You should likely run this idea past a few women. The typical reason they want to converse before meeting is security: Meeting strangers is dangerous and they want to "sniff test" to see if it is safe enough to even go that far.
Your app idea largely seems to exist to solve issues men have with dating apps but it doesn't really address why women avoid them/prefer direct social interaction.
That never worked out well for me: I'm a person of words, and while I really do want to meet, I'm unlikely to click with somebody who doesn't love conversation enough to chat before that. So I stopped meeting women who weren't interesting online; it seemed that the hope that they might be interesting in person never panned out. I hope they met somebody more to their taste.
Meeting strangers is dangerous, but if you arrange it in a public place, that's reasonably safe. And probably at least as good as trying to feel out whether they're dangerous via chat.
I guess it's just a lingering bias that makes us think "dating app people are creepy" even though today the people you meet in a bar are probably all on dating apps too.
Consider the "social contract" of both situations.
With the bar situation you can literally leave immediately with no social expectation that you should have to interact with that person again.
With the "date" typically they're alone (i.e. she cannot bring friends, unlike a bar) and there's a social expectation to stay at least for whatever constitutes an entire date.
I think it is less irony and more that we have complex social expectations.
There are plenty of first date options that make this easy. I was fond of minigolf because it goes relatively quick and you can either opt to play more rounds or hit the eject button with a half decent excuse.
Meanwhile, a date you eject from still consumes most of your evening. ...And it's extremely uncomfortable and emotionally taxing to be in that position for both people.
That said, I think almost everyone would be better served if they shot out a "wanna grab drinks at X at 8:00?" much earlier into the conversation. The sort of "Tinder convo" I see on r/tinder is almost exclusively men sabotaging themselves instead of making a move.
I mean, once you've established you're not one of those "send pic of vagene sex sex sex pls" people, I'm not convinced there's all that much more rapport you can build over text.
Then again, I imagine men who are able to talk themselves into a hole over Tinder chat are sending useful signals to women.
Couple possibilities I can think of there. First and foremost, it could be that the people being described before the comma, and the people being described after the comma, are not the same population. There may be some overlap, but I can at least say that the friends I have who've used (non-Tinder) online dating services in any sort of serious way were also very much not the kind of people to go to bars to meet people.
Another is that talking to a stranger at a bar is most decidedly not a date. Evidence: Once upon a time, I did that fairly regularly, and my partner didn't mind at all. (I think that there was only ever one person who was obviously only interested in a hook-up, and, it being a bar, it was pretty easy to gracefully exit that conversation.) I think they would have felt very differently about me signing up for OkCupid.
But as soon as you walk into a bar, every woman in that place is taking in broad bandwidth data on you. Do your mannerisms look natural? Are you acting aggressive? Are you friendly? What are you wearing, and are your clothes clean? Do other women seem comfortable around you?
All of those assessments are based on very finely honed intuitions that they rely on every single day to stay safe.
You can easily do a social proof check on a stranger in a bar by checking out their friends. That’s why it’s such a successful strategy to go on the pull with a wingman/winggirl.
https://www.thegoodtrade.com/features/best-dating-apps-for-w...
Talk to women sometimes about how they approach personal safety, and how many scary situations and too-close calls they've already had.
It's a law of truly large numbers thing. Even if a tiny tiny minority of guys are actually dangerous, over the course of even a relatively young life the average woman has encountered quite a few of them. They make life decisions accordingly, for understandable reasons.
The app could certainly facilitate "safe" dates by helping guide people toward certain places. That could even be the business model where you would book reservations at certain restaurants, coffee shops, or wherever through the app.
Frankly I don't think gatekeeping a person's comfort level when meeting a stranger is very constructive. In fact I think it would invoke quite a negative reaction (justifiably).
Meeting strangers may not be a high risk for you but it is for other people.
While you can't guarantee a good date, you can at least eliminate the worst and unsafe-est dates by a little messaging.
I dated for a while on various services before choosing OKCupid and sticking with it. I talked to and dated several women before I met the woman who is now my wife.
That included some chat up front, then picking a safe, public location to meet and do something. I'm lucky to live in Orlando, so it was very often a theme park. If either of us were unhappy, we could just go our separate ways and be done. (Thankfully that never happened to me.)
Creeps have a hard time hiding the fact that they're creeps. If I'm talking to a guy on a dating app and he immediately tries to steer the conversation towards sex, my body, how horrible women are, and shows zero interest in actually getting to know me then I know he's someone to avoid.
