[HN Gopher] Working for a Dating Website (2015)
___________________________________________________________________
Working for a Dating Website (2015)
Author : caseysoftware
Score : 108 points
Date : 2023-01-13 14:59 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (caseysoftware.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (caseysoftware.com)
| siliconc0w wrote:
| Successful couples do exit but they dfi get a pretty good
| permanent marketing machine because everytime someone asks, "How
| did you meet?" They'll promote the app. Also many (most?) people
| on there aren't looking for a long term relationship.
| nibbleshifter wrote:
| There is still significant stigma against online dating in many
| communities.
|
| Its still quite common for couples to come up with an agreed
| upon lie about how they met lol.
| gnicholas wrote:
| What communities are these, and what proportion of the
| population do they make up? All of the weddings I've attended
| in the last 7 years were among people who met online. The
| couples came from all over the US, with differing education
| levels, birthplaces, and socioeconomic levels.
| nibbleshifter wrote:
| I'm not American, so idk about the culture there.
|
| In Ireland and the UK almost every couple I know that have
| actually met on tinder/whatever tell their family and such
| that they met at a bar, lol.
|
| It does strike me as very funny that people still have this
| impression that online isn't where you meet anyone
| "serious", but a bar is.
| apples_oranges wrote:
| Can't wait for the day when fake-user-ai bots are flirting with
| flirt-ai-bots.
|
| Having said that, 90% of people I know really do find loving
| relationships via online dating. Sample size isn't great, but my
| feeling is those online dating relationships are superior,
| because people really can find good matches easier.
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| I think there's definitely some kind of bias in those results.
| Only certain kinds of people are able to tolerate online dating
| for very long, and the way they work only really finds "good
| matches" along a very narrow subset of criteria.
|
| Most people I know, myself included, can't stand the
| shallowness and general feeling that they are participating in
| a torturously silly marketing exercise.
| apples_oranges wrote:
| But what if you wrote that in your profile? Perhaps you would
| find the boy/girl that digs this kind of view on online
| dating.
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| So many reasons:
|
| 1) Negativity is generally not attractive.
|
| 2) It's a lie, since clearly I can tolerate it if I'm
| actually on a dating site saying I can't tolerate it.
|
| 3) Someone else who can't tolerate it isn't likely to be
| there to read it.
|
| 4) Stating it out loud doesn't change the nature of dating
| sites as shallow exercises in marketing.
| hardwaregeek wrote:
| Maybe this is making the author's point but IMO dating is hard
| enough that I don't think online services need to make it even
| harder
| wzdd wrote:
| I don't see why this is any more likely to be true than "by
| giving ok but not perfect matches we lose two customers, but then
| they both come back after 6 months", or "by giving absolutely
| dreadful matches we convince two free-tier customers to pay" or
| "by giving perfect matches we gain 5 customers because they all
| tell their friends".
| metalliqaz wrote:
| I'm surprised one of the big social media networks hasn't
| disrupted the online dating space.
|
| 1) The value of a dating site is proportional to the size of its
| user base. Dating sites can't match the big social networks.
|
| 2) Successful matches wouldn't leave the site entirely, they
| would just go back to using it for all the other non-dating
| functions.
|
| 3) It would presumably be cheaper for users because the social
| networks are primarily funded by advertising.
|
| So, why hasn't the Zuck rolled out Facebook Romance(TM) to eat
| Match Group the way that Facebook Marketplace ate Craigslist?
| lotsoweiners wrote:
| I agree with you. Every dating site I've been on feels like a
| scam that is full of fake accounts and wants to charge you more
| money per interaction. I had a lot of dating success with AOL
| back in the day. I had several longer relationships, quite a
| few short term relationships, and of course some duds with
| women I met on their. Part of what worked in my opinion is it
| was free since you were already paying for AOL and there were
| lots of people just hanging out and maybe interested in
| chatting/dating. Earlier on when everyone was playing Farmville
| etc, they should have made a way to easily meet and friend/date
| new people without it appearing as part of your main activity
| on the site. Maybe they struggle with some of the same issues
| Craigslist struggled with as a dating platform.
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| There is already a Facebook Dating, isn't there?
| metalliqaz wrote:
| Wow I didn't even know. But my point still stands. It just
| checked my rarely-used facebook account and I don't see any
| reference to the dating app anywhere. My intention with above
| comment was that it was seamlessly integrated into the social
| app.
| latchkey wrote:
| https://www.facebook.com/dating
| csa wrote:
| My guess is that making a match-killer would barely move the
| needle for FB's bottom line.
|
| If they could figure out a way to combine dating with effective
| ad delivery, then they might be onto something bigger.
| astrange wrote:
| In the same way that a dating site can work because you know
| the people on it want to go on dates, the people on social
| networks don't want to go on dates, or at least aren't
| comfortable with their friends knowing they have a dating
| profile.
|
| Besides, if you're super attractive you can just leave your DMs
| open.
| BizarroLand wrote:
| There's an old adage about if you're not paying, you're the
| product, implying that anything that doesn't cost you money
| generates its money from your actions.
|
| The idea was that if you use sites that you pay for, you will be
| the priority and your desires are more likely to be granted.
|
| Looks like dating websites took a look at that idea and said,
| "What if we made them pay to be the product?" and it worked.
|
| I bet they also sell your data to marketers and spammers. So you
| pay to participate, your presence increases the potential value
| of the site to other potential payees, and then the site gets
| money from selling your profiles, actions, location, and answers
| to any questions or quizzes to whomever will pay for it.
|
| I should have made a dating website.
| michaelteter wrote:
| A dating site is #2 or #3 on my personal project backlog. I have
| significant successful (and unsuccessful) experience as a user,
| and I have identified some significant improvements to be made
| (from the user perspective).
|
| There's really no point optimizing for profit only, as it almost
| certainly results in a bad experience for users. Sure, a company
| can make money (and likely eventually be bought by Match Group,
| so -cash out-)... but sometimes it's worth actually building
| something for the good of people.
|
| Yes, if two people match well, you may lose two customers... for
| a while. Most relationships don't last long term, and people who
| have had good experiences on a dating site will return when they
| are seeking companionship or love again. If they were happy with
| your site before, they will come back to you.
