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Comment by panny | Hacker News Reader

Dating apps don't have incentive to match you up. When they do, they lose a customer.

Its a little bit of a balance act, they want to match you with someone that's good enough to date a couple times but not enough to date long term.

I think the mathematics work better if they match you with "mostly compatible" people rather than "not compatible at all". Success stories are important because that's how you build recognition.

Now a days though, match group owns all dating apps so they have a monopoly in dating. Whenever a new app comes to market that's "better" (which will be, in its initial stages) they acquire. Users migrate and then they ruin. Rinse and repeat.

They recently acquired sniffies (a gay cruising app) for like 100M. Go figure.

I've looked into match group before, they're the usual suspects (Blackrock, Vanguard) and practice lawfare. If you don't take their buyout (like how bumble refused) then they try to sue you with software patents which I thought were all basically invalidated in Alice v. CLS Bank. But yeah, they're not a nice group of people who want to match you up. They're in it for money. And the way match group operates makes others reluctant to enter the market, unless they are just looking for a big buyout payday.

Blackrock and Vanguard are index fund managers, I'm not quite sure what you're talking about.

Breeze has a really cool formula in which you pay exclusively for each date. And a date is organised automatically for each match, without any possibility to chat beforehand.

Unless I'm missing something, this sounds awful.

When was the last time you went on a date with someone new? I ask because it's likely less awful than the current state.

Why does it? I'm curious. I think it solves most of the issues of the traditional apps. (But yes, I didn't mention a fundamental aspect: they propose you only a very limited amount of profiles each day, no endless swiping: if you don't fancy any of your daily ~4, tough luck, you can come back tomorrow).

How do you verify that they are who the profile says they are without chatting beforehand?

You don't. You go to the date (in a public place, set by the app) and if there's something fishy about them you can report them to the app (there's an explicit feedback request after each date).

If you have to pay per match, then aren't you already out the money at that point? Not to mention the risk of just getting murdered.

Ooh, you lost $12! And your date did too, and probably the account as well. As for the risk of getting murdered, I think it's unavoidable in any app (and in life in general) but probably worse if you organise the date by yourself.

You still have to match first. So the same swipe left or right but once you match, there is a system that asks when you're free for a date. That's it.

Not exactly, you only have a very limited amount of profiles visible every day. About 4, though maybe it depends on the location. So there is no endless swiping. You also cannot match anyone else until you have set up a date with your last match, and if you opt out too many times (again, probably three or four) your account gets blocked.

In any case, you only pay for dates you go to (unless you cancel at the last moment). Their incentive is to send you to as many dates as possible.

Coffee Meets Bagels tried that. A few matches at 12PM every day.

I think the key problem for dating apps is that 90% of women on it will only match with the top 10% of men. Meanwhile, most men will try to match with anything that has a nose and eyes.

I don't think Breeze's concept fixes that since it's still up to the girl to match.

> I think the key problem for dating apps is that 90% of women on it will only match with the top 10% of men.

Probably that's why they did this:

> you only have a very limited amount of profiles visible every day

It honestly won’t help. Women can use multiple dating apps. They’re also patient.

The problem you mention is real and fundamental, and yet matching happens in real life. I think it's ultimately because of limited exposure (you have access to a limited amount of people) and limited availability (the most attractive have limited time, can't really date too many partners in parallel). I think this app is a decent mitigation for both issues, as it proposes a limited choice and forces you to invest in each match (and I'm not talking about the economic investment but the need to actually show up for the date). I've tried it and it's working way better for me than the alternatives (though it might be an effect that wears off, I don't know. But so far so good).

I don't think it will help. This is my honest opinion.

It doesn't matter if Breeze limits matches to a few a day. Women who have Bumble, Tinder, Hinge, etc will still get thousands of likes from top 10% guys. There's no reason for them to go on a date with a 50th percentile guy from Breeze. They're not only using Breeze.

If you're getting success on Breeze, you probably have success in other dating apps too.

It's the average guy who is screwed on dating apps no matter if it's Breeze or Bumble.

Ok, don't want to sound more like an ad for a dating app than I already do :). In my case I can say that while the traditional apps had become completely, utterly useless for me, this appears to work. Maybe it's also an age thing, demographics, etc.

On the general side, do you really think that the women who match the 10% guys on Tinder are actually getting dates with them? If those guys have so many to choose from, they'll choose better matches. Or they're going to say that they're looking for non-monogamous relationships because that's what works in their interest. So traditional apps are not working for women either- just everyone despises Tinder and Bumble, at least that's what I'm hearing left and right. Again, this is just my social circle and age range, so YMMV.

Yes, they are getting dates from guys above their league but they are not getting commitments. Thats the problem.

Sounds like a cool concept. Too bad they're only in 6 countries. :(

There's 3 glaring problems here.

1. There's a steady stream of unmarried individuals so as you match people up there's more people (either just from growing older or divorce) that can use the app.

2. If you don't already own a dating app, then even if you cannibalize the market you can still make a large sum of money. Akin to mining all the gold in a plot of land; sure your company needs to close once its gone but you made money in the interium.

2.5. If you do already own a dating app, if you're known for not working then people will stop using the app and go to a competitor (assuming you didn't buy them all ...)

I actually think a Facebook or Instagram might be in the best position to offer dating with the goal of permanent matching.

* Recruit friends to make recommendations mimics classic searching techniques

* Can scope out a more complete bio early in the process, for both AI and Human filtering/matching

* Their long term incentives will be meet if they post cute couple pictures or generate new long term users

LinkedIn is. But they won't do it.

Just what we need, Microsoft to suck the joy out of another aspect of our life.

Facebook apparently already has a dating app. I've heard anecdotally it is much better than the match group apps, maybe for older age ranges? I'm married and haven't used dating sites in over 20 years.

In theory the 'knows people you know' thing is a good vetting system for finding people to date though.

That is only the case if people enter exclusive relationships. But if someone has access to a dating app or system that works really well, there is little reason to do that.

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