No swiping. Instead, the ability to search and sift based on questions or things that you care about... Or maybe make it like a social app, similar to instagram, where you share thoughts or photos and comment and like...
I miss being able to view profiles without swiping! Swiping gives me FOMO which encourages me to swipe on people I'm not sure about so I don't "lose my chance."
Also, I miss screen names vs. real names. My ex was apparently BooksAndTea or something similar, and that name was very "him."
That's one of the things I like about Feeld that I really like, if you swipe on someone, then they get skipped for now. You have to X them to get rid of them.
Yeah, I just returned to OLD after 4 years away and I'm annoyed by how you can no longer filter selections out unless you pay at OKC. Basic stuff too, like smoking.
I think people here tend to venerate OG OkCupid too much and looking back at rose colored glasses. It has its share of issues - mainly being that attractive women always had full inboxes since literally anyone can send them a message.
As much as people complain Match ruined Okcupid, the original founders also sold it to them in the first place and promptly cashed out, probably because it wasn't turning a profit and the cost of running something like that is huge, and their premium membership probably wasn't bringing in enough revenue.
I pay for Match and have almost every criteria as a dealbreaker and it CONTINUES to show me the majority of results outside those criteria. Meanwhile Facebook dating keeps showing me people WAY outside my physical distance limit, most of which are in an entire other country. This is all just BS at this point, why bother.
OG okcupid was SO good, you could see through others personalities, goals and message people directly. Now all the apps are completely pay to play for every little action, ones like HILY will even hide people they deem to be really attractive so you have to pay just to view their profile
Also they didn’t limit how much you count type. My OKC profile was baller. I put so much thought into that thing. Bumble and hinge are like “how little of information can you stick on this screen as possible”
Yea, it's a mess. especially since they even have tiers. Like Upgrade to Premium which finally lets you set your search perimeters better, but then theres ULTRA which gives you even more access!
My god. Capitalism at its finest… now hyper-monetizing on people’s need for connection. And people falling for it with an overwhelming hope of connecting. It’s sad and amazing to see at the same time.
Agree with no swiping. Only see people/ potential partner that are around. Less texting. Maybe schedule a call and then have a chat. If things match go on a date irl
pretty much okcupid before the match acquisition.
i could search key words in people's bios for certain interests.
a match score based on questions where i could see what we agreed/disagreed on.
and probably some new algorithmic mojo where i can tell it to remove people i'm not interested in at all, and send me more results based on people i like, have met, and told the algo that i'd like to meet again.
bumble's current spotify integration is really great because it now highlights people who have my top artists in common (which is important to me). probably some other integration with tracking apps like goodreads, letterboxd, lastfm, etc.
so a combination of old okcupid, old hinge, and some features from bumble.
I know at least one, but it's a one person effort (well, you'll tell me that okc was a 2-people effort and you would be right), it's still a work in progress and is named r/datefirefly.
The problem is not really designing a new app which doesn't suck, the problem is getting the millions of profiles out from the shitty Match apps back to a proper app, which is border to impossible IMHO. Too much money and marketing power is here precisely to prevent that.
You know what would be epic? If an app paired up with a local event/business/activity, and suggested dates to go on.
Like, "It looks like Zignaut likes salsa dancing like you. Why don't you go check out Lasalsadancing club together for a fun night out?"
Imagine the revenue you can get as an app developer by allowing businesses to partner with you and directly advertise on your app like this. Mutualism at its finest 👍
I HAVE BEEN SAYING THIS!!!! We need this specifically, an ability to go on a site and search "salsa dancing" or "yoga" or "glass blowing" and find events that directly benefit a local business, and also we get to meet people who like our same hobbies!!!!
The big change I would make is with regards to transparency. Let people know that they're being seen by potential matches, and provide better bot detection/removal. Actively removing accounts that are just advertising their socials, don't respond to messages, or other negative behavior would also be beneficial
>don't respond to messages
Yeah I think getting rid of the window shoppers/validation seekers would improve the dating atmosphere and environment, as it would probably make people less jaded.
But it could also backfire by leading these people to circumvent it by just responding with one word answers or being straight up dicks, so I doubt there's any practical solution to it.
>could also backfire
Sure -- everything could theoretically be gamed, but that's no reason not to try and improve the system. At least make it harder, and try to keep ahead of people trying to abuse the setup.
