I've always been interested in how dating apps work. You really only have two choices if you want to get in the business.
- Help people find a match, and they will never come back
- Make people pay and keep them on the platform as long as possible.
Let's pretend for a second that we actually want people to find love. Love is such a weird thing that we don't even know how to define it properly. Ask two people what it means, and you will get five plausible definitions. If you approach it programmatically, then you will likely look into some measurable metrics to match people and then hope that love emerges somehow.
In my quest to find what the ideal dating app would look like, I interviewed a couple of my friends that use those apps. I quickly gave up when I realized that I don't have a clue on how people actually use the apps. The first comment that threw me off was when my single friend told me of an app where she found some pretty good dates.
How can you find some good dates and remain single? And what made them good? The more questions I asked, the less I understood.
I guess I got lucky. I used a dating app for a brief time, and before I knew it I was married. I never got to experience "good dates". I thought when you found one, you were safe to delete the app. I never had to pay for super swipes, and other premium packages.
Anyway, I'm not trying to solve dating anymore but apparently whatever I thought I knew has once again changed. A friend described the experience in a way that I thought was profound.
In these apps:
Men are looking for a woman who doesn't exist anymore.
Women are looking for a man that never existed.
This must be peak monetization strategy. Dating apps don't create the perfect match, they pick from the same pool of people that they share with every other dating app. So to make it more appealing, you have to create the appearance of the perfect partner that may only exist in your garden.
Men are asked to look to the past, where women were like their grandmother. She was both strong and soft, in charge and submissive. A past that they never lived, but looks appealing through their minds' eyes. They were only toddlers when grandma took care of them. Who doesn't love grandma.
Women are looking for a tall rich guy who is both CEO and able to change diapers. He is at the grocery store, but he is also at the gym. He is at work, but is available at a moment's notice. At least that's how he is portrayed on social media.
The Giga family
Grandma, God rest her soul, has passed away. We don't know who she was and how she became the loving person we knew. Those rich gym CEO guys only exist on instagram. They are a convenient plot device that keeps you swiping and spending.
I don't know if there will ever be a better way to match people, but I think technology has already solved the connection problem. We can connect. But if we want to make those connections any stronger and fit into one of those loose definitions of love, then we have to put the device away and talk to one another.