefiber wrote: post #316

wolpoli wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But then that's not a stable SaaS business.

There's a pretty reliable flow of new people aging into the dating world or entering it for the first time. In any event, "pay a regular subscription for X years and free thereafter" is just a lifetime subscription paid in installments, not a fundamentally different business model.

It seems different. You may no longer need the service after a few mnonths. Or decide you don't like the service, and look for another one. In either case, you pay far less than what you'd pay for lifetime service.

Re: Never pay for online dating (2010)

#329

Post by onetimeusename » Tue, Oct 11, 2022, 6:23 PM UTC

EmilyHughes wrote: post #62

I don't get it. Why does no government anywhere run a non-profit dating site from tax-payer money when this is becoming the most popular way people are meeting? All the options people have are using toxic apps which entire business model is to undermine the self-esteem of young men and scamming them out of their money. And then people wonder where the mental health problems and mass shootings come from. I really don'…

I don't know about the mass shootings being linked to dating apps but I thought about this too.

I think the fundamental problem is that more men always sign up on these apps than women. That would be true of a government app also. It seems like this ruins the experience for both men and women alike. I am speculating here because we don't really know much about how these apps work since no one releases their user data. But women I have talked to complain about married men, copy-pasted pickup lines, and men treating women like prostitutes. With my own experience men complain about fake accounts, having to do all the effort and getting nothing for it, and for both, meeting people, going on dates, and then after you've become attracted to each other you find out how deeply damaged and incompatible the other person is because they hid all their baggage.

A lot of this just seems like it's exacerbated by the use of an app. I think the apps drive decent people away. This is all speculation.

I somewhat think the whole proposition of online dating was doomed to fail. I don't know if a non profit/government office could fix this leaving aside how politics could affect it.

Re: Never pay for online dating (2010)

#330

Post by afarrell » Tue, Oct 11, 2022, 6:28 PM UTC

teeray wrote: post #9

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).

I've long had an idea for an app that helped you be a better boyfriend/husband by helping you plan dates and find good ideas for dates in your city like museums, great restaurants, concerts, etc.