Im tempted to make a service where you "deposit" some fee to subscribe, I then return part of the deposit to you on a monthly basis UNTIL you find a match on the site. If/once you find a match, I keep the rest.

That should align goals for both the company and the partner seeker.

EDIT: I'll be getting interest from the remainder your payment every month, as part of my profit scheme.

That's basically how many old human-labor matchmaking services work, insofar as the matchmaker gets a lump-sum payment at the beginning, and then spends an unbounded amount of labor doing the matchmaking until it works out. The matchmaker is incentivized to make a good match as efficiently as possible, as their profit-margin decreases linearly with the amount of time they spend on each "case."

That just sounds like the optimal solution is to do zero match-making labor.

If it was a one-time game, sure. If your game relies on future business, word-of-mouth advertising, and not being arrested for fraud, it’s a bad choice.

Eh maybe from an efficiency perspective on profit vs labor, of I can get one person to pay me $100 to matchmake for them, then do nothing, I've got an infinite return on my effort, but if I want to make a living doing this I need to have some success stories to keep the $100s coming, so some effort is needed.

I like the alignment of incentives here, but "match" would have to be defined better. If it's a literal match (mutual like) it would effectively be a per-pay-like and wouldn't work. Maybe something along the lines of "matched, chatted, met, stopped using the app for X period of time"?

Yep, I've thought something like that:

For every month that you use the app to a certain degree (number of viewed profiles, page loads or whatnot) I will give you back 1/nth (1/12th) of your deposit. If you don't use it enough, then I'll "keep" that month's budget as a subscription payment. The idea is that once you match with someone, you will stop using the app, and the rest of the money will slowly go to me.

I am convinced it could be a good model, of course as with everything, there are several things to be solved before making it a sound business.

I know your idea is very theoretical but what happens when I exhaust the deposit? Do I stay around and earn money or do you kick me out?

And if someone finds a match but doesn't inform the site you lose out, no? I expect a lot of people to be dishonest if it means getting a bunch of money back.

Cheapskate users will keep dating (or even just looking) even after finding a good match.

From an end-user perspective? Desperately so.

I think the biggest obstacle to solving the Dating App problem is the onboarding.

I’ve been married since before Tinder so never used it. But I think the “Dating App problem” is something of a head scratcher. The reason the apps all have problems is because Dating is the problem. It’s hard. Always has been. Finding a lifelong partner, very hard.

I might be wrong but these types of conversations about how bad the apps are make me think y’all are expecting some sort of technological easy button. It will never exist. These companies are probably making it worse because of their profit motive but there’s definitely a reason nobody has “solved” dating.

The problem is not dating, the problem is visibility. If you have tons of dates with tons of people you'll end up with someone who aligns with you (also will help you to learn what you really like) but these apps, as funny as it sounds, make you invisible by oversaturation. The amount of people is so huge that you spend less than a few seconds to decide if you want to match or not with someone and you never know about this person ever again.

I struggle to see how this is different than the real world of strangers. If you go out anywhere you are around people. Some you find attractive some that may find you attractive. Yet, you probably never even speak to each other.

The fact it’s a dating app, just means you have some expectations. You expect you may get a date. But you may not. You expect those other people are real profiles. They may not be. You expect those people that you do match with actual intend to have a conversation/go on a date. They may not have that intention.

Volume and effort.

Likes and such are distracting as they are attract the wrong people (attention seekers) or give off the wrong impression (false flags). The former is very prominent against men, the latter is very prominent against women.

Volume exasperates both this problem and the problem of choice. There are so many choices for so little effort, people are drowning in it and not investing enough to feel attached to their choices. Where before you had to invest more time into an individual person and your other options where far more limited, now you have far more choice for less effort when you're on the winning side of the market.

Some poster posted a few sources one time on a similar topic regarding the importance of investment and how people will generally stick together when invested. It's the initial investment which is missing. The fact ghosting as a concept didn't just come into existence, but is so omnipresent among both sexes, speaks for itself.

I believe this is correct. The vast majority of my modern "swipe era" dating experiences fall into either 1) Woman makes up excuse to bail within ~2 hours of planned date 2) Woman ghosts/un-matches just as conversation begins to gain momentum 3) Woman tells me she is "overwhelmed" by the attention she's getting from the app and is going to delete it, leaving behind her cell number. The effort/attention ratio for women on dating apps is literally unnatural. This ratio is tempered in the real world because it takes balls to approach a woman.

exacerbates

ghosting occurs because despite that people complain about it, they would resent even more being told that they don't make the cut. ghosting is a little disappointment each day, and it fades as the days accumulate.

and if you still don't like it, just accept that the other person does like it, and it's a kindness you could extend to them.

The difference is precisely what you mentioned, people there expect to have dates and find a partner. There could be other people trying to get something else (heck there are even scammers) but it's not your expectation to start a convo expecting to get somewhere, it's the goal of the app. This doesn't happen in real life, in fact, if you try the same approach, you'll be seen as creepy depending on the context. Dating apps should skip this initial uncertainty and technically make it easier to get to the point.

I guess dating for me always just was an activity without expectation. Or perhaps better said, without surprise. Meaning anything could happen. I might have fallen in love with someone on the night we met, the universe seemed aligned, we already got in some small talk face to face, maybe even got physical then - only to find out the next day they gave me the phone number for Pizza Hut and I’d never see or hear from them again. I couldn’t even Google them or DM them, it didn’t exist. Everyone was a ghost by default.

Honestly, the worst part about dating apps is that it's basically become the only way a lot of women want to meet men. And I'm not speaking from a disgruntled male perspective, I'm speaking from a friend of a lot of women who've essentially stated exactly that.

It's funny because most of my LTIR friends have met their significant others through more traditional means and the perpetually single are stuck on gamified apps.

The apps can definitely work so it's not all for naught but I think the privacy and low risk (emotionally) nature of them leads to an over reliance by a lot of people.

I highly doubt most women would reject a male asking for a date IRL but not in Tinder or whatever. I think the preference for online dating is simply convenience, taking the path of least resistance.

IMO taking this path of least resistance is a bad idea, especially much so for males who make up the vast majority of dating app users. Meeting people and asking them out takes some courage and makes you stand out from the crowd. That’s the main reason why it can work so well, in online dating you’re just one face among others.

Dating apps aren't about dates they are matchmaking apps.

Indeed. I met my girlfriend on a relatively novel dating site called The League.

It was recently purchased by Match.