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Never pay for online dating (2010)

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Re: Never pay for online dating (2010)

#41

Post by tromp »

VBprogrammer wrote: post #20
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 wonder if there is an alternative business model which would put users and the business on the same side. Could you put a lien against someone's marriage, such that in order to marry someone you meet on HappyDating.com you had to pay the outstanding debt? Anything less extreme?

A subscription that converts to free membership after n years.

Re: Never pay for online dating (2010)

#42

Post by Bakary »

lake_vincent wrote: post #35
changoplatanero wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

can you explain more?

Their motto is that their app is "meant to be deleted." They don't want to you stay on it, but they DO want you to tell all your single friends about it. Hinge's free tier is absolutely excellent and I have gotten multiple dates, as well as a girlfriend, without paying a cent. What's the catch, you may ask? As with most dating apps, let's just say that if you don't have a "highly competitive" profile, you will strugg…

AFAIK from past discussions on here, the Hinge model is to make it harder with people with a low Elo on the app, and to provide them with more fine-grained options to pay to boost their chances ("roses" etc.)

If you have a higher than average Elo, it will seem like having a free lunch. But that's because it's fueled by someone else's desperation at being caught in low Elo feedback loop early.

You then have high Elos who cycle through the app quickly and don't pay, and the rest who cycle more slowly and are more likely to pay during their time there.

Re: Never pay for online dating (2010)

#43

Post by golergka »

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).

> When you find the love of your life, you delete the app forever.

That's true only for users who have this goal.

Re: Never pay for online dating (2010)

#44

Post by yellow_lead »

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).

Not if you're poly or something (just saying)

Re: Never pay for online dating (2010)

#45

Post by soylentcola »

bryan0 wrote: post #11
geraldwhen wrote: post #2

I paid for OkCupid to get advanced filters to find my wife, shortly after this article was written. I paid for a single month of premium back in the day. So this article is odd.

Yup I paid for online dating around when this article was written and it was one of the best decisions of my life!

I also used OkC and some others around that time period, and they struck me as both less expensive and a little less cynically "pay to win" (to use the gaming terminology). I recall it was more like paying $5-8 for a month's worth of better filters and being able to see who checked out your profile - something fairly useful since it may show you someone who's already at least somewhat interested and hadn't already come across your radar.

When I did online dating again a year or so ago, it seemed both more expensive and more blatantly creepy (pay to "like" the most in-demand people! yech...)

The one nice thing was realizing quickly that what they were charging for in 2021 wasn't something I wanted to pay for, so I could safely skip it. Even without paying a dime, I found Hinge to be a useful way to meet people and go on dates that were largely fun and a mostly decent experience. Currently involved with someone I met there a year ago and haven't used the apps since then.

Re: Never pay for online dating (2010)

#46

Post by geraldwhen »

300bps wrote: post #13
geraldwhen wrote: post #2

I paid for OkCupid to get advanced filters to find my wife, shortly after this article was written. I paid for a single month of premium back in the day. So this article is odd.

You have a great response to the headline! The article though gives details of what they see as the problem: forcing people to pay to allow communicating means that well over 90% of profiles on their systems are just filler and unable to communicate with you.

And had those filler profiles not existed maybe I wouldn’t have joined. But at least when I paid, specifically for OkCupid, the premium filters let me find real people.

Re: Never pay for online dating (2010)

#47

Post by wzdd »

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).

> works directly against their own goals (user growth, “engagement”. subscriptions).

... success stories, marriages per day due to the app (as per Match.com's advertising material in the article), word of mouth advertisement for the app to your friends...? Again, from the article, even in 2011 match.com was proudly reporting that its active user base changed out every six months. So the "dating apps don't want you to find someone perfect" narrative strikes me as a little simplistic.

On the other hand, plenty of people use dating apps like Bumble and Tinder to find hook-ups, not the love of their life. These people will keep coming back to the app as a result of being frequently successful.

Re: Never pay for online dating (2010)

#48

Post by [deleted] »

houstonn wrote: post #28
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…

More Orwellian still, they edited articles that contained data inconvenient to the politically correct narrative and elite ideology. Edit: Here's an example. “I’m bisexual.” REALITY: 80% of self-identified bisexuals are only interested in one gender. People who describe themselves as bisexual overwhelmingly message either one sex or the other, not both as you might expect. https://web.archive.org/web/20170307114207/h…

[deleted]

Re: Never pay for online dating (2010)

#49

Post by jimbokun »

idealmedtech wrote: post #15

The problem really happens when you do algorithmic price setting, which incentivizes you as the developer to get people addicted to the experience of swiping, regardless of whether or not the swiping has the desired outcome for the end user. A user base with just the right levels of dopamine from interactions and loneliness will probably end up buying one of the weekly promotional deals. That's why when you first sta…

> That's why when you first start on any dating service, you're (typically) inundated with activity, so that you can always chase that high, and when you can't get it, you try to pay for it.

It's striking how the business model is indistinguishable from how cocaine dealers were described to us as kids in the 80s.

Re: Never pay for online dating (2010)

#50

Post by rglullis »

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).

Tinder and OkCupid are not in the "I want to find a partner for life" demographic, they are in the "we give you a constant stream of hookup connections" business.
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