|
| The current dating site options are a wasteland. Not to beat a
| dead horse, but most are owned by Match Group. And from my
| experience with several of them, once they land in Match they are
| not good sites to use.
|
| OkCupid was one of the best at one time, and PlentyOfFish was
| pretty decent (if you can accept old/functional UI) long ago. But
| these days, they have pared down the features and upped the
| pricing to the point where it feels like they are just milking
| lonely people for all the cash they can get.
|
| At least they are possibly not stuffing fake female accounts like
| Adult Friend Finder and Ashley Madison did (and I suspect Bumble
| currently does).
|
| Of course, the whole premise of dating sites is wrong. The best
| way to make connections is in person, by going places regularly
| and seeing the same people frequently... building some non-
| romantic connections first which may grow into something more.
| Dating sites assume that if "I think I like you" and "you think
| you like me" then we are a match!. This sets up big expectations
| too soon...
| luckylion wrote:
| I wonder how far you'd get with running on donations. If you're
| successful in connecting people who fall in love and all that,
| they're probably thankful and might donate. It'd also kind of
| be "pay for the result, not for the try". Would you pay $50 to
| get with the love of your life? I would. Would you pay $50 so
| you can message people on a site where you don't know if
| anything will come of it? Meh, depends on how desperate I am, I
| guess.
|
| Good luck, hitting critical mass is probably even harder than
| in other areas. You can grow a community or meme site with a
| few users who are really active, but that doesn't really work
| for dating.
| jcims wrote:
| The problem is that the guys that send dick pics to complete
| strangers and women that are just surfing for free meals are
| still out there. They pollute the entire experience by having
| a large number of low-effort interactions, and in the
| donation model they are just going to be a net sink of
| resources and good will.
|
| I don't think online dating gets any better until someone
| devises a means to bias against people that aren't acting in
| good faith. Of course the challenge here is that you're going
| to be hard pressed to find a strong consensus on what actions
| do or do not constitute good faith in a dating app.
| luckylion wrote:
| I have no experience in running a dating site, and barely
| any in using them. Are unsolicited dick picks common even
| for the pay sites? I've assumed that it's mostly an
| anonymity issue that goes away when you tie it to identity
| (via payment or otherwise), but then again I've never felt
| the urge to send anyone dick picks, so I wouldn't put much
| weight on my assumptions.
|
| From what I understand, these days it's not just the dick
| picks but also love scammers, which aren't low-effort and
| are welcome by the recipients until the scam begins. These
| are harder to combat, but shouldn't tying it to identities
| help?
|
| Niche sites probably work better in that regard because
| e.g. Christian Dating sites have less trouble getting a
| strong consensus on what's appropriate, wouldn't they?
| TimPC wrote:
| I think the problem is based on hit rate the number is a lot
| higher than $50. If you're charging $10/month the average
| user lasts 12 months and the number of users who marry is 10%
| then you're charging $1200 for a successful match to get
| equivalent revenue, not $50.
| luckylion wrote:
| That's true, but are you getting the same amount of users
| when you're charging them $10/month for messaging?
|
| I'd assume that payment adds a hurdle that's somewhat
| welcome to keep out problematic users, just like rent does.
| Pay 30% more than the market and you'll only have neighbors
| who can afford that as well, which are much less likely to
| be unemployed alcoholics with behavioral issues.
| astrange wrote:
| If you want a "good dating site", it doesn't really seem like
| it's possible.
|
| But the job to be done of a dating site is to either get you
| more or better dates. I therefore suggest making a site that's
| just a page of text telling you to move somewhere with more
| opportunity, get outdoor social hobbies, and become a
| millionaire.
| cableshaft wrote:
| While I agree that in person should definitely be a part of it,
| as a bit of anecdata I made a huge meetup push for two years (I
| went to meetups 2-3x a week, every week) in order to meet new
| people and date, and did get a few dates out of it, but mostly
| just new friends (that being said, I do know a few people in
| those same groups that ended up as long-term couples through
| it, and one of those couples got married eventually).
|
| Meanwhile every relationship I had at that time came from
| OKCupid, including my wife.
|
| I wouldn't be surprised if all the dating sites are now garbage
| thanks to them all being owned by Match Group, but at least
| back then they weren't terrible and I had good luck with it as
| an average-looking nerdy guy, much more than in-person.
|
| I do credit going to meetups regularly with me becoming a bit
| more well-rounded and sociable of a person and more dateable as
| a result, though.
|
| Good luck on your dating app personal project. I worked on one
| professionally for about six months a long time ago, and it was
| an interesting and fun project, for the most part (that never
| went anywhere, we treated it seriously but the client was a
| narcissist that got lucky in real estate that assumed he'd get
| 10 million users in a few weeks of release with no marketing,
| he eventually killed the project when he realized that wasn't
| going to be the case).
|
| I've had ideas for different takes on dating/social apps since
| that time, and almost considered pursuing it, but it seemed to
| be too dominated by Match Group, especially post-Tinder, and I
| care more about games than apps anyway.
| Beltalowda wrote:
| If someone gave me a big bag of money then working on a better
| dating site would probably be what I'd do with it. I think it's
| very hard pull off as a "personal project" though, because a
| dating site needs people to be useful and attracting people is
| neither free nor easy. And you also need some form of "content
| control" to weed out the dickpics and other assorted assholery,
| which is also neither free nor easy.
|
| > Of course, the whole premise of dating sites is wrong. The
| best way to make connections is in person, by going places
| regularly and seeing the same people frequently... building
| some non-romantic connections first which may grow into
| something more. Dating sites assume that if "I think I like
| you" and "you think you like me" then we are a match!. This
| sets up big expectations too soon...
|
| In principle, I guess, but my experience is that many social
| spaces of all types are overwhelmingly male. There are probably
| some commentaries to be made about that, but I'm not sure what.
|
| And while it can set up certain expectations, I don't think
| that needs to be a bad thing, necessarily.
| CuriouslyC wrote:
| The whole concept of dating "websites" is bunk. We need a
| social video chat app where you can publicly ask questions or
| make statements, and people can make video replies which can be
| swiped through in a tiktok style, which also has geo-awareness
| and some basic personality profile information.
