In the weeks leading up to Valentine’s Day, dating apps typically see a spike in new users and activity. More profiles are created, more messages sent, more swipes logged.
Dating platforms market themselves as modern technological solutions to loneliness, right at your fingertips. And yet, for many people, the day meant to celebrate romantic connection feels lonelier than ever.
This, rather than a personal failure or the reality of modern romance, is the outcome of how dating apps are designed and of the economic logic that governs them.
These digital tools aren’t simply interfaces that facilitate connection. The ease and expansiveness of online dating have commodified social bonds, eroded meaningful interactions and created a type of dating throw-away culture, encouraging a sense of disposability and distorting decision-making.
Online dating apps sell us hope by exploiting our needs, desires and insecurities.
True for pretty much all social apps.
There was a “Golden Age” period of dating apps (that actually coincided much with the same “golden age” of many other services including streaming), where making money wasn’t the goal, and the services actually served their official goal - pairing up people.
Problem is, any kind of dating app is self-detrimental for revenue, because if they serve that official goal, they’re essentially nixing their own customer base. Because what’s the point of a dating app? To find a person you can date, therefore you wouldn’t need a dating app anymore. If it works as advertised, users spend bare minimum time on the platform before achieving their goals and leaving it.
This simply means that a dating platform is only viable in three scenarios:
- the platform itself is an extension of an existing service, meaning it doesn’t have to be financially successful on its own as long as it helps retain users and user-minutes (aka how much time a user spends on the entirety of the service, dating included). See e.g. Facebook’s dating subsection.
- there’s VC funding, the app is in a growth phase, therefore the goals can stay as-is as long as userbase growth can be shown to the investors. Problem is, once the platform reaches critical mass and those investors want their money back, from then on, enshittification ensues.
- the platform is driven not by VC funding or connected services but by a person’s or a group of people’s genuine interest in getting people paired up. There will be ads, there will be some paid features, but it cannot scale and is therefore doomed to fail on the long run (think pre-dating-app forums specialising on dating/partner-finding)
Most dating apps fall into the second category, and in fact if you do just a moment’s research you’ll notice that some 80-90% of the highest traffic (or most known) dating apps are under a single company. Yep, there’s a literal dating apps monopoly going on that snuffs out competition, or buys them up and shuts them down, and so on.
In fact… I’m a mobile app engineer, and I’ve actually ended up applying to a few dating app startups. The one common denominator between these was not that they wanted to do something new, or wanted to engage people differently than the rest… no. It was that all of these companies were specifically made with a niche idea in mind with the sole purpose of creating a minimum viable product that catches the interest of this dating monopoly and buys the company out. Yup. My job would’ve been “make our company sellable”. You can imagine how inspiring that is, especially when there’s no offer of equity on the table…
any kind of dating app is self-detrimental for revenue
It doesn’t have to be. In the US, about 4 million people turn 18 every year. Let’s say you get all of them signed up and all of them optimally paired off. You still have another 4 million new signups next year. Until the world falls off a demographic cliff, you’ve got an evergreen customer population.
That being said, the well is VERY poisoned at this point. The match group is a cancer on our society.
You know what would be a valuable dating app to me? I have no idea how this would work in actuality, but an app that helps me date my wife in some way. Suggestions of what to do, packaged date nights, flowers, all that shit — except for all kinds of people not just “traditional romance.” River rafting, swinging, sports bars, I mean appeal to all kinds or even people who just want to try things they don’t even know is it’s for them or not. It would be great for singles, but would still be useful after a relationship is in full bloom. But I think that’s something completely different from a dating app.
I would totally go for that! After being together for a decade, it does become quite difficult to find something novel to enjoy together.
And if they are doing their job right, they also won’t lose that many customers.
because if they serve that official goal, they’re essentially nixing their own customer base.
Not if it’s a promiscuous sex dating app. Then it’s more of a social network, thought, just around polyfuck graph instead of kitty photos graph.
True but we’re talking about dating apps meant for the general public, not a hookup/ONS/poly dating app.
I liked dating platforms way back in the days when you could make your own page, had large text fields to describe yourself and could filter by age, location and maybe a few other important things like smoking or wanting kids. Years later I tried the apps and it was just frustrating and nothing else. There wasn’t even really space to describe yourself or show your character.
Been trying Hinge and there’s lots of space and opportunity for it. What I’ve discovered/had validated is thay most people are just painfully cookie-cutter. Some are not, and it’s why I still use it.
Okcupid used to be good, before they sold out. Its where I met my partner. I was sad to hear it had enshittified.
Oh someone liked me… Oh I can’t like them back because the system locks 3/4 of people who like you behind a paywall.
Accounts that have more activity tend to get locked down to extract revenue from users.
.com domain, meaning US? US has next to no market regulation.
Most of the apps are trashy and don’t optimize for good matches.
