I really enjoyed reading your article and resonate with many of the points you made about the challenges and perverse incentives within dating apps. I’ve been thinking about solutions for these issues and had a question:
Given that Facebook Dating is free and doesn’t seem to suffer from the perverse incentives you described, why do you think it hasn’t taken off? Facebook has the incentives to create a matchmaking system that works well because it drives overall engagement with their platform, yet it hasn’t gained much traction. Is it just a lack of focus, or are there deeper challenges at play?
That said, I feel your proposed third-party idea might overcomplicate things. If a consumer social company like Meta (leveraging Instagram, Threads, or even Facebook) truly focused on connecting people to highly compatible matches—along with culling problematic accounts and offering user coaching (e.g., “this photo is underperforming, consider updating it” or “this message might not land well with Stephanie”)—I think they could genuinely improve the experience and outcomes.
I also think limiting the number of "matches" to, perhaps one MAXIMALLY COMPATIBLE match (see Marriage Pact that came out of Stanford for how this would work) might work a lot better than offering people unlimited choice.
Do you think this approach could work, or are there other factors I might be overlooking?
I'm not sure that Facebook has gone heavily into promoting it, and there might be hesitation on the part of users because they want to use a "burner" identity not linked to their social media. I also don't know what the actual user base looks like for it - for all I know (not having used it in a long while at this point) it may have real numbers engaging now.
Limiting number of matches & advising is exactly the thing that would make an app more successful at matchmaking but less successful at perpetual engagement - so, yes, that would also work.
The third-party idea is to deal with the perverse incentive problem. I do think the "Facebook finesse" play does work there, but there are clearly a very limited number of players in that position.
For a dating app it is very important that only women can start a conversation with men, men cannot start a conversation. When men can start a conversation with women, attractive women are completely littered with messages.
Also it is important that the dating app does not get more money if they invent fake woman profiles or if they keep women profiles active even if the profile owner did not show up for months.
I really enjoyed reading your article and resonate with many of the points you made about the challenges and perverse incentives within dating apps. I’ve been thinking about solutions for these issues and had a question:
Given that Facebook Dating is free and doesn’t seem to suffer from the perverse incentives you described, why do you think it hasn’t taken off? Facebook has the incentives to create a matchmaking system that works well because it drives overall engagement with their platform, yet it hasn’t gained much traction. Is it just a lack of focus, or are there deeper challenges at play?
That said, I feel your proposed third-party idea might overcomplicate things. If a consumer social company like Meta (leveraging Instagram, Threads, or even Facebook) truly focused on connecting people to highly compatible matches—along with culling problematic accounts and offering user coaching (e.g., “this photo is underperforming, consider updating it” or “this message might not land well with Stephanie”)—I think they could genuinely improve the experience and outcomes.
I also think limiting the number of "matches" to, perhaps one MAXIMALLY COMPATIBLE match (see Marriage Pact that came out of Stanford for how this would work) might work a lot better than offering people unlimited choice.
Do you think this approach could work, or are there other factors I might be overlooking?
I'm not sure that Facebook has gone heavily into promoting it, and there might be hesitation on the part of users because they want to use a "burner" identity not linked to their social media. I also don't know what the actual user base looks like for it - for all I know (not having used it in a long while at this point) it may have real numbers engaging now.
Limiting number of matches & advising is exactly the thing that would make an app more successful at matchmaking but less successful at perpetual engagement - so, yes, that would also work.
The third-party idea is to deal with the perverse incentive problem. I do think the "Facebook finesse" play does work there, but there are clearly a very limited number of players in that position.
For a dating app it is very important that only women can start a conversation with men, men cannot start a conversation. When men can start a conversation with women, attractive women are completely littered with messages.
Also it is important that the dating app does not get more money if they invent fake woman profiles or if they keep women profiles active even if the profile owner did not show up for months.