Ah I can dream right? Haha
As long as you have trustees making decisions about staffing levels and remuneration (and they can't hire their friends or give themselves salaries), then there should be no incentive to raise the app's pricing or do anything else that would put off users.
I do have a novel app monetization strategy to suggest, though, which I've not seen anywhere. Imagine that the monthly costs for the servers and staff were published, along with the number of paying customers that month. There could then be a monthly reverse-lottery where N% of free accounts are chosen at random for deletion, with N being proportional to how much financial loss the app made that month (hopefully zero).
The only advantage to having a paid account would be that you are not subject to the lottery, and the only disadvantage to having your account deleted is that you have to reinstall the app and fill in your profile again. Hopefully that would provide enough incentive for people to do the right thing (combined with the fact that people should want to support the services they use, especially if they end up finding their soul mate through it).
It might take a while, but as long as it's possible for existing users to pay more, pressure will build up to convince them to do so. Whether because costs go up, usership goes down, or what. Any organization seeks to survive, and it will need money.
Your lottery is sufficiently weird that I can't say it's exactly what my proposal is designed to prevent, but it's definitely in the space of wacky things no one should have to worry about. Also I don't think you understand the level of investment that can go into a dating profile. Message history, for instance.
To the extent you do have trustees, I'm not sure it's wise to not pay them a salary. You don't really want to give power to people who will accept a power trip in lieu of money. Unless it's really easy for the community to replace them
In my large US city, even some of the big-name apps (like Coffee Meets Bagel and Match) had almost no active users.
I think it would only work if you tacked it onto an existing social network, like Instagram or TikTok, but you'd need the parent company's blessing (which almost certainly wouldn't happen).
Why stop with dating apps though?
But my guess... There's a disconnect between what the woman expect from me and what I do.
Further more I'm either a sports guy or a nerd. Not both, because that doesn't exists in their world yet.
(I have redacted a lot of things, but it's kinda difficult for me, I'm not talking about getting a match.) Hope I don't get downvoted.
You seem to be claiming that most women stereotype you (& poorly at that. What is this "their world" B.S.?) & that being interested depends on your job and/or hobbies.
That's bullshit.
Both my job & hobbies are boring & stereotypical, but I compensate for that by being interesting in the way I communicate (like actually listening to the woman I'm speaking with) & what I choose to discuss (hint: not my job or hobbies. Probably her job and/or hobbies/interests instead).
Emotionally unavailable people that think they just need to outsource the size of their dating pool? No app can fix that no matter what theme they do, because the size of the dating pool or their network isn't the only issue.
So, thats just an audience. Trying to match the superficial with the text. Why not just match the text and find out later. Instead of making the rejected person have a new set of pictures, a fun perk could be to show people how many 50%s they matched and rejected, and letting them revisit later or revealing who it was.
My comment might sound blunt but the reality of biology and how our brains are wired cannot be denied.
So in your example people will game their interests till they are matched with a picture they like.
As a thought exercise I wonder if there is a dating service for blind (since birth) people and how they choose their partners. Something tells me even they would go by voice rather than 'interests'.
Also (and sorry for so many questions I never met anyone blind from birth), do you feel more at peace than people with vision (anecdotally)? Because people can barely sit for 15 minutes in meditation and I always wondered what would not being aware of one sense completely felt like (not losing but never having).
If the purpose is to create relationships then I believe people shouldn’t be able to match too many times without giving “chances”.
The app could facilitate this through ice breakers or perhaps embedded small games or showing a TikTok or other short video to facilitate conversation.
The problem is that modern apps make people do all the work, which is fine, but there are some who require a little push or something explicitly to discuss to get started.
I still think the idea is worth building, but it's also very easy to copy and the existing players could make it an optional mode in their apps or so and immediately have a big userbase.
Would you be interested in collaborating on a proof of concept?
“I’m the guy with 3 ducks” and in their profile pic in the background is an image of 3 ducks. Or something like that.
Could be too much effort for most to try workaround though.
Were they as generically sarcastic as Tinder's? "Going to the supermarket, want me to get you anything?"
The main difference is expectation, mainly.
When you make a profile you get two accounts. One that shows only pictures, and another that only shows interest/text. There should be no way to infer one from the other without a “true match” as described below.
You match with peoples picture version and text versions separately and only when both dual matches complete mutually are you truly matched.
This in effect forces people to make themselves interesting enough without the crux that is photography but also presentable enough so that the natural superficial curiosities can be satisfied.
Assuming no one makes it I’ll probably make it at some point. The way monetization would work is by allowing you to rank people across attributes for both the picture profile and text profile. Paying users can be given information on this.
In addition paying users can be given a “second chance” where if your text profile receives a match but your picture profile doesn’t, you can ping the person anonymously in the future with a new set of pictures and speak with them again, but only after some cooldown period, say a week.
Obviously I’m biased but I think what I described is the solution to the problem that is modern online dating.