You know, there's probably fewer perverse incentives with a government run dating service. Obviously I can imagine ways it could suck, but when I compare them to how commercial dating services are run it's hard to see how they could do a _worse_ job.
I contemplated whether to try to build a dating site a few times while I was single, and every time what stopped me was the perverse incentives. Making a financially viable dating service without actively making things worse on purpose is really hard.
E.g. at one point I spoke to a woman who told me she'd out of curiosity paid for a month of Tinder's premium sub to see how many had swiped right on her, and her queue was over 3000. She wasn't swiping much. The queue was basically perpetually growing, and the odds for any of the men swiping was accordingly low and dropping. Which was good for Tinder of course - a larger pool of people for men to swipe and get frustrated over lack of responses from, until some proportion pay.
If you're not dependent on frustrating your users into wanting to pay for priority, or getting people off the service because they've found someone is in fact your goal, it's trivial to fix this issue (and many others): Stop showing a profile when the queue gets too deep.
Same thing with not showing inactive profiles. Or actually trying to match profiles of people who are likely to match up (again there's a perverse incentive: you want to match up profiles that one side will like, but not match up profiles where both sides are interested too often; rack up the swipes but not the connections...)
That's the long way of saying I agree, and to get out some of the frustration from past years of using them (hopefully never again...). There are truly few types of services where the interests of users and commercial operators are so totally misaligned.
To run a business you either need to show ads, have everyone pay, or have a freemium model where it can be used for free but some portion of users pay.
It’s easy to imagine making a better service by removing all of the parts that fit what I just described. I could make a better Instagram if it didn’t show any ads and was free for everyone. I don’t think my developers or hosting providers would want to work for free though.
The reason dating apps have this freemium model is because building a large pool of users is important to their success. Most people will not pay for an app if a free alternative exists. Most people hate ads. So the product which wins will always be the one lets people get started without paying, bringing in the largest dating pool.
There have been many dating app businesses that tried models where everyone pays the same flat fee. Most either converted to freemium or disappeared. There are still some niche social apps that use their expense and difficulty of getting an invite as a selling point, but they target very niche audiences because they’ll never be mainstream.
Your friend just discovered one of the harder realities of dating apps: Your odds of getting a response from an individual profile is very low. Swiping on a lot of profiles is necessary. For people who get easily frustrated by these odds and who get angry at having to pay for anything they’re going to be generally very frustrated with the apps in general.
Dating apps are one of the most poignant examples of a service that provides a lot of value relative to alternatives (you’ll spend more on a single drink at a bar or even on transport to a restaurant to meet someone) yet the nominal charge still makes users scoff. It’s hard to sell apps to consumers.
Yes, we know why. The problem is that the incentives this creates for dating apps are among the worst around. Many sites have business models where they paywall is locking away content or functionality that is desirable, but few other types of sites benefit nearly as much not by just locking away content or features, but by actively making the site functionality worse for everyone - including for the paid users, who may get e.g. priority access but are still wading through a sewer of zombie profiles and other effects of the user hostile monetisation.
As for ads being such a big problem, I'm not convinced - we've had several reasonably successful dating sites that did well with ads instead of or in addition to freemium.
The biggest challenge to that model flourishing is that Match Group tends to buy them and start locking away the features and pushing more towards the subscriptions. E.g. Plenty of Fish was mostly ad funded until Match Group bought them, OkCupid more mixed, but then Match Group bought them.
I'm not blaming the founders of those. If I started a site like that and Match Group offered to throw money at me, I'd probably sell too, knowing I'd gotten their attention and they'd probably do their best to clobber me if not.
You will get more limited growth if ad funded compared to what you can squeeze out of maximally frustrated men. And as a result you'll be a more attractive acquisition target for Match Group to snatch up at a bargain knowing they can drive up margins by enshittifying you, and you'll have lower margins to fight them with if you don't sell.
water-data-dude · · focus · HN ↗
vidarh · · focus · HN ↗
E.g. at one point I spoke to a woman who told me she'd out of curiosity paid for a month of Tinder's premium sub to see how many had swiped right on her, and her queue was over 3000. She wasn't swiping much. The queue was basically perpetually growing, and the odds for any of the men swiping was accordingly low and dropping. Which was good for Tinder of course - a larger pool of people for men to swipe and get frustrated over lack of responses from, until some proportion pay.
If you're not dependent on frustrating your users into wanting to pay for priority, or getting people off the service because they've found someone is in fact your goal, it's trivial to fix this issue (and many others): Stop showing a profile when the queue gets too deep.
Same thing with not showing inactive profiles. Or actually trying to match profiles of people who are likely to match up (again there's a perverse incentive: you want to match up profiles that one side will like, but not match up profiles where both sides are interested too often; rack up the swipes but not the connections...)
That's the long way of saying I agree, and to get out some of the frustration from past years of using them (hopefully never again...). There are truly few types of services where the interests of users and commercial operators are so totally misaligned.
Aurornis · · focus · HN ↗
To run a business you either need to show ads, have everyone pay, or have a freemium model where it can be used for free but some portion of users pay.
It’s easy to imagine making a better service by removing all of the parts that fit what I just described. I could make a better Instagram if it didn’t show any ads and was free for everyone. I don’t think my developers or hosting providers would want to work for free though.
The reason dating apps have this freemium model is because building a large pool of users is important to their success. Most people will not pay for an app if a free alternative exists. Most people hate ads. So the product which wins will always be the one lets people get started without paying, bringing in the largest dating pool.
There have been many dating app businesses that tried models where everyone pays the same flat fee. Most either converted to freemium or disappeared. There are still some niche social apps that use their expense and difficulty of getting an invite as a selling point, but they target very niche audiences because they’ll never be mainstream.
Your friend just discovered one of the harder realities of dating apps: Your odds of getting a response from an individual profile is very low. Swiping on a lot of profiles is necessary. For people who get easily frustrated by these odds and who get angry at having to pay for anything they’re going to be generally very frustrated with the apps in general.
Dating apps are one of the most poignant examples of a service that provides a lot of value relative to alternatives (you’ll spend more on a single drink at a bar or even on transport to a restaurant to meet someone) yet the nominal charge still makes users scoff. It’s hard to sell apps to consumers.
vidarh · · focus · HN ↗
As for ads being such a big problem, I'm not convinced - we've had several reasonably successful dating sites that did well with ads instead of or in addition to freemium.
The biggest challenge to that model flourishing is that Match Group tends to buy them and start locking away the features and pushing more towards the subscriptions. E.g. Plenty of Fish was mostly ad funded until Match Group bought them, OkCupid more mixed, but then Match Group bought them.
I'm not blaming the founders of those. If I started a site like that and Match Group offered to throw money at me, I'd probably sell too, knowing I'd gotten their attention and they'd probably do their best to clobber me if not.
You will get more limited growth if ad funded compared to what you can squeeze out of maximally frustrated men. And as a result you'll be a more attractive acquisition target for Match Group to snatch up at a bargain knowing they can drive up margins by enshittifying you, and you'll have lower margins to fight them with if you don't sell.