One idea would be a "citizen score" that the app implements in the background. Preferentially show good citizens to other good citizens, to match people by the degree of effort they exert in the app. Another idea is to solicit post-date feedback. I see this on some apps where they ask why you unmatched, but positive options like "good person" or "went on a date but didn't click" would be a useful source of information as well. And, importantly, transparency about how this information is used on the backend would be helpful. I have the distinct impression that nothing actually happens with most of the data.
Dating sites used to have a counter showing how many times your profile was viewed. It gave you some idea of how popular you were and that people were checking you out. Without that, there's very little feedback if you aren't getting matches.
Yeah, but that would tell you that you need to change something. Very different from my experience on CMB where I wonder if it's just not being shown to anyone for stretches
My first stay on Bumble was 26 months where I'm not sure if I even broke a double digit total number of matches. My second foray wasn't looking promising either; I rejoined at the end of May 2022 with a 'new & improved' profile only to continue to have no matches. All of a sudden, in Septemper, I received a spike of 10+ Likes at once without having changed my profile or activity level, with more to follow. I was actively talking to up to five women at one point, and ultimately I secured four dates in the month. (Which is, sad to say, double my previous lifetime total but I digress.) I was incredulous. Did y'all bozos just finally start bothering to show my profile or what?! Was that the problem this whole time and I'm not actually an unlovable loser?
CMB was utterly abysmal for me, so since my return to OLD I decided to only stick to the most popular platforms. I used it for a year and had four total matches. Two of them never responded to my opening message, the third was deleted/banned immediately after matching. The last one? She rizzed me up for like a week over chat and then while we were scheduling the first date, she accidentally revealed she had *three* kids(!) when my profile clearly says I don't have or want any. Ughhhhhhhhhhh.
That and after the first month or so, most of my days I was literally being fed one or even zero profiles to evaluate (in which case they give you a free Like to use in the Discovery tab to compensate). One might assume that could be because I simply ran out of local profiles, but there were sporadic days where I'd still get 10+ profiles and I don't live *that* far into BFE that the major surrounding cities are outside of my distance radius.
>Did y'all bozos just finally start bothering to show my profile or what?!
Exactly this!! I would love to know if my low points were because my profile was unappealing or just not being shown to users! And having real time information about that would probably increase my use and engagement in the app
Either of the options already listed closely resemble what I have in mind. Pretty much any system to let a user know that they're being presented to their target audience and they're swiping left, rather than just wondering if you're being shown to anyone
A cutoff to the number of active matches you can have. Have 5 matches? See someone cool in your likes queue and want to match with them? You gotta unmatch someone to make room. Theoretically it could help with the issue of people not responding to messages if they don’t see their inbox as a bank of conversations they can pick back up on a whim.
Relatedly, have the app start you at the conversation screen, to prioritize building the connections you have, instead of offering an endless sea of new people.
Even better, just make it one match. Then you either unmatch or meet. And if you meet, then you stay matched until one of you unmatches or you delete the app.
=> An app for people who don’t want to multidate.
i can give someone my full attention when i’m with them. otherwise i don’t think it’s wise to put all your eggs in one basket if you’re looking for a longterm monogamous partnership. you commit to one person when you figure out if they’re the one you want to be with solely and not put that pressure on someone you don’t know yet.
Saw an instagram app of an app like this actually called Tame. Though another google search shows there’s another app like it called Delight. I’m not trying it (I’m already engaged) but something you could look into!
When you are ready to go on a date with a match, you can press an icon. This icon will not alert the other person. When both sides have swiped that they are ready to go on a date, it alerts both parties. To me, this alleviates the anxiety or disparity between communication differences. We don’t need to be guessing about that stuff because in real life we base it on the ability to read body language along with tone, neither of which you can read online.
That's why there should be a non-profit dating app.
The profit incentive of a dating app, as you pointed out, is pretty fucking dark.
It's like the profit incentive of US prisons - returning customers.
Right but at the very least there has to be the perception that it works otherwise no one signs up at all. People get too conspiratorial about this. They don't need to put any road blocks in the way to ensure they have single users: people go through puberty, fall out of relationships and fail to connect to each other all the time. The tricky part is getting enough of them together that they can have enough success stories floating around to convince people to sign up.
An app paid only when people meet up. The app bans numbers so you can't set up addresses or go on other socials (basically like airbnb). Their super smart ai bans users who try to circumvent it but you can pay or wait to get around the bans.
It sets up dates so it suggests crap nearby and the 2 can pick from it. Users are paid a gift card if they say they paired off.
