Hacker News Reader

Comment by josephcsible | Hacker News Reader

> The intent of these apps is to keep you single and spending money.

Perhaps a different monetization model would fix that. The ideal outcome of a dating app for you, the user, is that you find someone to marry and spend the rest of your life with, and that means you won't need the app anymore. This means that for apps where the user is a source of ongoing revenue (either paying directly, or through ads), there is an perverse incentive for the app to want exactly what you said. An idea I've heard before would be an app where there's a one-time payment to join, and that's the only revenue ever generated by each user. Then their incentives would be aligned with yours.

View on HN

You're describing old-style matchmakers.

I paid one about $200 circa 1998. She promised matchups every month until I cancelled, more or less. She wanted me to match so I'd quit draining her time & effort. Within 3 months I had a girlfriend, and we both dropped out. We had a grace period where we could re-up if it didn't work. Obviously, if one of us cancelled and the other asked for more matches, that deceipt would have been quickly revealed.

In short, you paid a larger finder's-fee upfront, and the service is motivated to match you ASAP.

    Perhaps a different monetization model would fix that. 
    The ideal outcome of a dating app [...] means you won't 
    need the app anymore.

I used to run a moderately profitable social site with a dating slant.

I get what you're saying. In a way, yeah: your ideal moneymaker is somebody who signs up for a $20/year recurring subscription and forgets about it for the next 30 years.

But that was not how I viewed things. There's always a fresh "supply" of people who are looking for connections.

Think of a college bar. You don't need people to become "lifer" customers. There are always new people coming into town.

In some senses, if you're running a "pure" dating site (ala Tinder, as opposed to something with more of a community/social slant) it's probably not even advantageous to have the same people hanging around the site indefinitely. Most people want to date local people, and they would like to see a constant supply of new local search results/recommendations rather than the same people over and over.

> Perhaps a different monetization model would fix that. The ideal outcome of a dating app for you, the user, is that you find someone to marry and spend the rest of your life with, and that means you won't need the app anymore.

You're describing hinge. OP should probably try Hinge.

A quick search says Hinge charges a monthly subscription, is that not correct?

One of Hinge's marketing messages is something along the line of "The app you're meant to delete."

Marketing message !== company’s economic incentive.

Oh 100%. My understanding is that they still haven't caved to their economic incentive and that it's such a flooded market that they actually find it a differentiator. But yeah no one should trust dating apps to be honest for any amount of time.

I recently canceled my subscription for Hinge. And the number of matches I'm getting in my last week is higher than the rest of the month. Hinge has the same incentives optimizing their algorithm as everyone else.

Hinge's algorithm has gone to crap. It's very obvious when they show your profile and when they don't. If you don't use their roses then the chances of a match go down drastically.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com