|
| By being video only and gating it securely through the app
| you'd eliminate catfishing and a lot of the hard
| misrepresentation you see on dating sites. Having conversations
| be public by default and needing permission to DM would also
| help limit bad male behavior.
| tester457 wrote:
| This idea is crazy genius. I imagine that shy people will not
| try it though...
| Logans_Run wrote:
| What you are describing sounds remarkably similar to the
| dating videos concept from the 1980's. I guess all that is
| old becomes new again!
|
| (Did a quick search that turned up two low quality links to
| illustrate what I mean)
|
| https://www.thrillist.com/sex-dating/nation/lessons-
| learned-...
|
| https://www.businessinsider.com/found-footage-
| awkward-80s-vi...
| CuriouslyC wrote:
| The similarities are only superficial though. That is like
| a bunch of video job interviews, what I'm describing is
| more like a virtual pub where you can preferentially join
| conversations with other singles who share similar
| interests.
| GloriousKoji wrote:
| Sounds like a video chat version of clubhouse. On paper
| it looked great but devolved into people mostly trying to
| build/sell/promote their brand which resulted in most
| conversations turning into something like low quality
| crowd sourced podcasting.
| dboreham wrote:
| A dating site is like trying to solve an NP problem. It's
| provable that there's no correlation between information
| generated by users and outcome. For example the known factors
| that affect couple compatibility are things like attachment
| style. People are generally unaware of their attachment style.
| karpierz wrote:
| If it were possible for a dating site to consistently make great
| matches, they wouldn't bother taint their results. Dominating the
| dating site market is a money printing machine, even if you're
| continually having to find new customers, since that's how dating
| sites currently function.
|
| I interned at a dating site a while ago and there's no need to
| taint anything. People are far too complicated to predict beyond
| who will send a message to who. Also, the problem is adversarial
| (IE, people misrepresent themselves as the person they want to be
| as opposed to the person they are), so trying to find the signal
| is a continuous game of cat and mouse.
| rjh29 wrote:
| The majority of people who sign up will quit after a month or
| two anyway (or forget about it and keep subscribing). It
| doesn't seem like the quality of the matches being bad would
| affect income in any substantial way. And even if two people
| pair up, they might sign up again when their relationship hits
| the rocks. Emotional cheating is a thing.
| smnrchrds wrote:
| > _Dominating the dating site market is a money printing
| machine_
|
| Not if you already have almost the whole market to yourself.
|
| > _Match Group ... owns and operates the largest global
| portfolio of popular online dating services including Tinder,
| Match.com, Meetic, OkCupid, Hinge, PlentyOfFish, UPWARD, Ship,
| and OurTime, totalling over 45 global dating companies_
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Match_Group
| cheriot wrote:
| Bumble being the largest one in the US that they don't own
| (only Tinder is larger).
|
| https://infogram.com/us-dating-app-
| marketshare-1h8n6m3konzmz...
|
| Intuitively, the largest dating app has a moat because people
| will open the app that has the people they want to date.
| Nevertheless, Match has had to continue acquiring competitors
| in order to stay in first place. So maybe that moat isn't so
| defensible?
| red_trumpet wrote:
| I fail to see how this would _not_ make it a money printing
| machine?
| Smar wrote:
| It is already, regardless of quality of their product?
| smnrchrds wrote:
| "If you were a product person at IBM or Xerox, so you make
| a better copier or computer. So what? When you have
| monopoly market share, the company's not any more
| successful." - Steve Jobs
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P4VBqTViEx4
| googlryas wrote:
| Most of those companies were acquisitions for the match
| group, so basically build a great dating site and match group
| will pay you a barrel of money to buy your money printing
| machine.
| epicureanideal wrote:
| It's not possible for them to make great matches in any
| significant quantity, because our society has become incapable
| of making good long term matches at all due to changes in
| morals, expectations, etc. And many individuals, probably a
| clear majority at this point, are not capable of being
| psychologically healthy relationship partners.
|
| A steady stream of top businessmen, actors, sportsmen etc. are
| being divorced by their wives. If these people can't maintain a
| marriage, how much more difficult is it for most people?
| idopmstuff wrote:
| Why would that group of people have an easier time
| maintaining a marriage than "average" people?
| cocoa19 wrote:
| Right, I don't have any proof, but I think it would be the
| other way around.
|
| Top execs are often married to their jobs with less time
| for family. Actors are exposed often to very liberal and
| beautiful people (affairs are common). And people on the
| lower economic rungs are more incentivized to stay together
| to spend less money.
| epicureanideal wrote:
| > And people on the lower economic rungs are more
| incentivized to stay together to spend less money.
|
| The research actually shows that the upper end of the
| income distribution is more likely to 1) marry and 2)
| remain married. The lower and middle classes have been
| most disrupted by social change in the last 50 years.
| idopmstuff wrote:
| Probably depends exactly where you draw the line, though
| - the A-list rich and famous types might well have
| greater rates of divorce, but there are few enough of
| them to bring down the average of the top 10% of earners
| or what have you.
| ipaddr wrote:
| A-list marriages are a very small group less than 1% of
| 1% or 1% of average rich/upper class people. They are
| usually part business strategy as well.
| cataphract wrote:
| Exactly, the factors that really matter for a relationship to
| work (empathy, emotional availability, tolerance, will to
| change, etc.) are not presentable in a profile. You cannot make
| "great matches" without that information, even putting aside
| the fact that people lie.
|
| The dating apps actually work better for hookups (including
| people travelling), and the companies know this, which is why
| Tinder had those ads promoting "single life".
| scythe wrote:
| >they wouldn't bother taint their results.
|
| Results are tainted by default. The simplest dating app is a
| random number generator attached to a list of user IDs. This
| probably performs badly. (But who knows? Maybe build it and see
| what happens!)
|
| The question is simply whether there is really a _deliberate,
| focused effort_ to identify who gets into long-term
| relationships and to replicate the conditions that lead to such
| relationships. If dating sites were actually trying to help
| their customers, they would do this; someone would have worked
| on it; there would be an internal lore about what was learned
| from these attempts. The absence of any of this shows that it
| just isn 't a priority, and that's enough.
