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Comment by chongli | Hacker News Reader

I think it's a fatal flaw in the dating site business model, to be honest. Their incentive is for you to stay on the site for as long as possible. If you could find a relationship quickly and then they would leave the site quickly. This would reduce the amount of ad and subscription revenue, in addition to reducing the size of the pool of "potential matches", discouraging those who have more trouble finding someone.

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Okcuipd (and Sparknotes!) co-founder Christian Rudder wrote an article entitled "Why You Should Never Pay For Online Dating" saying exactly that. When Match Group acquired them, they took it down. I found a mirror, though.

https://web.archive.org/web/20190429100515/https://static.iz...

That's an amazing article. (Like, good enough that I'm not just upvoting you, but also telling everyone else to read it. It's worth it.) I had no idea the numbers were that bad. And I can see why it got taken down after the acquisition.

It's really too bad. Before they were acquired, they had all kinds of data-driven articles/discussions like this. Some really pissed people off too (mainly because they didn't like the data revealed). This was back in the day when OkCupid still had old-school forums. It seems like you can't even find any data-related articles before 2016. How things have changed. Really sad.

So good that I won’t just upvote your comment but again tell people: read it!

That’s brutal.

My new hypothesis is that Match acquired OKC just to get Rudder to STFU.

The OKC blog was also full of good advice and interesting research about how online dating works. In some sense it was probably considered a threat that was revealing trade secrets.

That blog was amazing - one of the best overviews of the realities of dating published anywhere at any time.

The Dataclysm book is even better and goes into more detail.

Excellent article.

One trick I think that was missed though? :

> eHarmony seems to do quite a bit better than Match, claiming in their ads to marry off 236 people a day

That doesn't mean those people marry people they meet through eHarmony, nor that they people used eHarmony at the time they found their maate etc?

I wonder if they ever considered explicitly marking which profiles are paid vs unpaid, and then allowing users to "gift" a subscription to the unpaid / dormant accounts.

Seems like a good potential revenue source, although it might require a little bit too much honesty for their taste.

It would be nice to have a dating site where potential matches were verified, including height, weight, and photo. Perhaps have them visit a kiosk in a participating business to get a photo taken from a standard angle (no "myspace" angles) along with a verified height and weight (stand on a scale!)

potential matches were verified, including height, weight

I am happily married now (met my wife through a mutual friend, the old fashioned way) so my experience of online dating may be obsolete but women on dating sites tend to be very specific about their partner’s height. And income, and what car he drives and a big shopping list of mainly physical and materialistic traits. If you could verify all of that you might be onto a viable business.

How you attract the men to your platform is up to you...

> How you attract the men to your platform is up to you...

Women. Period. If you have women, then men will come. And they'll jump through absolutely every hoop and hurdle to do so.

The population of men who fulfil one of these shopping lists and would subject themselves to this verification process is insignificant. They are in bars successfully pursuing women who don’t write shopping lists on dating websites.

yep its cause women dont have to do any work they just get chats all the time from guys

but its so bad now because women are competing for the top 5% of men who are like models and everyone else gets no response

An honest question: Do you have any evidence to back up this claim? I keep hearing this claim, but I haven’t see any solid science or other data supporting it.

My understanding is that women are more picky than men about who they find attractive, but less picky about who they will message and respond to.

Before the above-mentioned buyout, OkCupid's blog used to have at least one article documenting this exact phenomenon. If you are not an 8/10 or better rated by women, you are fighting for the bottom 20% attractiveness of women, and EVEN THEN still have a low response rate.

Create a profile of an average looking guy, then create a profile with a model looking guy. The first guy will have zero girls messaging him first and will get 5% reply rate, the second guy will have girls throwing nudes and phone numbers down his inbox.

yea okcupid did a test and showed it then tinder did a test and its even worse now

https://medium.com/@worstonlinedater/tinder-experiments-ii-g...

https://twitter.com/paperclique/status/1087579317809246210

https://twitter.com/devonzuegel/status/1087575749949673472

Thanks for the links.

I have seen that @medium link before; this is an informal survey done by a single person so there’s probably a lot of methodological issues with the survey. The third link is just a screenshot from that same article, so it is just as dubious.

The second link is quoting the actual article out of context.