At the same time, many users half-ass using them, or deploy a variety of self-sabotage. (No, it’s not that you’re not tall or hot or whatever. It’s more likely your impersonal message didn’t warrant a response)
These two facts together mean a lot of people have truly bad outcomes.
I feel like it’s hard to craft a bunch of personal responses only to receive no response or a short conversation that dries up quickly afterwards. Talk about exhausting! Might as well start with the bare minimum and engage more if there’s interest back. Otherwise I can’t maintain the energy to keep it up.
On essentially all of them, they went to a swipe right to like and a swipe left for no.
Except when actually trying to make a match, it’s more advantageous to literally swipe right on everyone to maximize matches and then unmatch if you match with someone you aren’t interested in.
But if you are swiping left, you will match with significantly fewer and potentially none. It becomes demoralizing. And it takes much longer to make a decision if you are looking at everyone including those that don’t match with you so you go through fewer people to potentially match with.
Wait until you match with someone to look at their pictures and their profile, and only then, decide whether to stay matched or unmatch.
I had quite a few short relationships from tinder and bumble. But some of those wouldn’t have happened if I were more picky at the swiping stage.
Except when actually trying to make a match, it’s more advantageous to literally swipe right on everyone to maximize matches and then unmatch if you match with someone you aren’t interested in.
This isn’t true if their system punishes people for swiping “yes” on everyone. While I can’t be certain that’s the case, it seems very plausible it is. Swipe yes on everyone, your profile is down ranked, you don’t get as many good matches.
Additionally, tinder and hinge only allow you a limited number of yes swipes per day. If you blow them on the first ten profiles, you’re going to have worse results than if you spend a little longer looking at profiles.
Furthermore, on hinge, you can send a message with your like. Your chances of having a conversation and date go way down without a good message.
As a dude, I wasn’t matching while I was swiping often. I’d swipe in the morning and then see what came up through the day.
They may have changed their apps in the… 10 or so years since I used them. But the premise is the same, the more you swipe right on the better the odds of matching someone that swipes right on you. Even if you don’t swipe right on everyone, be extremely generous on your swipes.
This is wild advice, thier algorithm will say “this person is addicted to matches and will literally match with anyone, sell him the unlimited swipes package and downgrade his match chance exposure to keep him hanging on for more”. Based on 5 years since use.
At the same time, many users half-ass using them
Honestly the way a lot of the Tinder-style ones (swiping) are designed it almost feels like they’re meant to be half-assed? You can’t filter by likes, just exclude by dislikes (ex. Don’t include people who don’t want kids, don’t include smokers, etc) because there’s no search anymore. They just show you a profile, and you swipe.
When I was using them I very quickly stopped reading bios before they matched back. I just swiped right on everyone, checked daily for new matches, read those profiles and blocked/messaged people based on what was in their profile.
Speaking on filters, though: They don’t even work. I had men filtered out, and I ended up getting about 25% of profiles being men. Like, the only gender tag they had was “Man,” which lead to a lot of the “Idk why they even showed me to you I have men filtered out” message being sent.
I had that happen to me, too, and I’m a straight man. Never really wanted to do gay stuff, and yet Tinder would constantly throw in gay matches as if to say “are you SURE you don’t wanna do a little experimenting while we watch?”
The top of the funnel I could see an argument for not putting a lot of thought in. You’re just trying to get a pool of potential matches. (The apps are cruel for making you pay for this and not just giving you the list up front)
But once you do have a match, you have to put in some effort to stand out. A lot of people get a match and all they write is “hey”, and then they go right into the trash. Why would I engage with someone who just wrote “hey” when I could instead talk to someone who read my profile and said something personalized?
Also swiping yes on everyone might do strange things to their recommendation algorithm. Unfortunately that’s a black box, but I wouldn’t be surprised if that puts you in some sort of chum bucket shadow ban situation.
And also, yeah, making you pay for basic filters is a trashy design. Match group should be broken up.
Maybe, but it did happen earlier on before I’d started, so I think the filters are just kinda not great to start
They’re really optimizing for the income of the people who make the apps. No surprise there.
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I think dating apps are mostly used for hookups
This isn’t especially true. Maybe Feeld and Tinder are less “serious”, but the idea of dating apps is mainstream enough that you find all sorts of people and goals.
The capitalism and for-profit nature does make them all kind of suck, though
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Thinking about my friend group, about half the people met their long term partners on dating apps. The other half is a mix of work and large social groups (eg: people who all go to certain kinds of music festivals)
I guess it varies by age and region.
While meeting partners through personal networks is still the most common kind of introduction, about one-in-ten partnered adults (12%) say they met their partner online. About a third (32%) of adults who are married, living with a partner or are in a committed relationship say friends and family helped them find their match. Smaller shares say they met through work (18%), through school (17%), online (12%), at a bar or restaurant (8%), at a place of worship (5%) or somewhere else (8%).
Some other sources I’m seeing say it’s as high as 60% of couples met online.
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whose been screwing with the gas chromategraph?!
