Dating Apps

Dating apps are broken. They’re broken for users, that is. The businesses are doing ok.

The Flaw Of Dating Apps

I universally hear from my friends that the apps are not working for them and that they are “giving up on the apps.” I hear this refrain with increasing frequency.

The problem with dating apps doesn’t stem from a technical challenge nor from a flaw in their financial model. The user experience of dating apps suck the root cause is social convention.

It’s due to a mismatch between the overall intent of the user when they’re in the app at odds with their incentive to behave in any given interaction:

(1) The goal of a dating app is to find love / romance / a relationship / etc.

(2) To be successful in the pursuit of this goal one must match and attract a high quality partner candidate.

(3) High quality candidates attract other high quality candidates.

(4) High quality candidates are in high demand. They are not desperate.

(5) Urgency is a sign of desperation.

(6) Don’t show urgency.

What does not showing urgency look like?

Receive a match from someone? Don’t look at it too quick.

Received a message? Wait until later today to respond.

Are you free to meet for a coffee? I’m pretty busy but I might have some time next week.

What a shame. Performative apathy is hardly what the stuff of enduring relationships is made of! And in practical terms, apathy is not at all helpful in the awkward early stages of establishing a relationship, especially in the context of going from a cold start with someone you just met from a classified over the internet.

Destructive feedback loops

The problem is made worse when you consider dating apps as two sided marketplaces. The behavior of one party in a dating match affects the behavior of the other party. The behavioral standards of the crowd reflects on the behavior of the individual within that crowd.

Remember what I said earlier: the problem is getting worse.

As participants learn that messaging quickly is a negative signal, they learn to perform apathetically in ways conscious and not. They turn off their dating app notifications; they ignore messages and wait to respond; they deprioritize scheduling first dates with strangers. After all, they are high quality individuals, they like to think!

Even the individuals who hate this about dating apps, those who wish they were finding higher intent and higher quality date matches on the apps, they also fall prey to the perception of desperation. God forbid someone they matched with suddenly stands out from the crowd and show intentionality and high interest. What a weirdo! There must be something wrong.

On a fundamental level the participants in the network are individually incentivized to be bad actor participants, and as more participants take on the behavior of bad actors the quality of the overall network decreases. As the quality of the network decreases then individuals are more strongly disincentivized from showing urgency - they come off even more desperate than before!

And so the downward spiral continues and the network quality worsens over time. Dating apps become digital consumer content platforms - an opportunity to check out profiles of single or looking people near you - not dating marketplaces.

Real life encounters

Contrast the behavioral incentive we have in the online world with the incentives in the real world.

Just met someone alluring? Engage them in conversation. Make eye contact.

Enjoying the conversation? Ask questions. Keep them engaged.

Need to run? Ask for their contact details right now. You might not get another chance.

Our real world encounters have urgency built in. Two people are meeting for reasons serendipitous and ephemeral. This chance may not come again. If you’d like to see them again you need to make a move right now. Get their Instagram before they go. Even better, see if you can arrange a time to continue the conversation later today or tomorrow. There’s your first date right there.

The Exception

There is an exception to “dating apps are broken.” One category of dating apps is absolutely thriving and it’s where my friends are increasingly finding successful relationships and love: casual hook up apps.

Casual hook up apps - think Grindr for gays, Feeld for straights - turn the flaw on its head. Urgency is a positive attribute on these apps.

People are on hook up apps because they want to get off, and they want to get off now, or very soon anyway.

Those people don’t want to waste their time with people who are not interested in getting off right now. Too good for this conversation, or too busy to focus? Fine, then I should just find someone else.

Hanging like the sword of Damocles over the conversation between a hook up app “match” is the very real and present risk that the match will choose to get off with someone else instead, or will just choose to j**k off by themselves instead.

Unlike eternal love, which frankly can wait until the perfect person presents at the perfect moment, by contrast getting off needs to happen right now.

Unlike dating apps which sell love but fail at connecting humans, hook up apps sell sex and some of the time they’ll create an enduring connection.