|
| >Dominating the dating site market is a money printing machine
|
| One problem with modern dating is that people don't have a
| potential partner's reputation to go on as much as they used
| to. Relationships formed "through friends" have declined
| significantly, in tandem with a decline in friendships
| themselves. But this decline in friendships _also_ poses a
| problem for any word-of-mouth dating site marketing strategy.
| People who have lots of friends are probably the _least_ likely
| to benefit from dating apps, but they 're the most likely to
| hear about the hypothetical "good dating app".
|
| I don't actually know how most of my friends met their partners
| -- even people who I know many other things about. It's in my
| mind as an awkward question. Furthermore, most long-term
| relationships in my friend group are older than most dating
| apps. It would inevitably take years to build a reputation as a
| dating site that does this, because you don't know if you have
| a stable relationship until it stands the test of time. But
| investors generally aren't so patient.
| nradov wrote:
| That's not necessarily the right question to ask. Only a
| subset of customers are trying to get into long-term
| relationships. Other customers have different goals. Some
| don't even want human contact through the dating apps at all:
| they just want validation as represented by matches.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| >If dating sites were actually trying to help their
| customers, they would do this; someone would have worked on
| it; there would be an internal lore about what was learned
| from these attempts. The absence of any of this shows that it
| just isn't a priority, and that's enough.
|
| Or maybe the absence of it shows that the problem is much
| harder than it sounds.
|
| > One problem with modern dating is that people don't have a
| potential partner's reputation to go on as much as they used
| to. Relationships formed "through friends" have declined
| significantly, in tandem with a decline in friendships
| themselves. But this decline in friendships also poses a
| problem for any word-of-mouth dating site marketing strategy.
| People who have lots of friends are probably the least likely
| to benefit from dating apps, but they're the most likely to
| hear about the hypothetical "good dating app".
|
| This is correct, but good luck implementing this in a
| business while having to tip toe around claims of
| discrimination, quite possibly getting entangled with the
| law.
| pydry wrote:
| A simple feedback on dates "it went well / it didn't go
| well" would be immensely helpful and legally prudent.
|
| I suspect there are reasons why this never happened but I
| doubt they are good reasons.
| 7373737373 wrote:
| A reputable dating website can most likely not be for-profit.
|
| "Why You Should Never Pay For Online Dating", written by a co-
| founder of OkCupid:
|
| https://www.gwern.net/docs/psychology/okcupid/whyyoushouldne...
|
| before they, too, sold out to the Match Group monopoly.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Match_Group#Dating_services_ow...
|
| The world needs a site with the moral integrity and user-only
| focus the likes of lichess.org
| thomasahle wrote:
| > The world needs a site with the moral integrity and user-only
| focus the likes of lichess.org
|
| A low-costs + donations model ala lichess would actually be
| quite interesting for a data site.
|
| Maybe you could even convince "alumni" to donate, in
| appreciation of their successful relationship. The longer it
| lasted, the more donations.
| yurodivuie wrote:
| A lot of people would pay to get the history of their
| exchanges on a dating site. You don't realize when you close
| your account that you're also losing all the history of how
| you met - at the time it's more of a celebration of "job
| done" and demonstration of commitment.
|
| I understand why it all vanishes (the privacy concerns are
| non-trivial, storage isn't free), but it would be worth
| almost any price when the 5/10/20 year anniversaries roll
| around.
| gnicholas wrote:
| After our third date, my now-wife and I decided to delete
| our online dating accounts. I had the foresight to
| screenshot/download her profile and our messages, but I
| forgot to capture my own. Oh well!
| jimt1234 wrote:
| The problem with a free dating site is that it'll quickly
| become polluted with fake accounts - scammers and people
| promoting their OnlyFans page. At least that's my experience.
| qup wrote:
| That would be a great problem to focus on if you were trying
| to improve the experience for users.
| 999900000999 wrote:
| [flagged]
| scythe wrote:
| >If memory serves that same co-founder wrote multiple blog
| posts where he pointed out various races just don't do well
| online. Maybe just maybe he doesn't want certain people using
| his app?
|
| The OkCupid guy posted _data_ showing that Asian men and
| Black people in general got worse responses on OkCupid. All
| indications are that the data was fairly collected. He
| described this as an unfortunate bias present in the
| population.
|
| It's extremely unfair and counterproductive to accuse him of
| encouraging racism when he was in fact calling it out.
| tsss wrote:
| He wrote it because it is true and censoring the truth will
| not improve the life of anyone.
| cat_plus_plus wrote:
| Bah, by that logic lawyers don't want their clients to stop
| having legal troubles and my handiman doesn't want my roof to
| stop leaking. Just for starters most people are not psychopaths
| and just want to provide a useful service. But even if they
| didn't care about your happiness, they would still care about
| reputation. Happy couple will have friends and tell them how they
| met. Or direct repeat business, realistically most dating site
| relationships do not last a lifetime.
|
| Above all, successful matches are extraordinarily high. Partly
| because chemistry is not apparent online and there are many
| dimensions - values, emotional, financial - that need to align in
| a viable relationship. But I would say mostly because people are
| delusional about their own perfection and expectations on others.
| You would turn down someone who is perfect but happens to smoke?
| REALLY?
|
| So site developers can break their back and still have an abysmal
| success record. I don't think anyone would hobble algorithms on
| purpose.
| gregw2 wrote:
| There is a business opportunity here IMHO for success for a
| player with much better aligned incentive structure with their
| users. (I perceive there's plenty of money in the market however
| much a monopoly it tends to be now.)
|
| Vanguard did/does this with mutual funds for example and grew to
| be the biggest player (while still leaving plenty on the table
| for others) in the market. You just have to make it part of your
| core business model and marketing strategy and stick with it long
| enough to see success.
|
| Here's my stab at how to align incentives for dating sites, both
| the business, the customer, the employees and the stockholders.
| Commit to the following type of pricing model and market the heck
| out of you wanting to see your customer succeed:
|
| Your initial price is $50/month (the going rate IIRC).
|
| After two months it drops to $40/month.
|
| After six months it drops to $35/month.
|
| After a year it drops to $30/month
|
| After two years it drops to $20/month (below or just at or only
| slightly above your marginal cost-to-serve)
|
| (Vary the dollar values above depending on your economics and
| behaviors. Maybe you start people at $60/mo, higher than
| competitors for example but reassure people it will auto-drop for
| them.)
