Many times when it looks like someone else is interested in you, the appearance is made that they can only be reached by subscribing for money, it turns out that the person is not there, never was there and had abandoned the other platform due to lack of interest.

And paying for the service never makes it easier to get dates either.

So does anyone know if there is a startup accelerator specializing in making dating apps for selling to Match?

Something like: "Here's a list of features that users love, and here's a bunch of marketing techniques for making your userbase grow fast. Don't worry about monetization, Match is going to buy you out anyways. We're just going to keep on repeating doing this until Match runs out of money or everyone we know is rich."

OkCupid: Matching using questions/answers + statistical modeling

Tinder: Simple swipe left/right model + hook up emphasis

Hinge: Emphasizes long term connections + "designed to be deleted"

So best way to get acquired would be to find a new niche and an innovative way to appeal to that niche.

Potential dates are matched with a set number of people at random.

The potential date interrogates the matches within a specific subject area, using a specified format and context.

After a preset length of time or number of questions, the quesioner is then asked to decide which respondent was human and which was a computer.

If the quesioner guesses human and is correct, they can choose to go on a date.

Bumble/Badoo have some Russian connotations... so the choice is between cancer or syphilis. Within the last 10 years we voluntarily have delegated our mating preselection to them... and "in real world" is even worse...

I think this might be true for a subset of people, but I've personally had zero luck with online dating and have met all my partners IRL. It is interesting to consider if the FTC will ever take action on Match Group's near monopoly here.

Dating apps lower the barrier to entry. This is actually a bad thing for men, because it floods the dating market with competition from men who would otherwise be too offputting or antisocial or meek. There is currently no way for women to filter out these men via software (they would if they could).

Just like in business, it's easier to stay in business if there is a barrier to entry.

Actually this is even far more anti-pattern than that. The fact the recipient knows you sent a rose signals a few things to (presumably) her:

1. You had to pay to get access to her, your ELO/Algorithm score is low enough that they app thinks your beneath her

2. You're not getting enough dates / matches that you're desperate enough that you're now paying money for what others get for free

Maybe you could make it open source? But sounds like you’re gonna have a hard time staying ahead of abuse. Not to mention attracting enough people for the app to be useful is gonna be difficult if you’re not spending money on marketing.

Maybe you could have a monthly fee? But then who’s gonna use it? And there’s already plenty of established sites like that.

Well maybe you could have a virtual equivalent of buying someone a drink? Ah yes, we end up back on roses. Is it perfect? No. But doesn’t sound like any option is.

OnlyFans is already doing it all .

I've thought a bit about how to prevent that in a way that isn't too easily gamed while aligning the incentives of users and apps.

My first thought was that users of the app pay some high-but-not-obscene sign up fee (let's say $250, but knowing how dating apps work this number would probably move up and down based on an area's COL, user's demographics like are and gender, profession, W-2 scans, etc). After x years, if the user is still single they get their money back (base this off of marriage records, app activity, or whatever). The app can invest the money in the meantime, so even if most users end up in relationships before the deadline they can still generate returns (IIRC this is actually how insurance companies get a lot of their revenue).

I think if there's one lump sum people are gonna be more inclined to game the system, so one variation is to make it more of a trickle of money. eg every time a pair of matched users verify that they've gone on a date, they get $10. Enough money that they might bother logging it in the app, but not so high (hopefully) that people would go on fake dates.

However I think due to the additional friction these options still wouldn't be very successful. The low barrier to entry is part of why apps get critical mass and become successful.

Honestly I dont know. But here's an idea that came to mind.

Men pay per swipe. (men tend to over swipe and inundate women with messages, make them not.

Perhaps also women receive a token amount for showing up to a date, not ghosting as reported by the man. (Ghosting is a real thing unfortunately. It being a token amount means no sane women would endanger herself to get the token, but it might be enough to say, cover the first drink or part of the uber ride there) .

The current political climate probably wouldn't allow functionality required to optimize the cisgender heterosexual experience. (Because that would require taking a stance about gender differences and designing systems that are suboptimal for other dating patterns) .

You will get presented this match for free and message her without a rose.

I suppose you could send a rose voluntarily to someone who you presume does not get roses in an attempt to exploit the fact they dont get roses... which is slightly condescending xD .

