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The Future of Online Dating Is Unsexy and Brutally Effective

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Re: The Future of Online Dating Is Unsexy and Brutally Effective

#41
One of the problems with this idea is that it kind of paints you into a corner. It doesn't allow you to aspire to be the person you desire to be. It predicts that who you are is static and then it helps make that a reality.

During my divorce, I intentionally sought to not allow past relationship data to influence whom I hooked up with.* I had been with four people. Three of them were blonde. Three of them were born within a few weeks of me. All four of them were either in the military at the time or joined it later (because we were both just 17).

I didn't hate the man I was divorcing. I didn't think I had missed by much on finding a great match for me. I was trying to figure out how to sort the wheat from the chaff.

For me, a dating app that said "You clearly like blondes. Here are all the blondes." would have been the exact opposite of what I wanted. I wanted to make personal connections that were not biased by shallow details of that sort. I succeeded in that goal and it was a growth experience.

So, to my mind, a dating app that would be this thorough is the dating equivalent of redlining colored communities and not approving mortgages there. I say that because one of the issues was that I had been molested as a child. So, my feeling is that if you limit future relationships based on passed behavior, you are saying that you are 100% fine with painting abuse survivors into a corner they can never, ever escape. And that doesn't sit well with me.

I generally like to give life room to surprise me. I have gone out of my way to let men surprise me with being better people than my bad past experiences led me to believe I could find in men. The last thing I want is someone or something essentially telling me "So, we hear you like abusive men who will shit on you. Here are your matches."

Yeah, no. I never asked for that. But finding my way out of it has been a long, strange journey because, seriously, society doesn't yet have a good play book for how on earth you do that. So, you very much have to roll your own.

* http://micheleincalifornia.blogspot.com/2015/10/reducing-bia...

Re: The Future of Online Dating Is Unsexy and Brutally Effective

#42
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're right, but I think you're overly simplifying the problem by ignoring the alternatives. At one end of the spectrum, insurance companies, or dating apps, have essentially no data. So every person is charged equally, which I think is unfair (some might disagree). To improve, companies collect data via a questionnaire. The obvious problem is people lie -- often unintentionally. The next step is to use genuine data…

> The next step is to use genuine data. Or the way the world is going the next step is a startup that sells an arm that tricks smart watches into thinking they are on a human arm that is exercising regularly...

Sure, or when your doctor asks, "how much alcohol do you drink each week?" you answer, "not much -- maybe a glass of wine on Friday and Saturday."

Re: The Future of Online Dating Is Unsexy and Brutally Effective

#43
post #9

> Already, some apps do this by learning patterns in who we left and right swipe on, the same way Netflix makes recommendations from the movies we’ve liked in the past. Netflix recommendations are utterly bad. Musk et al. warn us constantly about "AI" and its dangers, but so far AI doesn't seem to work very well. Translating from Italian to English with Google Translate results in complete gibberish; Amazon (the othe…

Yeah, I can't think of any service that appears to actually do anything useful to me with all the data they've been collecting. Netflix recommendations are awful (one reason I recently canceled my account), Amazon recommendations are pretty hit and miss, YouTube makes some good suggestions but they are dominated by channels I'm either subscribed to or have watched a lot of recently. OkCupid for all their talk of data analytics seemed to have very questionable match percentages. Facebook fails horribly at putting interesting things in my feed. For all the hype around big data and AI there's a serious dearth of really good applications.

Re: The Future of Online Dating Is Unsexy and Brutally Effective

#44
post #9

> Already, some apps do this by learning patterns in who we left and right swipe on, the same way Netflix makes recommendations from the movies we’ve liked in the past. Netflix recommendations are utterly bad. Musk et al. warn us constantly about "AI" and its dangers, but so far AI doesn't seem to work very well. Translating from Italian to English with Google Translate results in complete gibberish; Amazon (the othe…

Musk's hype of AI is just marketing.

Musk's "hype" of AI? He says we should be scared of it.

Re: The Future of Online Dating Is Unsexy and Brutally Effective

#45
post #10

Dating apps/sites that employ the strategy of "get as much data as possible and match intelligently" have failed to compete for users against Tinder, the dumbest, simplest dating app that hardly does any intelligent matching at all. This implies that it's not the sophistication of a dating app that matters, it's the simplicity and ability to attract a userbase that in turn attracts a larger userbase etc in a virtuous…

For dating sites, the userbase is pretty much the only thing that matters.