Here is the entire article: https://archive.is/yse2

To wit: “Site-wide, two-thirds of male messages go to the best-looking third of women [...] women rate an incredible 80% of guys as worse-looking than medium. Very harsh. On the other hand, when it comes to actual messaging, women shift their expectations only just slightly ahead of the curve, which is a healthier pattern than guys’ pursuing the all-but-unattainable.”

Point being, it’s men who only want the most attractive girls, and it’s women who are more willing to give a homely guy a chance.

nah women start chats like 1% of the time so theyre just messaging back men who actually reached them first

okcupid was from 2009, its way different now after ten years. women control the scene and they only go for the top. thats what the tweets i linked from 2019 show

I see you're getting downvoted, which is funny because I've proposed the same idea on HN a few times and a lot of people thought it was a good idea. Maybe the weight thing isn't necessary with everything else in play, but otherwise I think this is something that should be tried. Yet nobody has bitten. Perhaps that means it's either not viable or of interest to investors.

People have a right to an “affectional preference.” The strange thing is that the same people who wouldn’t question the right of a man to not be attracted to women (for example) are most likely to be disturbed or that someone may have a weight preference.

Perhaps the concept of outsourcing the vetting of potential mates' physical characteristics strikes folks as disturbing.

And yet it's been pretty common for a long time and still is in a lot of cultures - mostly for traits like income/wealth and family though. Matchmaking and forced marriages are still very much a thing.

Really!? You don't care if your potential mate is male or female, young or old?

Dating apps are creepy enough as they are.

I think what is disturbing is people’s propensity to lie about something so objectively false.

As far as I know, vetting potential mates’ physical characteristics has happened for thousands of years, whenever families/friends/coworkers propose a match.

I might even think this is a superior system as people are bad at perceiving their own price in the mating market, and an outside appraisal is frequently more accurate.

Ignoring the expense of those kioskes, for this to be fair, we would need to verify height, weight, photo, marital/relationship status, and income (paycheck stubs will need to notarized).

Plus fully functional anatomy, ready to produce offspring, and no use of hormones or antibiotics. No bodily modifications without approval, including docked ears or tails. I need to see the GMO certificates.

I'm not sure DMV photos would inspire romance...

Is people misrepresenting themselves something you encounter frequently? Seems like a short sighted move.

It's completely understandable to put yourself out there as the best version of yourself, but yes I have frequently seen people exaggerating themselves to the point of misrepresentation.

You see profiles with only pictures that clearly were taken 5-10 years ago, or only picture of the face with a filter so heavy they are barely recognizable. It is certainly short sighted because you can only hide behind a carefully curated profile for so long. If I was looking for a dating service I would certainly pay for one with just verified, unedited photos. At some point this could get creepy but other stats like height, age, and weight could be optionally verifiable and public.

If this could save me from even one awkward date a year with someone I don't find even remotely physically compatible it would easily be worth it.

You see profiles with only pictures that clearly were taken 5-10 years ago

Again my experience is long ago but I would occasionally be matched with someone I knew IRL and women shaving 5-10 years (e.g. moving into a lower age bracket) was very common.

Right. And then you meet someone that doesn't meet your innate "affectional preference" and what do you do, leave? (Yes!)

What's funny is I didn't make any value judgements when I proposed a verified physical characteristics site. I never said that it's better to like fat or thin, or tall or short, or blonde or redhead, or bald or hairy, black or white. There's someone for everyone and that's great!

But it's not OK to lie about it, and hope the other person will overlook the fact that you are a liar or that you'll change your mind "once you get to know him/her"

There was a really good OkCupid blog post that analyzed their member profiles and found that men that were 5’10” and 5’11” would round up to 6’. It was a pretty significant portion of them, too.

Do you know if they said what would happen if the user just left the height portion blank?

yea cause every girl on tinder wants a guy over 6 foot tall

I'm 6'2" and it seems to have done nothing for me. I only have maybe 1-3 people to swipe on anyway. Once you get outside of densely populated cities, Tinder is all but useless.

i mean you still gotta be good looking sorry its tough out there

It's the paradox of choice. If you get to pick from many, and people are just a photo + description, it's easy to get more picky than you'd normally be.

