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Comment by smnrchrds | Hacker News Reader

> Dominating the dating site market is a money printing machine

Not if you already have almost the whole market to yourself.

> Match Group ... owns and operates the largest global portfolio of popular online dating services including Tinder, Match.com, Meetic, OkCupid, Hinge, PlentyOfFish, UPWARD, Ship, and OurTime, totalling over 45 global dating companies

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Match_Group

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Bumble being the largest one in the US that they don't own (only Tinder is larger).

https://infogram.com/us-dating-app-marketshare-1h8n6m3konzmz...

Intuitively, the largest dating app has a moat because people will open the app that has the people they want to date. Nevertheless, Match has had to continue acquiring competitors in order to stay in first place. So maybe that moat isn't so defensible?

Dating apps seem more prone to the “eternal September” effect than other forms of social media. In practice, this looks like less quality messages being sent, more fake/catfish users, and monetization where it didn’t exist previously.

I fail to see how this would not make it a money printing machine?

"If you were a product person at IBM or Xerox, so you make a better copier or computer. So what? When you have monopoly market share, the company's not any more successful." - Steve Jobs

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P4VBqTViEx4

I don't believe that quote to be true if we suppose "success = printing money".

And if we don't suppose that, I do not see relevance of that quote.

It is already, regardless of quality of their product?

Most of those companies were acquisitions for the match group, so basically build a great dating site and match group will pay you a barrel of money to buy your money printing machine.

I once worked for a guy who supposedly was involved in the creation of the original match site, money was the only language he spoke.

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