Ask HN: How would you overcome the chicken/egg problem when making a dating app? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: How would you overcome the chicken/egg problem when making a dating app?

1 pointthrowawayadvsec10 comments

I think the Match Group +/- monopoly/dominance is terrible for society and single people, and it needs to be broken, one company shouldn't have that much influence over so many people relationships.

But the main problem with this kind of app is the chicken and egg problem. To give it any kind of appeal you'd need both enough men and women in at least one city.

I have a few decent ideas for differentiation and providing a better experience to users, but this won't matter if no one uses the app first.

I can think of one nasty way of getting users that would be a (bad) mean to an (good) end: temporary AI generated profiles and chats, to get it off the ground. I'd feel terrible about it, this would be very temporary, but if it can give it traction at the beginning it could be a good plan.

Focusing on queer people could also be interesting, you need less people if everyone could potentially be interested in anyone else on the website.

Another way would be to focus on online friendships/long distance relationships, and slowly switch to a more local focus.

I'd probably also use every trick in the book to promote it on insta/snap/tiktok as well as locally targeted ads/marketing focusing on one big city at a time.

What would you do to overcome the chicken and egg problem if you wanted to launch a dating app?

> temporary AI generated profiles and chats

This is terrible for many reasons, one of which is that no one will actually meet anyone else in real life and no one wants to talk to a dating bot. Once that's exposed you'd lose all credibility.

For heterosexual relationships: you need real single women. If you have that, the men will show up and they'll be easy to attract. You might consider locating single women in several age groups (not sure how to do this, perhaps marketing) and asking them to join, you could potentially pay them for signing up and creating a profile. I'm not sure what that amount is but it's probably not that expensive.

> ...you need real single women...

THIS.

I'm no chicken/egg expert...but to get the women I'm thinking you'll need both some sort of serious rewards for women signing up, and a good answer for the woman who asks "So...why is your new dating site going to suck less than all the other ones that I've said 'yuck!' to already?"

"you need real single women"

Yeah I'm perfectly aware of this.

Now the thing is, a lot of single lonely men, will still keep use an app for some time even if they don't get a date, especially if they get a few messages from time to time to keep them hopeful, the bot could be prompted to make excuses or to delay the date(I know it's awfully unethical, I'm not debating this). I know because I'm doing it and I know a lot of guys in the same position.

The goal would be to do this for a few weeks tops to get a bit of traction, and once there is actually a few women on the website to disable it entirely.

"Once that's exposed you'd lose all credibility."

Aware of that too, hence why it would be quickly disabled.

Don't even start, you're cheating the users and it seems you're looking for people to validate the idea of bots or AI. It's a bad idea.

I'm looking for better ideas that don't require a million dollar advertising budget.

In some industries the barrier is too high. I believe dating apps have reached that level.

> the bot could be prompted to make excuses or to delay the date

I'm so glad I'm (at least currently) married and don't have to worry about finding myself using this app to meet people.

Your post said:

> "I think the Match Group +/- monopoly/dominance is terrible for society"

How is using AI and bot accounts to chat with lonely men (who think they're chatting with real humans) any better for society?

> Aware of that too, hence why it would be quickly disabled.

Or you could just... not do it at all

>How is using AI and bot accounts to chat with lonely men (who think they're chatting with real humans) any better for society?

The plan would be to use it just to kickstart the project. I think wasting the time of 50 people to help thousand/millions can make sense.

"Or you could just... not do it at all "

I could also do nothing at all.

Open to better viable ideas. I wouldn't ask otherwise.

Like all apps, marketing, seeding, fake profiles, fake reviews and SEO.

Show profiles that are arbitrarily far away from each other

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