Even taking a shower, putting on decent clothes, and showing up in person to a bar is a massive filter that dating app conversation doesn't have. This is one of the fundamental trade-offs of meeting people online vs in person.
As an added bonus, you also get to screen out all the people that don't really care enough about their potential date's feelings to exchange a few messages, and all the people that are saying yes to too many dates to even notice conversation threads never mind show up.
Shooting from the hip, I'm guessing this would not do much to even out that male:female ratio.
This is such a ridiculous thing to say. A significant disadvantage compared to _who_? Other men? That sort of negates your statement? The women on the platform? Men aren't competing against women on the platform to find a date, for the most part.
I think you're sort of dancing around the issue that attractive people on the platform are going to attract more attention, but that applies to both genders equally. If you don't want 'competition', try seeking out people who aren't conventionally attractive.
I believe you just described escorting/prostitution. Not that I am against sex work, but that app would be DOA.
Most amazing spin ever. Here's the ad targeted at women https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GK2MrUOfAPE and the one targeted at men https://vimeo.com/21179683
Also https://misstravel.com and their pitch https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JLSiy4nUvnc
So as a man you're primed thinking your date will cost you on the order of $20, but the woman is expecting offers in the order of $100. Expectations are already mismatched before you've even signed up!
I could think of a gentle spin where the money would go to pay the date (restaurant/drinks/activity), which is expensive anyway, but the way it's framed I am speechless.
So you’ll have many frustrated users who are simply being gamed for messages.
And since this is built on top of Facebook the spam ratio is pretty low.
Some of the features it has: You can always see who has "right-swiped" on you, even if you didn't match with the person. You can see everybody on the app in Facebook groups you share. If you accidentally swipe left you can go back.
This obviously doesn't change anything about the valid point that men and woman approach dating in a different manner. I guess apps made this even worse.
They just make obvious what otherwise we don't like to admit, like how important attraction is in the deal even though we don't have much control over it.
Usually when I see criticism of dating apps (like in this comments section), I wonder if the critic realizes that what they are complaining about is how dating already works. You are always sizing people up around you based on how attractive you find them, for example.
Swipe apps more-or-less turned dating into a game—you could provide the tooling to become a better player.
Dine: You match only by choosing a restaurant listed in their profile to meet at. They get a notification, "So-and-so would like to go to ABC with you". If they click "yes" the system puts up a list of times to meet.
HowAboutWe: You list only activities you'd like do together.
As a guy who has been on dating apps, being able to hold a conversation puts you at a significant advantage. I don't see how restricting the ability to have one helps, unless your intention is to help guys who can't or shoot themselves in the foot early.
I like that idea.
The business model is tricky to figure out. You'd have to ditch subscription fees and advertising (since both of those models disincentivizes real matchmaking in favor of long-term endless use of the app).
The app I was actually looking for with the search isn't in the top 10, but you can see that it's been tried more than once.
Do you mean paying a potential match? It would be a dating site for cam girls and professional escorts.
I mean, you might actually be on to something there :)
I wonder how many people in these sorts of HN threads who complain about the crapshoot of dating have taken it seriously enough to try these sorts of things.
I highly recommend them. Speed-dating itself is really eye-opening.
Exactly, which is why apps that work in the same way, based on exactly the same input (just superficial visual appeal), seem redundant to me. I'd much prefer something that actually makes use of modern technology, for example: upload 3 photos of your exes and we'll find someone similar for you. Or, match people by professions and lifestyles that are compatible in some way (in addition to ML-rated visual appeal).
Datings apps aren't men vs women, where a woman wins and a man loses (or vice versa). Any real life connection that gets made is mutual. So what you mean is MOST or SOME men are at a disadvantage, and then you must ask which ones and why.
>One idea I've had is to disallow conversation in the app, and instead focus on making date plans if there's a match
Why not just do this yourself? It's not a bad strategy for a guy. Why does making this a rule forced on others do anything?
doesn't sound like a dating app, more like "uber for escorts"
One idea I've had is to disallow conversation in the app, and instead focus on making date plans if there's a match. Another idea is to introduce a payment aspect to make spamming economically unviable, except that the payment goes to the recipient instead of the platform. Some apps have tried things like this, but they kind of suck because it's not real money so it's not useful.