On one first date a woman I had been talking to for a week texted me late at night. I told her to show up at my house and for her to bring a bottle of red wine. The next morning she is telling me a recent dating story. A guy took her out for a fancy meal. He spent $120 on her and then he got pissed after the meal when she wouldn't kiss him.

I have some success and plenty of failure too when it comes to dating. There is so much bad dating advice out there for men. I feel bad for the men that are in the dark and being taken advantage of.

The problem is that men have been griping in public and private about this for years but they're continually shrugged off or made fun of for doing so. Some gripes are obviously unhinged, but I don't think there's even a shred of empathy for this problem even without those unhinged folks. This business model is absolutely normalized.

I’m not sure whether… innovation in the online dating space would do us any good, but I’m positive that Match Group is hard at work to prevent it from happening.

Much, much more profitable to simply drag your customers along forever and use every whale-milking technique ever designed.

That's true of many industries. If a light bulb manufacturer invented a light bulb that lasted 100 years they'd go out of business. [1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planned_obsolescence

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoebus_cartel

According to the internet, the "average kitchen" is remodeled every 10-15 years, so once your LED lights last longer than that, they're likely to get thrown away still working.

That'd get expensive quick, a lame way to spend a million dollars over the course of a lifetime.

There are about 70 million single family homes. If we count all dwelling units, we're at 140 million or so.

So the average kitchen lasts 35 years by that metric, to 70 years. I suspect the 10-15 year number counts "refreshes" and not just tear-down/rebuilds. Cabinets these days don't often last 35 years without some work.

Checkout Gerbert Johnson on YT, he has a channel with some funny content on it that isn't absurd redpill nonsense.

Not that this helps you much right now, I suppose…

I’ve never given them a cent. I did put a lot of work into my profile - going on dozens of dates, learning from the bad matches how I could signal incompatibility earlier, and generally just going head first into the trial-by-fire of online dating for the first time.

Things are progressing slowly for me but to be honest my caution is the limiting factor. More importantly there has been progression.

If anything money should be spent on improving the profile itself (you could hire a professional photographer to take some "candid" looking nice photos of yourself + go to a higher end hair cutter, get your clothes tailored, etc etc). All of these things would probably also help you in real life. Worst case you have some great LinkedIn photos or something to send your family and some great fitting clothes to wear to dinner with friends.

You're absolutely right that most men could stand to improve their profiles. However in the article the writer mentions how the photos she saw seemed designed to fit some template of what is supposed to be attractive, and that she was a little wary of how professional they appeared, so this can go both ways. Overall, though, it seems far better to have higher quality photos even if they appear staged.

One of the biggest challenges, however, is that the nature of these apps means that to 'get a good feel for your real personality' people must somehow get that across in only a few seconds before the person on the other end swipes on to another profile. With margins like that, and so little to work with, it is daunting and seemingly impossible to try and write something compelling enough to capture attention in a consistent way.

If I match with someone I want to be able to convey that this person gives me a strong vibe of compatibility. It makes the next steps of conversing and meeting a natural conclusion. I don’t think you can do this if you don’t know what you’re looking for or who you are or what life you’re trying to live. But this is all very straightforward if you can make it clear you’re looking for something specific - in my case a spouse to raise children with. Without a goal the path is not clear.

I think why so many guys get mad at the apps is they just don't have the resilience for that amount of rejection. It's very easy to get disheartened when you match with someone, talk for a few days and ask them on a date only for her to not be interested. It's so easy to get mad when this happens and just go "F this entire thing", but you have to keep telling yourself that it's part of the process and keep going.

I've had a rather positive experience on Hinge but I think one of the main reasons is I set the expectation for myself that there will be alot of rejections.

Chatting for a few days before asking them out isn’t wrong - but you can get to the same natural conclusion much quicker and with less pain by trying to have a good conversation right away and then asking them out the next day.

As for fearing rejection - I managed that by putting myself in the position of being the rejector. I showed up to each first date looking for problems, not trying to see if things could work. If I didn’t feel like there was potential I’d reject them an hour or two after the date ended. If you are not being as picky as they are then you could give off the impression that you have low standards. What person wants to feel like they’ve been picked for their appearance alone?

I’m not an unattractive guy, but I’m also no movie star.

Before any SJW replies that I must be some troll here is the proof "Revenge reporting" is real. Revenge reporting happens to men too.

https://www.stylist.co.uk/relationships/dating-love/dating-a...