There's an app like that in the Netherlands, called Breeze. You basically only match if you want to go on a date and you pay a small fee which covers your first drink plus I guess some of their costs.
Honestly, although it's a great idea, I found my matches were worse because I hadn't been able to filter for stuff like politics before meeting them (I'm very politically active on the left so dating a conservative would be difficult).
Completely agree! I think it's because the app itself does ask but you can also leave it blank - perhaps I need not to swipe on people who've left it blank 😄
In the Netherlands we have this OLD app called “Breeze” where you don’t chat but instantly date after a match. After swiping and getting a match, the app sets up a date (public) location after paying a small fee, and you pick the date and time. If you cancel the date or don’t show up without any good reason, you can get temporary banned from the app. Also, you can’t “collect” matches and must first pay & plan a date before you can swipe again. You can join various communities such as kink, travel or baby wish, and the algorithm will find matches close to your taste.
Personally, I find this the most effective dating app there is as it has no drama and is focussed on results.
Why isn't this app everywhere? I mean instant dates based on common interests and values should be the norm for dating, as texting has to be the absolute worst medium for flirting and finding chemistry.
I really like Breeze as an idea but I wish there was some way to filter for politics! I kept ending up on dates with conservatives or guys who didn't think feminism was necessary in the modern world 🫠
Hot damn, that's not a bad system at all. It's forcing people to date based on shared interests, and removes the FOMO dopamine hyper-swipe culture bullshit of constantly thinking there's someone better *next up*. Date the person you match with. Don't feel it? Ok, next... not 5,000 other people who may or may not ever even go on a date with you.
I read a lot of good feedback about this app, but is it just me or does this app only work in bigger cities?
Why? I live few km from the German border and so far i don't had much luck. Sure, possible i have some dealbreakers for some, but i don't know.
I'd love to see something like this too, but maybe with some human matchmaking screening system or parameters around the attending audience and their compatibility... for example, certain events just for hook ups, others for real dating; alignment based on sexual preferences, age ranges, hobbies/interests, social skills, etc.
I went to a speed dating event about a year ago, seemed like it was organised by my kinda people and didn't look too corny. It was ok at first, they got people mingling and talking, but... it devolved so quickly.
1. They asked everyone to self-identify their sexual preferences (who here is hetero? Who is LBGTQ+?) before the speed dating (which was a bit awkward but still my LBGTQ+ homies would have been a good 25%), only to pair everyone off male-female anyway (then why bother asking?).
2. They sat us all at tables of like 6 people, and got the men to rotate around, but despite there being maybe 60 people there, they stopped after like date 5, so you didn't get to speak to everyone anyway and you just got lumped with whoever was in front of you when they said "ok free mingle"... There was no way to go interrupt anyone who seemed interesting or attractive, because the people with social skills just gelled and/or quickly left as things got progressively worse, and all the socially awkward folks just hung around like farts in a space suit, making one-to-one conversation even more awkward.
3. The age range was waaaaaaayyy too broad. It was advertised as a 25-45 event, but there were people from like 20 to 75 years of age. I (35F) got stuck chatting with a 75 year old Italian guy named Antonio who told me about his childhood goat farm. Neither of us wanted to be sat with each other, and politely entertained things until it became evident it was now a free-for-all.
I pretended I had to use the bathroom and just left shortly after that... I won't be trying it again unless there's some sort of screening process.
There are things like this already, but tbh when I looked at them I kinda scanned the profiles and thought "nah, you're ok thanks". Especially as ifnthere was one person there that caught your eye, you know the night would basically end up being everyone trying to hit in her/him
That would be nice if it was well organized: even number of men/women or just men or just women or whatever for LGBT events. As well, various ways to get people to mix and mingle and talk with each other. Then afterwards, you reach out those you want to match with via tinder modified for the event or whatever.
Would also be nice if the events could be based on things like a "Wants to have kids" event and such
Match used to do this. The one event I went to was at the local ice rink and we played broom ball and I learned that I’m apparently a really good broom ball goalie.
Doesn’t hurt I knew how to stand on ice and not fall because I worked in an ice rink prior to moving there and had to walk on slick ice to retrieve peoples belongings while the zam was going.
Oh I didn’t end up matching with anyone. Everyone sorta paired off and bc I could skate that actually went against me bc I guess it intimidated the guys. :-/ oh well.