|
| Then you are incented to get people good matches most at the
| point at which they are most engaged. If your employees are not
| striving to get people matches at that point, your business will
| suffer. If you find yourself with a low-margin business with too
| many $20/mo customers, your stock valuation will suffer.
|
| Two other pieces of data I would gather when trying to setup my
| internal metrics:
|
| 1) Ask each customer when they signup what their ideal timeline
| (2 days, 2 weeks, 2 months, etc) is to A) meet someone through
| the site, B) have a steady relationship, and (if applicable) C)
| get married. Understand the demand/expectations curve and how it
| intersects with your pricing curve.
|
| 2) Offer customers a $20 refund when leaving the service to tell
| you if they got married, are in a serious relationship, or never
| got anywhere with your service. Incent the customer to help you
| measure your success rate and its correlation with their initial
| expectations, individually and in bulk. Give customers the option
| of explicitly refusing to get the refund because they are so
| satisfied, or to give you a tip and use that as a key KPI
| measuring customer satisfaction.
|
| The above pricing curve also ironically adds stickiness the
| steeper the price drops are, because people won't want to quit
| and then resignup later since their price might triple if there's
| a chance they might get more active again on your site in the
| next few months. You just don't want your initial price to be too
| steep to drive too many people off.
| blowski wrote:
| Similar problem to recruitment: recruiters need you to change
| jobs every couple of years to stay in business.
| fallingfrog wrote:
| I haven't had too much luck with online dating, especially after
| I grew my hair out. I feel like a lot of women are looking for
| don draper, tall, confident, clean cut, etc- and I've always been
| a weird little artist. I did try cutting my hair short and acting
| in the most masculine way I could for a while, and it worked, I
| got a lot more attention. But it feels _so bad_ to pretend to be
| someone you're not in order to get people to like you. You always
| have in the back of your head, if you knew the real me, you
| wouldn't like me anymore. I think a lot of women deal with the
| same kind of pressures, of course. I would rather be alone.
| otikik wrote:
| Cory Doctorow has written very similar pieces about social
| networks and tech companies. There's one literally called "Even
| if you are paying for the product, you are still the product"
|
| https://doctorow.medium.com/even-if-youre-paying-for-the-pro...
| kitd wrote:
| OTOH, if you are good at perfect matches and advertising the
| fact, you'll probably replace those 2 lost customers pretty fast,
| and with lots more on top.
| spants wrote:
| Also in the same vein, Big Pharma doesn't want to cure you - they
| would lose a customer.
| metalliqaz wrote:
| Company A develops treatment for disease, doesn't bother with
| developing a cure because it's more profitable long term to
| sell a life long treatment.
|
| Company B develops a cure.
|
| Company A loses all the resources it put into developing the
| treatment.
|
| If a cure is possible, it will be developed.
| astrange wrote:
| 1. There's always new people.
|
| 2. Most countries in the world have universal healthcare.
| thrownawaydad wrote:
| I briefly tried (and paid for) OkCupid. Not many matches.
| Initially seemed like zero. Turns out it was one--someone I could
| never have met in real life. Perfect fit, and we're now happily
| married.
| klabb3 wrote:
| That's sharpshooting. Congratulations!
| goodside wrote:
| I worked in the online dating industry for five years (OkCupid
| 2011-2015, Grindr in 2020). I've heard this argument many times
| but it isn't true. I've never heard of anyone in the dating
| industry applying this logic, because no app is good enough at
| making permanent matches that it makes sense to worry about.
| Traubenfuchs wrote:
| Do you have any insider knowledge from your time with Grindr on
|
| 1) why the app appears to remain a terribly bad buggy mess and
| never seems to improve? Is there any awareness of this in the
| company? Is it just a legacy code issue?
|
| 2) why the desktop web version was shut down?
|
| 3) why unlimited pricing is that outrageous?
| winternett wrote:
| 1) If everyone on the app finds great matches, everyone will
| stop using the app, and therein kill the possibility of the
| company in making a profit.
|
| 2) They laid off developers to save money, and desktop apps
| can be hacked to get around paywalls and user controls a lot
| more easily than on mobile apps, so getting rid f desktop
| apps always looks like a win for a software maker.
|
| 3) There is so much competition with expensive cloud host
| overhead that if a company can gaslight users into thinking
| that their app is worth money, they push it all the way in a
| bid to maximize their traditionally weak earnings on the
| deceptively small user bases they have... They also create
| tons of fake accounts and profiles to also emulate that they
| are running vibrant communities.
| ahtihn wrote:
| > desktop apps can be hacked to get around paywalls and
| user controls a lot more easily than on mobile apps
|
| This would imply that paywalls and user controls aren't
| implemented entirely on the server side, which sounds like
| an obviously bad idea?
| pcthrowaway wrote:
| Hmm, well it wouldn't be the first time:
|
| - https://web.archive.org/web/20190223153650/http://www.y
| desou...
|
| - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8173197
|
| - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28303536
| bushbaba wrote:
| Funny enough some dating sites such-as jdate measure success
| based on marriage-kid outcomes. With funding raised based on
| those stats.
| numbers_guy wrote:
| That's sounds like a church, lol.
| [deleted]
| csa wrote:
| > That's sounds like a church, lol.
|
| Probably more like a synagogue, but point taken...
| beezlebroxxxxxx wrote:
| I would assume for the users of Jdate that marriage-kid
| outcomes is exactly their reasoning for using a niche service
| like Jdate. Other dating apps and services....maybe less so.
| On the one hand that gives jdate a clear target and metric
| for success and marketing, but also gives them a smaller % of
| the population to try to appeal to.
| danuker wrote:
| I think the OkCupid questions in that period were great (submit
| your answer, what you'd like your match to answer, and how
| important you think the question is). My ex found her now-
| husband on that site.
| astrange wrote:
| I tried it around 2010 and it seemed very focused on
| personality quizzes and oversharing; besides wondering how
| all these people had 20 different favorite movies, my 100%
| match was someone I already knew and wouldn't want to date.
|
| Didn't seem to consider revealed preferences and the appeal
| of people who aren't exactly like you much.
| rendaw wrote:
| I think you're in agreement with the article - the author says
| that they didn't need to taint results because they were
| already terrible. And that they're not going to fix things
| because there's no incentive.