In some areas it is going to be more difficult and those areas probably are over represented on HN. SF/Bay Area, Seattle, Bangalore etc. The dating apps can't change the male to female ratio.

https://www.vice.com/en/article/akzang/straight-middle-aged-...

Does paying actually get you anywhere? Do you meet people you wouldn't have met without paying? I know they make it seem like it's going to help, but I have my doubts about whether it does. I think if you ignore the misleading marketing and go by results, paying for a basic subscription gives you the full benefit of the app.

I believe it as that's how most of my friends met their partners.

What it really comes down to though is how much effort you put into your profile. I do not do online dating really but all my female friends complain about the low quality photos of 90% of men and the lack of effort in their profile. They show me what they are dealing with and it is honestly kind of laughable. And the guys they do end up going for often are not even the most attractive.

It also helps a lot if you put the effort in immediately after making your profile. Once the algo starts rating you low then it can be harder to come back from.

The truth is if you're not already getting a decent amount of likes on the standard tier, there's no point paying for 10 boosts like that will change your attractiveness.

The "Standouts" feature still felt like a total scam to me though. "Here's a bunch of women we think are out of your league, pay us and we'll let them know you exist".

This experience was highly location subjective though. I had many great matches in the bay area.

YMMV

I think you have given a counter-example rather than a refutation. I don't deny that some men have great success on dating apps, but that experience is not evenly distributed.

Additionally, age plays a huge factor. None of the comments have mentioned age so far.

>implies it is working to some degree for some amount of users

And gambling works for some amount of users, but we both understand casinos would die out if users were making a net profit on average. Meaning there's more to this.

For anyone feeling inclined to say "but winning isn't the only thing about a casino!", yes, exactly.

Men desire a beautiful woman. Women desire a wealthy man.

Women are able to signal their appearance by uploading pictures. Men are able to (more credibly) signal their wealth through otherwise pointless IAPs.

I'm not saying Hinge's system is perfect or good or even worth anyone's time, but it is a more honest portrayal of "the game" than putting both sexes on equal footing.

So long as you can express enough of these signals, wealth beyond her income level won't be a deal breaker.

[1]: please just forgive this term as a stand in for the personality traits that express in people with sufficient testosterone and success as defined by the society.

[2]: this point is just common sense across all genders... having options but choosing one is a form of backing for a compliment. Choosing her out of a pool of no one else is not flattery, it's desperation.

Wealth historically indicates hard work or power, which in turn indicate masculine traits.

Beauty historically indicates good health (childbearing) and self-care, which in turn indicate feminine traits.

These indicators can definitely be gamed, but they define the game for a reason.

What a world we live in, where people have to apologize for using the correct word to describe something.

Women who get into those relationships have psychological problems and feel like they need a man who needs to be "fixed". They'll actively reject men who don't need to be "fixed". I've seen this in family members.

You shouldn't.

But as a third party, I will absolutely be skeptical of all the women who "meet creepy men on the daily" and continue to be passive and use those services.

As for the original point. It wouldn't be the first time a woman covered herself by calling the other creepy over something minor. It's not exactly an unknown thing for humans to cover their own flaws and misjudgments by blaming the other party, man or woman.

Bullshit.

If the platform doesn't give you a technical way of sending a photo, then how the hell do you send a dick pic? You don't. You can't magically make a dick pic appear through a text message when that's all the platform allows.

I really expect better than this from HN.

Based on what I've heard from women, it's bad for them too. Easy to find a root, but hard to find someone to introduce to mum and dad.

IRL dating is worse. Apparently in the post-#metoo era men just stopped talking to women in general.

If you meet someone on a dating site, then you know they're interested in dating. And if you mutually match them (as most apps work now), you know they're at least a little bit interested in you.

If only the dating app companies were treating their job with respect and as a duty to society instead of perverting it for profit incentive, it would work much better for its intended function than it does now.

Just repeating what I've been told, mainly by "older" women (30+), many people like that sort of attention, and miss it when they no longer receive it (more of a thing for 50+ people).

It's often not perceived as harassment or inappropriate, but of course it varies from person to person and also depends on how it's phrased ("would you like to get a coffee?" vs. "I want to cum on your face").

