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Never pay for online dating (2010)

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Re: Never pay for online dating (2010)

#341

Post by derefr »

xtracto wrote: post #304
bartimus wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So there's still a void for a dating service to be filled?

Im tempted to make a service where you "deposit" some fee to subscribe, I then return part of the deposit to you on a monthly basis UNTIL you find a match on the site. If/once you find a match, I keep the rest. That should align goals for both the company and the partner seeker. EDIT: I'll be getting interest from the remainder your payment every month, as part of my profit scheme.

That's basically how many old human-labor matchmaking services work, insofar as the matchmaker gets a lump-sum payment at the beginning, and then spends an unbounded amount of labor doing the matchmaking until it works out. The matchmaker is incentivized to make a good match as efficiently as possible, as their profit-margin decreases linearly with the amount of time they spend on each "case."

Re: Never pay for online dating (2010)

#342

Post by vintermann »

carabiner wrote: post #209
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…

Match has turned all of its apps into tinder. That is, gambling-like "one more swipe" photo centric dating apps, where the artificial restriction of choice keeps every person starved. Tinder is casual hookups, okcupid is leftist tinder for relationships, Hinge is politically moderate tinder for traditionalists, and so on. Each is a different marketing segment, but the same basic idea that gets men to pay to meet wome…

Sounds like the same trend we se in other social media, which is that as soon as there's something new which against the odds has broken through, everyone rushes to copy it - the reason both YouTube and Facebook are pushing shorts so aggressively now.

Re: Never pay for online dating (2010)

#343

Post by londons_explore »

tkk23 wrote: post #340
karpierz wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This model ignores a key incentive: dating apps that don't successfully match won't be used. So at best, the developer is incentivized to have the user find someone to date in the short term and have the relationship fail in a manner that doesn't reflect poorly on the dating site. And it's not really feasible for the dating site distinguish between "will successfully date for a few months" and "will successfully date…

Have you considered the network effect? Users can't switch if there is no competitor with possible matches.

There is also a network effect for data. A dating site with few users doesn't collect much data, so can't train an ML algorithm to do a good job of showing you interesting matches.

Re: Never pay for online dating (2010)

#344

Post by no_time »

somedude895 wrote: post #123
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…

Back when I was on Tinder I'd delete my profile and make a new one once every three months or so, seemed to do the trick.

I'm very suprised they are not using face tracking and/or device fingerprinting to thwart this.

Re: Never pay for online dating (2010)

#345

Post by btbuildem »

xtracto wrote: post #304
bartimus wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So there's still a void for a dating service to be filled?

Im tempted to make a service where you "deposit" some fee to subscribe, I then return part of the deposit to you on a monthly basis UNTIL you find a match on the site. If/once you find a match, I keep the rest. That should align goals for both the company and the partner seeker. EDIT: I'll be getting interest from the remainder your payment every month, as part of my profit scheme.

I like the alignment of incentives here, but "match" would have to be defined better. If it's a literal match (mutual like) it would effectively be a per-pay-like and wouldn't work. Maybe something along the lines of "matched, chatted, met, stopped using the app for X period of time"?

Re: Never pay for online dating (2010)

#346

Post by btbuildem »

bartimus wrote: post #293
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…

So there's still a void for a dating service to be filled?

From an end-user perspective? Desperately so.

I think the biggest obstacle to solving the Dating App problem is the onboarding.

Re: Never pay for online dating (2010)

#347

Post by concordDance »

pksebben wrote: post #251
mpweiher wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're not surveys, and that's exactly the point. Surveys reveal how people claim to behave, which may nor not be how they actually think they behave, which may or may not be how they actually behave. If they were surveys, your criticism would be valid. Instead, this was about how people actually behave, so neither fooling themselves nor others.

whether it's a survey or not is a straw man, and you know it. it's bad faith to argue along these lines given that the primary criticism leveled was regarding sampling. if you want to back up your point, speak to that. how does this show anything about the ~99% of people who have never used okcupid? on what grounds do you believe okcupid to be a representative sample?

Do we have reasons to think the non representativeness would have been relevant to these conclusions?

Re: Never pay for online dating (2010)

#349

Post by mattmaroon »

edude03 wrote: post #319
mattmaroon wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The number of men with the attitude that the problem couldn’t possibly be the way they use the apps is astounding. A female friend of mine took some very expensive online dating class run by a former data scientist from one of these apps and she started her own side business fixing mens profiles. I was very skeptical at first but I have several friends who’ve used her. Each of them went from basically no success at a…

Was it Logan Ury? If so I think that’s part of a much more complicated and nuanced discussion on self worth, self reflection, knowing what you want etc more than anything specific to “apps”

I think the teacher of the class was female but I’m not certain! Honestly I’ve seen some of the profile transformations she’s done and they’re good. They got great results. And there’s nothing magical about them, just some good insights.

Re: Never pay for online dating (2010)

#350

Post by vintermann »

skyyler wrote: post #217
auveair wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is simply not true. I removed the point about today since I haven't been dating in a few years, but I stand by the 2010 comment, you could find a few female stars being openly bisexual for example but it was incredibly rare for male stars, which is indicative of how hot it was perceived at the time.

My lived experience just completely disagrees with what you are saying. Perhaps it's an age difference thing. The gay men have had more of a problem with me than the straight ladies. I gravitate towards bi/pan people anyways due to my androgynous features.

No personal experiences here, but I observe that k-pop stars are more popular than ever and that yaoi is a thing. I believe you.
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