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Comment by quantummagic | Hacker News Reader

That doesn't account for the good-will and word-of-mouth generated from any successful matches, which presumably could lead to many more customers than those lost due to marriage.

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Very anecdotal, but in my experience people have no attachment to or enthusiasm for dating apps. I've heard (acquainted) couples say the met on dating apps. No one ever said which ones.

My counter anecdote would be that almost every time I mention my spouse and I met on a dating app, people ask me which one.

Edit: people ask me which app, not which spouse.

I think the difference is are they people asking in a relationship or not - asking which app is categorically asking where they can find someone to hook up with.

Or it's curiosity (genuine or polite). Maybe, for some people it tips the scale into trying the app either because they were already thinking about trying some/any app, or switching away from their current one.

I don't know if anyone who's asked me has started using the app as a result, but I think it (anecdotally, again) supports an idea that a successful results for one app organically helps its name recognition.

Edit: unless you meant the difference was between people asking which app vs which spouse.

No, you understood me exactly as I meant it - which app. I met a partner of five years on the apps and people often asked how we met but they never asked which app (Tinder) - we actually saw each other on multiple apps but she did not respond on Bumble because it forced her to send the first message, which I thought was interesting feedback.

It doesn’t matter which one because they’re all owned by a single company and converging toward each other.

That's a very difficult metric to measure whereas "did this user return and continue paying" is easier. The tyranny of metrics in action.

Man i hate metrics sometimes. Important things that are hard to measure are just left by the wayside

I feel like that kind of word of mouth is not enough to compensate. Like how many customers is word of one sucessful match expected to attract?

“I met my husband on hinge” is something that gets people to download the app right away. I’ve seen it happen tons of times

I mean, one wedding can draw in over a hundred people, and the specific dating app in question gets name dropped not infrequently. The last wedding I went to, Hinge was mentioned in at least one of the speeches.

I feel like dating apps almost exclusively take off via word of mouth. It doesn’t have to be marriage, though, just people finding matches worth meeting.

Almost every dating app is scammy, buggy, heavily paywalled, and barely used. If you see an ad for a dating app, it’s usually in that category.

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