| Eisenstein wrote:
| Misaligned incentives are always fascinating. 'If I pay you and
| you do your job well, you will get less money than if you do your
| job poorly, but not so poorly as to be obviously incompetent or
| malicious.'
|
| The key here is to realize when these incentives line up and try
| to mitigate them as much as possible -- usually the best way to
| do this is to look for motives beyond profit. Examples would be:
| they are looking to build or maintain a reputation; they have a
| philosophical agenda; they are your friends/family.
| numbers_guy wrote:
| Isn't that pretty much how every transaction these days is
| structured?
|
| If I hire somebody to remodel my bathroom, he will do the job
| well enough that I won't raise too much complaints but also cut
| as much corners as possible without me realizing, so that he
| can save time and money.
|
| If I buy literally any kind of consumer product, it has planned
| obsolescence built into it.
|
| If I go to a wealth manager, they will try to sell me the
| investment/pension fund that gives them the best commission.
|
| If I go to a dentist he will try to sell me on treatments that
| will earn him the most money.
| CuriouslyC wrote:
| That's not true of craftsmen as much because they live and
| die by reviews and referrals, and people raving about your
| craftmanship, punctuality and politeness lets you charge a
| premium relative to your competition. Cutting corners and
| slap dashing work gets you 3 and 4 star reviews.
| numbers_guy wrote:
| Most people cannot tell their ass form their face when it
| comes to this kind of stuff, so the reviews are completely
| useless. They will rate the craftman who is the most
| sympathetic to them as the best and most reliable one, yet
| he might be the one who uses the cheapest materials and
| does work in such a way that it looks good at first but has
| no permanence, or in such a way that if you need to ever do
| repairs you have to tear everything us because everything
| is glued/cemented together.
| caseysoftware wrote:
| And the worst work gets buried anyway..
|
| I had to sue a contractor a few years back who not only
| did bad work but lied about its status and falsified
| documents from inspectors. To get any settlement in the
| 2.5+ year battle, I finally had to agree NOT to post
| reviews of his work on a specific list of sites.
| Unfortunately for him, my own personal site, Twitter,
| Facebook, etc were not listed.
| moneywoes wrote:
| What sites were banned
| [deleted]
| mattgreenrocks wrote:
| Yeah, it kind of taints the whole transaction. We got our
| house insulation replaced and I could never really get the
| salesman to talk frankly about the marginal benefit of dense
| pack insulation on the sloped portions of our ceilings.
|
| When the sale was in the initial stages and might not go
| through, he was fine saying it could be omitted from the work
| order. After I partially committed and asked him what the
| marginal benefit was, all I could get was, "it might be
| cooler in the rooms without it...its your house." Some would
| say, "what did you expect?" but for a not-small job I'd hoped
| there could be a bit more rapport.
|
| Also, there's a very real scarcity mindset right now due to
| economic downturn.
| aeneasmackenzie wrote:
| If you actually have the ability to make great matches, matches
| so good you are concerned you will lose two customers, you should
| be running a matchmaking service and not a dating website.
| RajT88 wrote:
| This is why there are matchmaking services charging 10k a year.
|
| You used to see ads for them in Skymall.
| LorenPechtel wrote:
| And how often did they work?
| RajT88 wrote:
| I will say that the ads were a bit creepy.
|
| Always sort of ethereal looking hot 40'sish blonde women.
| Implicitly promising you'll be able to date and marry one
| of those (but of course the hot 40's lady is the
| matchmaker).
|
| They sort of similarly implicitly promised you could meet
| and marry a doctor or exec or something.
|
| Also - the ads were never targeted at women.
| RajT88 wrote:
| No clue. I never used them.
|
| My role here was writing snarky comments in Skymall
| catalogs to unwind on my Friday night redeye flights home.
| (I used to fly a lot for work)
| bdcravens wrote:
| Most relationships end at some point, and datings sites are
| often used by those still in relationships (open relationships,
| polyamory, cheating, etc...)
| dmarlow wrote:
| Would those "happy" customers lead to more word of mouth
| though?
|
| Not everything has to be a gimmick, right?
| aeneasmackenzie wrote:
| If I used a matchmaking service and it provided me with "end
| your subscription to a dating service 90% of the time"
| matches I would be telling everyone I knew.
| numbers_guy wrote:
| Dating on the internet is a flawed concept and no kind of hacks
| are going to fix it, because it is human behaviour that is the
| issue.
|
| If hypothetically, you had a benevolent dating website, and then
| you had 100 attractive men and 100 attractive women on it, that
| would work just fine.
|
| BUT, that is not what you have with dating websites. Most women
| don't have trouble meeting men, and don't need to take the
| additional risk of meeting a stranger on the internet. So the
| women on dating sites are already self selected in many ways, and
| in any case there are too few of them in comparison to the men.
|
| I mean, I already frequented an engineering university with 25%
| female students and that was brutal enough. I do not need to go
| online on some stupid website to keep experiencing exactly the
| same bullshit. At least the quality of women at the university
| was decently high.
| datethrowaway0 wrote:
| I think that characterization only applies to young people: no
| standards, no idea of what they want or what they're looking
| for, but imagine that someone else in their life will bring
| clarity.
|
| Yes, it's quite easy for your average woman to be bombarded
| with men on OLD. But after a certain age, it starts becoming a
| problem when you're looking for something more serious. You
| have a better grasp of who you are, and what you want, and the
| majority of the men flooding in are not "up to snuff."
|
| A simple progression of tastes. You may have been able to
| stomach junk food and boxed wine everyday in younger days, but
| now it revolts you -- and you need something different.
| Something with subtlety and depth that adds to your life,
| rather than getting in the way of it.
|
| The majority of people using OLD are young, and shallow, and so
| the platforms cater to them: creating an experience that's
| quick, and without depth.
|
| Tinder and Bumble the obvious examples. Compare to OkCupid
| (before it was bought out by Match.com, and completely
| destroyed): you could find people and filter through all of
| them based on a very large amount of aspects you considered
| important (values, lifestyle, beliefs, etc.) -- to cut down on
| the wasted time.
|
| Hinge is probably the only dating app I can think of at the
| moment that creates an experience that isn't so shallow (but it
| lacks vision, and pales in comparison to what could be --
| likely due being developed, once again, by Match).
