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Comment by anonylizard | Hacker News Reader

Dating apps don't work because the business model doesn't make sense. All apps rely on repeat business, yet here repeat business depends on failed relationships.

It is theoretically possible to make 'repeat business' on long-term reputation attracting new customers, similar to how schools and universities can thrive despite only ever serving a customer once. However, how often will someone need to introduce others to a dating app? A multi-year timeline for word-of-mouth is probably too much for a VC funded app.

There exists dating businesses that can profit from long-term relationships, its called Church (Marry at a church = lifetime donor + children likely become members too), hence churches are far more optimized and effective at building long term relationships than apps could possibly be.

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> All apps rely on repeat business, yet here repeat business depends on failed relationships.

By that logic, car mechanics don't make sense either - they repair your car, yet they rely on recurring faults to make money. And let's not get started on doctors.

These misaligned incentives exist, of course, but successful matching also serves as advertisement and there are enough people to sustain a business with one-time customers.

Coincidentally, car repair people are trusted maybe a tiny bit more than lawyers. A lot of people in these positions are morally bankrupt and won’t hesitate to rip off grandma to the tune of an order of magnitude

For dating apps like Tinder a large subset of the user base doesn't consider short term relationships failed relationships, and can stay on for years and years

Tinder is ok as a hookup app, the problem is that its success there and marketing as a dating app caused it to eat most of the competition, and what competition it didn't eat copied it because of its success despite its format being absolute trash for anything more serious than mr/ms right now.

> mr/ms

What does this mean?

> Mr. Right (now), Ms. Right (now)

i.e. Not "Mr. Right", but "Mr. Okay for Right Now"

Where I live, Tinder is mostly millennials looking for long term relationships. I suspect younger people have mostly migrated to social media, I hear a lot about using insta as what is effectively a dating platform, and is certainly a better user experience. The whole dating app experience is pretty awful.

> I hear a lot about using insta as what is effectively a dating platform, and is certainly a better user experience.

How does that even work? You just send messages to random people, or?

https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Slide%20into...

Pretty much

On the flipside, dating apps are killing their industry by being so ineffective. It's seems much more desirable for people to have a good experience.

Also many people are not looking to get married at 20. They likely have a decade of messing around before getting off the apps for good.

> dating apps are killing their industry by being so ineffective

I tried to look this up and was surprised to find that Match group doesn't share their MAU numbers. Probably wouldn't be that meaningful since many people use multiple apps. What I did find though is that they have 16M paying users worldwide, which is fairly close to their all time high, and if you estimate that those users are all men, and only 25% of men pay, and there are equal numbers of men and women across all the apps, then you would have a rough estimate of 128M users worldwide, which sounds about right to me.

these numbers must be taken with a grain of salt given the rampant amount of bots / onlyfans / spam users.

only person i know who used the tind estimated that 90% of his likes were people asking for money, redirections to their insta, or just straight up fake likes from the app to keep him using premium. FWIW he got a girlfrend through it, tho -- meeting them for a dinner thing this weekend

The business model does make sense, it's just that the actual business model isn't what's presented to users. These are profitable companies.

Long story short, they know they've got better matches in reserve, and give you those that will keep you using, not those that will actually make you happy.

Dating apps don't work for a myriad of reasons: misaligned incentives, irrational users, one-size-fits-few approach.

That said, I've had enough good experiences with dating apps that when I am single again, I would 100% use them to find dates.

Bumble offers a lifetime membership, which I think fixes the perverse incentives.

It doesn't, it will still show nagging dialogs to buy "spotlights" and use dark patterns/nudging to get you to spend even more.

Yeah but you have to deal with the homophobia and judgement of other members if you want to date around and not immediately settle. The church had a such huge role in western society but squandered it.

The primary source of members for all the Abrahamic religions are born into it, not converts. Churches, Mosques, Synagogues will continue to exist, as long as they are effective at boosting birth rates for their members, and manage to retain their children to a degree.

Homosexuals are therefore low-revenue customers, because the expected children count (including adoption) is far lower than heterosexual marriages. Churches that prioritize accommodating modern social mores statistically have shriveled massively.

Whether they have 'squandered' anything by sticking to their 'business model' will only become obvious in decades. They don't operate on quarterly targets or even 5 year plans. Judging by fertility rates, highly religious groups still have higher birth rates than secular groups.

A couple things.

I understand what you're saying about the judgement of other members, but I think it's misguided. Many, probably most, people fear judgement of their social groups, but conversely it is social groups that also enable the most powerful and free versions of ourselves when we find the right ones. Which ultimately is to say that when the judgement of the group is good, you are empowered to do things you didn't know were possible. So rather than fear judgement, either intentionally pick the group that will judge you well, or more preferably make the changes in yourself that the groups judgement is incentivizing.

Homophobia isn't the right word. The church isn't afraid of homosexuality. It has beliefs that are inconsistent with homosexuality but it isnt fear as the word falsely implies.

> Homophobia isn't the right word. The church isn't afraid of homosexuality. It has beliefs that are inconsistent with homosexuality but it isnt fear as the word falsely implies.

Catholics, I think, get a really bad rap for this.

The standard literally is "sex is only in a marriage of one man and one woman." Everything that doesn't fit is viewed as being incompatible. Gay relationships? Straight relationships outside marriage? Straight relationships in addition to marriage? Masturbation and Pornography? All aren't acceptable - being gay is hardly special theologically even if it gets the most attention.

They get a bad rap because they try to impose Catholic rules on non Catholic people.

In addition, the standard is that marriage is a vocation that lasts until death, even if divorce isn't the issue of the moment.

> Homophobia isn't the right word. The church isn't afraid of homosexuality. It has beliefs that are inconsistent with homosexuality but it isnt fear as the word falsely implies.

The church encompasses many beliefs and mandates. However, there is a reason anti-LGBT sentiment resonates so strongly with certain church-going crowds, and it's not merely because the clergy is telling them it's wrong. I believe it's because they're playing to a crowd who has a base fear or even disgust of LGBT folks and wants their preconceived notions validated.

In other words, the church is telling a crowd of homophobes what they want to hear. Does that make the church homophobic? To me, that's a distinction without a real difference and not even the most important thing to figure out. The real question is why that base disgust exists in the first place for the clergy to sell to.

Do you think that hydrophobic materials are afraid of water? That just isn't what the suffix means.

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