Say the company charged $1 per first contact you make with a person. They can then show you people most likely to respond to help you get your conversation going ASAP and give you the highest value for your money. Or they could instead keep giving you poor matches so that you keep paying over and over. As far as they are concerned, the minute you fully engage with someone, assuming you are monogamous, you will not be a client for them for 6-18 months or whatever the length of an average relationship is in your demographic. But as long as your matches are mediocre (enough engagement to keep you going but not enough for you to get off the app), they can keep making money.

This is where hookup apps could do a lot better than lifetime partner apps: a hookup app will have repeat business with this pricing model and will actually do better in terms of expectations but a LTR app will lose you soon as you find a suitable candidate.

The alternative is 100% free apps which mean that bots have a zero cost to be bots and so you can run as many of them as you want. It is a problem of the commons in a way: soon as a certain percentage of bots spoils your interactions with the app you have no reason to come back.

Small rant: Bumble IIRC shows you most popular people in your area if you are on the free tier. These are almost guaranteed to not match with you and might not even be online having been overwhelmed by the attention. But if you pay, they’ll first show you people who have actually liked you, you know the ones recently online and ones you can swipe right on to start talking. This is the wrong incentive though makes them money in the short term.

(Pretty good, slightly cringey, video on how apps use the language of capitalism https://youtube.com/watch?v=-bcKRd_lfAg )

Looking back, I wasted my most dateable years doing exactly this. I thought if I just stayed on the apps a little longer, put up with the dopamine-drip machine bullshit just a little more, I'd meet someone.

I wasn't even relying entirely on them – I attended a church, volunteered at a soup kitchen, and other things where you're supposed to be able to meet people, but I wonder if maybe I would have emphasized them more (seeking out more volunteer opportunities, etc) without the gambler's promise of the dating apps panning out "any day now."

This is probably my biggest problem. I can go out, and women will even approach me and flirt, at least until they realize they have some years on me…

I think this is the right thing to do. Apps work great for a quick check of "does this person look cute and interesting."

They suck for everything else. I think it's great that apps like Tinder have given up on the pretense of helping people present their true deep selves, find compatible people, and figure out if there's a connection before they even meet. I know it seems more enlightened to deemphasize looks and concentrate on inner qualities, your personality and values and dreams, but over decades of painful experience we've learned that that stuff just doesn't convey accurately online. People invest huge amounts of energy creating profiles, answering quizzes, and trying to understand other people through their profiles and through online conversations, and the result are always disappointing.

By now I think we understand that failure well enough that when a company promises to do it well, we should call it a scam. It might work for a few people, but they're very rare and very lucky. Apps should be honest and stick to what they're really good at, which is helping people who mutually pass the superficial visual check find each other, on a scale they could never accomplish IRL, and facilitating them getting face to face so they can find out if they actually like each other.

Tinder does a perfect job of this. Just a few pics and a tiny profile. Put vital info in the profile (kids? open to what kind of relationship?) and some polarizing context in the pics (signals of political and cultural preferences, whatever feels important to you.) If someone wants to chat for more than a week without meeting you in person, unmatch them, because they're probably a bot or somebody just doing it to kill time. (Unless they say hey, let's put this on ice for a bit, I just met someone and if it doesn't work out I'd like to meet you next. That's valid.)

Paying to increase the attention you get is a scam, too, of course, and I won't defend any app doing it. It basically turns the app into a strip club where the women work for free and it's even easier for the men to delude themselves into thinking they'll get something out of it. Really if you aren't getting hits then all you can do is work on your profile or cast or wider net, or take a break for a month while you wait for new people to become active.

Working on yourself > working on your profile. Hit the gym, lose a few pounds, maybe find a better barber, etc

This is absolutely true. The best we've got right now is bars & clubs, and in those environments, there's no preselection for the type of person you'd want a meaningful relationship with.

Case in point: I met my wife at church. Going in the door, it was predetermined that we would share a common set of values.

There's no need to restrict yourself to one approach. People can do both.

But the immortal words of Mary Schmidt should always stay with us in terms of dating "Your choices are half chance. So are everybody else's."

The entire foundational purpose of dating apps is to make the numbers game tractable.

By limiting the amount of swipes you can do, you limit the amount of people you can contact. By paywalling swipes, you limit the amount of people who can contact you.

Somehow the only popular dating apps are the ones literally designed to fail.

Give me all the options I have time for. If you really are good at deciding what matches will work best for me, then present them first. There is no good reason to hide the options you think won't work out for me: the failure case is not matching, and that is painless.