Re: The Future of Online Dating Is Unsexy and Brutally Effective

#46
post #3

To me the frightening thing is that people seem to be unable to differentiate between no data and the negative case. For example * No Fitbit data == "You're inactive * No Open source github commits == "you dont like code" * Few Facebook friends == "you dont have friends" * Few Instagram posts == "You dont do anything"

It won't be long before "No Twitter, no Facebook, no Instagram, no Snapchat, no G+, no nothing" will translate to " a catch " in dating app terms: someone with whom to share life as we know it, not as we want others to think we live it. Then again, maybe I'm overestimating the intelligence (or integrity) of dating app purveyors. After all, 'real' people are so hard to monetise...

I fear such a person (I am one of them) would more likely be tagged as a serial killer than a catch.

Re: The Future of Online Dating Is Unsexy and Brutally Effective

#47
post #40
post #10

Dating apps/sites that employ the strategy of "get as much data as possible and match intelligently" have failed to compete for users against Tinder, the dumbest, simplest dating app that hardly does any intelligent matching at all. This implies that it's not the sophistication of a dating app that matters, it's the simplicity and ability to attract a userbase that in turn attracts a larger userbase etc in a virtuous…

Also, for dating sites in particular, doing an excellent job of matching can be bad for business. Successful matches, especially for users seeking long-term monogamous relationships, mean they stop paying for your service. This is most extreme for the services that are practically marriage brokers, and that's where y ou see the "lots of data" approach most often. At the other extreme, apps like Grindr and to a slight…

Does that argument really hold water?

I'd argue that the market of 'people who are dating' isn't going to be dramatically affected by any particular company, and probably not even by online dating in general. They would have to be stupendously effective at creating long-term monogamous relationships to really move the needle there.

Marriage rates have been declining for decades, and serial monogamy seems to be growing (can't find good quantification of that). Successful dating services don't necessarily cannibalize their market.

My intuition is that providing an effective and enjoyable experience is going to provide far greater returns by gaining market share in a relatively inelastic market.

Re: The Future of Online Dating Is Unsexy and Brutally Effective

#48
post #10

Dating apps/sites that employ the strategy of "get as much data as possible and match intelligently" have failed to compete for users against Tinder, the dumbest, simplest dating app that hardly does any intelligent matching at all. This implies that it's not the sophistication of a dating app that matters, it's the simplicity and ability to attract a userbase that in turn attracts a larger userbase etc in a virtuous…

Tinder is doing a lot more intelligent matching than you think. The CTO of OKCupid (which is owned by the same parent company) was on a podcast a few weeks ago where he briefly discussed some of the algorithmic challenges of Tinder. They include: - it may not seem like it, but Tinder does try to pick people it thinks are most likely to produce a match, based on-- to be brutally honest-- your attractiveness (as determ…

Maybe he missed out on some of the other important things Tinder does on the "addiction" side of things.

When the app first came out (or possibly when you first start using it), the first person is/was always a match. Then they got clever about hiding matches deeper in the swipes.

This triggers addictive behaviour because the "match" reward is inconsistent. Though, clearly, before you start swiping, Tinder knows which matches it is going to present to you. It's a delicate balance to judge how long you will spend swiping, when to show you your match and how to make sure you swipe right a few times to keep the funnel loaded.

Re: The Future of Online Dating Is Unsexy and Brutally Effective

#49
post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, for dating sites in particular, doing an excellent job of matching can be bad for business. Successful matches, especially for users seeking long-term monogamous relationships, mean they stop paying for your service. This is most extreme for the services that are practically marriage brokers, and that's where y ou see the "lots of data" approach most often. At the other extreme, apps like Grindr and to a slight…

Does that argument really hold water? I'd argue that the market of 'people who are dating' isn't going to be dramatically affected by any particular company, and probably not even by online dating in general. They would have to be stupendously effective at creating long-term monogamous relationships to really move the needle there. Marriage rates have been declining for decades, and serial monogamy seems to be growin…

> Successful dating services don't necessarily cannibalize their market.

GP is clearly not suggesting that a dating service can be so effective that it depletes the market of single people. They're suggesting that a successful dating service won't retain customers, insofar as customers who find their life partner no longer need dates.

Re: The Future of Online Dating Is Unsexy and Brutally Effective

#50
post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Musk's hype of AI is just marketing.

Musk's "hype" of AI? He says we should be scared of it.

He started a company to research making friendly AI, so he wants you to be scared of AI that isn't his.
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