If someone asked me if I want to date an overweight woman. I'd say no. But if I met a great person, and she happened to be overweight, it wouldn't really matter to me that much. So, within limits, I could accept being 'lied to' on a dating website.

Reminded me of this excellent talk

https://www.ted.com/talks/barry_schwartz_on_the_paradox_of_c...

People wanting to flatter themselves? The nerve. Get off your high horse.

You're missing the fact that deceptive profiles negatively impact the experiences of everyone they interact with.

Robbery? People just want to enrich themselves. Rape? People just want to pleasure themselves. The nerve of society to criminalize these behaviors, we should all get the fuck off our collective high horses.

If you're going to say adjusting a photo angle is equivalent to rape, please never use a dating website.

If you're going to be so obtuse that you can't understand a logical analogy, please never debate people on the internet.

It’s making sure people are honest. I’m making no judgements. Some people use photos that aren’t even of them. Is that ok?

There’s a huge difference in flattering yourself and exaggerating to the point of misrepresentation.

> I think it's a fatal flaw in the dating site business model, to be honest.

I think it is just one exhibit of the fatal flaw of the idea that shareholder value maximization is the correct objective of a corporation. The very original raison d'etre of limited libility was to enhance wellbeing of public, not shareholders. And for some reason that has been forgotten.

(No, I have no good solutions for proper corporate governance, but I still think acknowledging we have a problem is the first step.)

In reality, dating sites/apps are really first date apps (even when they're being honest, not like here). I would like to see a start up that will connect you to someone, but their business model is around keeping you connected. So much of their tech is around curating good dates and helping you maintain a healthy relationship.

This is not unique to the dating industry, other industries get by just fine without resorting to outright fraud.

In other industries it is called growth-hacking, but in the dating industry the business model depends on it, even when the business has reached maturity.

It's a fatal flaw in the monthly subscription-based model, to be sure, but I don't think that many customers are subscribed for months on end - either they find someone, or give up (on that particular website/app) because "it isn't working". Thus, a feature-driven per-use pricing scheme which Tinder uses for "Super Likes". It sells them a la carte even if you don't have a subscription. (They also have a traditional scription model.)

The interesting thing is this is Hinge's business model but they have the problem of abandoned accounts sitting there instead of people deleting them for whatever reason.

I may be misremembering the specific app and timeline but I’m fairly sure Hinge sent me an email among the lines of “you look like you’re no longer active so we’re hiding your account” after a few days of inactivity.

Ah yes, the only profession aside from medicine that exists to eradicate itself.

The goal of any consultancy should be to get your clients to the point where they no longer need you.

[Cough] Gov't consulting companies would like a word.

Well I did say "should". :/

Also there's a difference between specialist consultancies and contract labour hire. I'd say most government contractors fall into the latter camp.

"Consulting: If you can't be part of the solution, there's a lot of money to be made prolonging the problem."

Not quite. Teaching counts too, with the the end result of a good tutor being that they're not needed any more (same with a college or university).Quicker you pass say your driving test, the less money the instructor makes.

> Quicker you pass say your driving test, the less money the instructor makes

Only if people never recommend driving instructors to friends and family. If they do, a driving instructor who consistently has people passing their test quickly is much more likely to make more money long term

Medicine does no more eradicate itself than food industry does. Of course, once you've eaten in a restaurant, you are not hungry anymore, but that's far cry from food industry "eradicating itself".

I work in information security and we have effectively consulted ourselves out of a job and were happy to do it. Some customers only need our help for a while, others need it for much longer :)

I can't tell if you're being sarcastic. I'm inferring a tone of sarcasm from your comment but I'm not sure what you're really trying to communicate here.

I don't think they're being sarcastic. It's a market that when done efficiently and successfully, puts itself out of business. The better medicine gets, the less patients they get.

Well I met my wife with OKCupid so can't complain! It really worked for me.

isn't this the job board model too? Indeed, ZipRecruiter, Linkedin?

No, LinkedIn works to establish the network of professional connections which stays with you even when you got a job.

Now, I'm not sure if these are of any worth (I never got anything useful out of LinkedIn... either people trying to sell me something, or colleagues I know already).

I've heard of people (of gold digger kind) using LinkedIn as a dating site.

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