|
| There's no conclusion here, just my thoughts.
| undulatingwaves wrote:
| I think there needs to be a dating experience that feels
| mutual/equal and doesn't have completely different
| experiences for different genders.
|
| Like you say 'the majority of the men flooding in are not "up
| to snuff"'. That's one (common) perspective, but I don't know
| why anyone thinks that someone from one gender is generally
| better than the other. Maybe one has different expectations,
| but that doesn't mean that the other gender is garbage like a
| lot of messaging around dating implies.
|
| Yet dating apps and strategies kind of assume that men put in
| the effort up front before they really know who the other
| person is. They are put through a bunch of time and money
| hoops. Some people may feel they have no other option and
| feel pressure to act a certain way, which can lead to
| resentment later on. As a guy it can feel like you are
| constantly proving yourself with costly signals for the first
| month (that women don't have to do), so it's hard to relax
| and open up and can feel defensive.
|
| I think dating should require equal commitment from the
| beginning. It doesn't have to be exactly 50/50, but as a guy,
| when you have to do the legwork in the apps (send 100s of
| messages, etc) and a significant minority of women label you
| a cheapskate if you don't pay for the first few dates, it's
| hard to not feel like you are being taken advantage of in
| dating.
|
| This probably starts by not having a mentality that most
| men/women you meet aren't going to be human garbage. Of
| course, don't accept shitty behavior.
|
| Women have issues of course and dating sucks for everyone,
| just my perspective as a man.
| nradov wrote:
| You're not going to get very far complaining about
| inequality and telling people to alter their behavior.
| Different genders have different expectations. Whether
| that's due to culture or biology or other factors doesn't
| really matter; the situation isn't going to change any time
| soon regardless of how dating apps work. It is what it is.
|
| Expectations are also heavily influenced by the gender
| ratio in a region. If you're living somewhere like "Man
| Jose" then you're automatically at a disadvantage. Try
| somewhere else.
|
| https://www.kqed.org/news/11231284/does-san-jose-deserve-
| the...
|
| There are apps where women have to initiate contact. If you
| want to put in less effort then just use those.
| AtlasBarfed wrote:
| What? You were a (presumably male) student at a 25% female
| college and don't see the point of a dating app that would
| drastically increase the pool of women you could interact with?
| What am I missing here?
|
| Unless you were in the apex male top 5% at the college, that
| just sounds nuts.
|
| Women may meet a lot of men regardless of dating apps, but
| everyone wants a bigger better deal. Dating apps provide access
| to many people, such that a better quality mate is possible.
| Again, you may be flawed by being in university.
|
| In the real world you meet a far wider range of people in
| demographic, socioeconomic status, age, education, etc. So the
| people you meet that may match what you want is drastically
| lower that university, which will generally function as a
| filter for socioeconomic status, demographic, location, and
| especially intelligence. At a technical college, it even
| preselects for area of interest.
| somethingreen wrote:
| Dating services are not representative of general population.
| Even biggest most well established slow dating platforms have
| m/f ratio of about 2. Young people dating - parent would be
| lucky to get into a 4:1 pool. Like he said, it's the same
| thing, except more shallow and at a higher pace.
| fckgw wrote:
| Such an odd blog post. Author says that dating sites don't want
| people to _actually_ find great matches, alluding to his time
| spent working at a dating website. Insinuating the whole thing is
| a scam basically.
|
| At the end of the post he says the site he worked at didn't
| actually do any of this and that he voluntarily quit once he had
| this major epiphany. Even uses that boring old trope of "you are
| the product" that people like to say but isn't as profound as
| people think it is.
| thomasahle wrote:
| How was Match Group allowed to vacuum up every single dating app
| out there? I thought we lived in times of increased antitrust
| scrutiny.
| latchkey wrote:
| > I thought we lived in times of increased antitrust scrutiny.
|
| If that were true, we wouldn't have Live Nation Entertainment.
| _Globally_ , they own every large venue (or the access to those
| venues), along with the ticket and merch sales.
| leashless wrote:
| https://youtu.be/q5fbLQJu-XY maybe not quite ten years ago I did
| a talk about this before the numbers were anything like this bad
| - maybe only 10% of people met through apps. Dating is 100% an
| area where the algorithms should be 100% transparent and open to
| inspection.
|
| The talk asks what a Socialist government would do with the State
| dating website, to contrast with the (equally terrible)
| incentives for a dating website generated by the free market.
|
| There's no way out of this without open protocols and visible
| algorithms. The agency problem is not easy to solve.
| Ethan_Mick wrote:
| This is very similar to an except in Derek Sivers book on
| cdbaby.com. (CD Baby let independent artists sell their music CDs
| on the site long before iTunes). In it, he writes:
| At a conference in Los Angeles, someone in the audience asked me,
| "What if every musician just set up their own store on
| their own website? Since that'd be the death of CD Baby,
| how do you plan to stop that?" I said, "Honestly, I
| don't care about CD Baby. I only care about the musicians.
| If some day, musicians don't need CD Baby anymore, that's great!
| I'll just shut it down and get back to making music."
| He was shocked. He had never heard a business owner say he didn't
| care about the survival of his company. To me,
| it was just common sense. Of course you should care about your
| customers more than you care about yourself! Isn't that
| rule #1 of providing a good service? *It's all about them,
| not you.*
|
| I think a lot of companies forget that.
| mattgreenrocks wrote:
| Lots of business owners end up treating their businesses as
| their kids in the sense that they see them as extensions of
| themselves primarily, rather than their own thing. This, of
| course, is deeply narcissistic and hurts everyone in the
| vicinity.
| jesuscript wrote:
| The original creator of the company will care about that
| because they know _why_ they are trying to solve the problem.
| Everyone that comes after will not. This is natural. Everyone
| after sees the validation of the product as a validation of a
| money printing machine and will look to run just that - a money
| printing machine.
|
| Hate to deify a Steve Jobs, as if he needs more god-like
| overtures, but that is what will always make him different than
| your Tim Cooks of the world (or your Sundar Pichais of the
| world as opposed to Larry or Sergey, your Activision-Blizzard
| management versus just the original Blizzard team).
|
| Two completely different types of animals. In a sense, that's
| why we usually describe this loss as a company's soul leaving
| it. The _why_ goes missing and the what, which is always money,
| is all that's left.
| Fnoord wrote:
| The shareholders won't care about that, but a private owned
| company _can_ care about it. Even successors. Startups
| generally attempt to become publicly owned, so they use bait
| and switch. And most fail anyway (to become a unicorn).
| However, even a CEO can care about it, its just that they
| ultimately fall under authority of the shareholders / board.
| jesuscript wrote:
| Right. Well I think that's one of the reasons Musk doesn't
| take Spacex public. The _why_ he operates under is very
| much not palatable for any reasonable shareholder.
| Shareholders would want to scale out space deployments of
| practical things (satellites) and focus on that. If they
| knew Musk's _why_ , which is to get to Mars, well ... well
| I mean that's just crazy. What board is going to go for
| that?
|
| He carefully keeps that one out of sight.
| kerpotgh wrote:
| And I hope he continues to keep it private. Much as he
| has gone off the deep end lately, I have idolized him for
| so long I can't help rooting for him.
| lylejantzi3rd wrote:
| > a private owned company can care about it. Even
| successors.
|
| In theory, but rarely in practice. I've seen a lot of
| private, family-owned businesses go out of business or get
| sold after the son/successor takes over because of exactly
| the phenomenon jesuscript mentions. Even if the successor
| cares, they don't care about the same things as the
| founder.
| Laremere wrote:
| I'm racking my brain trying to remember where I heard it, but
| I've heard it roughly summarized as: Companies are founded by
| people who are loyal to a vision, but tend to promote people
| who are loyal to the company. Eventually the people who are
| loyal to the company have all of the power. The people loyal
| to the vision are only left in the lower ranks, if at all.
| erquartdarcy wrote:
| Amen to that.
|
| I am living that particular dream (nightmare) as are a
| handful of us 'vision loyalists'.
| hgs3 wrote:
| > The original creator of the company will care about that
| because they know why they are trying to solve the problem.
| Everyone that comes after will not.
|
| A good follow up question is why not make CD Baby a non-
| profit instead of for-profit? Being a non-profit foundation
| would telegraph to everyone, including future leadership,
| where their priorities should lie.
| astrange wrote:
| A non-profit is largely motivated to stay alive, just like
| a for-profit, but mainly does it by asking for money from
| rich people rather than selling things.
|
| Also, the extra accounting and regulation is intense for a
| small organization.
|
| These have been getting popular recently:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benefit_corporation
| ipaddr wrote:
| Much of the wealth a non-profit generates can get lost on
| large salaries and expense accounts. A charity might have
| more rules and send a stronger signal.
|
| But having said that the creator could make tons of money
| and then shut it down because it is not needed. That's
| perfectly logical
| twobitshifter wrote:
| jobs talking about exactly that with regards to Xerox.
| https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=NlBjNmXvqIM
| hypertele-Xii wrote:
| Good business provides value to customers.
|
| Bad business extracts value from customers.
| jfengel wrote:
| It helps that CDBaby was handling a lot of stuff that musicians
| didn't want to do themselves. They were happy to outsource it.
| If the alternative were easy, people would already have done
| it.
|
| That wasn't what CDBaby lost to. They lost to the fact that CDs
| disappeared. CDBaby had a great business, removing a pain
| point, and they could genuinely want that pain point to go away
| entirely.
|
| Such are the best possible businesses, genuinely caring about
| your customers while having enough moat to avoid being undercut
| tomorrow. Not all businesses can do that, regardless of the
| best intentions of management.
| benwaffle wrote:
| I think today CDBaby is one of the most popular ways to
| release your music to all of the major streaming platforms. I
| wouldn't call that "lost".
| gmiller123456 wrote:
| This isn't intended to reflect on any particular business
| owner. But I have yet to hear any business owner announce "We
| are totally motivated by greed, and will screw over our
| customers and partners to make money". Elizabeth Holmes said a
| lot of touchy-feely stuff. So I wouldn't put much weight in
| what any business owner says about their motivation.
| friedman23 wrote:
| What about a dating site that only charges the user once they
| stop visiting the site? Put some ads on it too so that if people
| try to game the system by visiting it often they get money from
| ad impressions.
| citizenpaul wrote:
| Rebecca is sponsored by Colgate watch this commercial to send
| her the 100,000th message she gets today and never even will
| see.
| jfengel wrote:
| The article talks about abstractions, but doesn't mention
| anything concrete that his employer was doing to promote that
| model.
|
| It sounds a bit like the theory that pharmaceutical agencies
| don't work on cures because they lose customers. But if one
| pharma had a cure, it would put the others out of business. It's
| not in your interest to let somebody else get the cure instead of
| you.
|
| "Successful" users do leave dating web sites... but then they go
| out to make new customers. Sure, there's a long lead time on
| that, but new customers are being made all the time. Every day
| 10,000 Americans turn 18.
|
| I just don't see a need for dating sites to avoid setting up
| their clients in the best way that they know how. Making a
| lifetime match is hard enough. Any number of things can cause a
| relationship to fail. The best thing a dating site could
| advertise would be how many customers stopped using it.
|
| There are plenty of other dirty tricks for dating sites to play.
| Not wrong matches, but dark patterns to get them to sign up for
| the pay site. Those can't work for long: you can't date a bot.
| You need to actively weed out other people's bots, who will try
| to use your site for scams. Users will have bad experiences
| without trying to somehow invent a good-but-not-perfect matcher,
| which sounds like an impossible task.
|
| So I'd want to know what, if anything, this employee actually
| saw. It sounds as if they were working from a flawed
| understanding of the business model and making invalid
| extrapolations.
| AlbertCory wrote:
| I heard a talk by a Singles guru a long time ago, and the brutal
| logic of male-female dating is as true as it ever was:
|
| * Younger men far outnumber younger women
|
| * Older women far outnumber older men
|
| This is a very shallow article and actually wrong. Dating success
| stories, i.e. "word of mouth" is the most powerful form of
| marketing.
|
| As a personal anecdote, FWIW, I tried JDate even though I'm not
| Jewish, because a friend met his wife there.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2023-01-13 23:01 UTC)