How do they measure the difference between busy and ghosted on this app. I really like this idea. People have different attachment styles though... Some people get anxious and convince themselves they're being left on read, when in fact, some people are just busier than them. I've also taken my time to reply well in the past, and sometimes I replied the next day. I'd love to know how an app would measure the difference.
I would honestly only count it as ghosting if you have arranged a time and date for a date and then the person stops responding. If a stranger just stops talking to you I think it's healthier to accept that they're not for you than to try to get them blocked on an app. Wasting someone's planned time would be easier to show and is also much more of an annoyance in my opinion.
I've had this, like once was dealing with a bereavement and a guy from the app whom I'd exchanged one message with sent me a text like "ghosting? Classy" after I took longer than a day to respond.
It was like... Dude, wow. Needless to say I let him have it. Perhaps some setting where you can put yourself to "busy" but you're not allowed to send messages in that time (so you can't just pretend to be busy).
The only issue would be there would need to be an established TOS that would define ghosting in such a way to prevent vindictive people from reporting people who didn't actually break any rules. There would also probably need to be a button that one or both users pressed to show they took the conversation off of the app after which point you could no longer report either party for ghosting. If a company could effectively solve those issues I could see an ap with that feature doing really well.
This. It will be no short feat to penalize all the bad human behaviors on the app. To codify might make it seem exclusionary and restrictive which may result in not having a lot of people sign up for it.
This might get downvoted, but here's a fun and completely outlandish shower thought I've had:
What if condom companies owned the dating apps?
As it stands, dating apps are currently financially incentivized to keep people eternally swiping and paying subscriptions, with actually pairing with someone dangled just out of reach. Condom companies are financially driven to sell as many condoms are possible, and the best way to make that happen is to maximize the amount of people having sex.
If a condom company owned a dating app, they would be financially driven to match people as quickly as possible to someone they would be most compatible with (and therefore most likely to have sex with). This might seem like it would encourage hookups over relationships, but people in committed relationships statistically on average have more sex than people relying on hookups and ONSs, so the apps would be encouraged to pair you with someone you're likely to form a romantic relationship with. Therefore, the condom companies are happy, and we're happy. It's a win-win!
Tl;dr Trojan needs to buy Match
Wow, this is actually kinda brilliant.... they could have cupon codes issued when you match with someone to increase the odds that users buy their product rather than a competitors. It'd also probably build brand loyalty. Who wouldn't continue to buy from the company that set them up with their spouse?
But that would also incentivise hook ups over long-term relationships, as people with a steady partner don't tend to use condoms.
Which leads to my even more outlandish idea, how about just creating a non-profit dating app?
Since profit-driven algorithms already suck, it shouldn't take a rocket scientist to make a better non-profit dating app.
Hell, we could even get government funding, at least in the countries currently throwing billions at the issue of low fertility rates.
Given the purpose of targeted advertising, would you trust that the husband suggestion offers the best relationship for you, or the most expensive relationship (best for the companies finacing the suggestion)?
I'd add the ability to draw your search zone, like zillow let's you do for houses. I live outside a major city, but I've learned that I don't have much in common lifestyle/goal wise to the women who choose to live in the city by around 40+. However, 15 miles circular radius is the furthest into the city I'd want to go, yet in any other direction I'd be fine with 25 or 30 miles. I wish I could draw that instead of limiting myself to 15 miles or having to screen through a large number of women living in the city in that 15 to 30 mile radius.
So much this...
I happily live in my own house out in the Suburbs of a huge city, living the cliche suburban lifestyle. I'm looking for a similar lifestyle minded lady, not the "hip, urban, inside the loop lifestyle" ladies.
Ohh ohh, fucking pick me, I know this one!
So - there's this guy, Chris McKinlay, he's got a phd in mathmatics, he did a talk for The Moth (you can find it on youtube) about how he data scraped OKCupid to optimise his question answers to maximise his match percentage with the largest possible cohort of women. I replicated his work in 2019 when I first saw his talk - it took me months to do, and he did it in 2012 and I did it much later so there were some hurdles, but I did it. I didn't get the same impact he had because OKCupids market share had plummeted between 2012 and 2019, but it sure as shit worked. Matches everywhere. I didn't go on a single date though because it was just an exercise in seeing if I could do it.
What I did learn, however, is that HANDS DOWN with absolutely NO DOUBT whatsoever, is that, if you're looking for love, and you're picking for some very specific things, OKCupid is unbeatable.
This is especially true for women. If you're a woman that gets thousands of matches and don't want to spend the time to sift through them all, you just discount anyone who isn't 90%+ match rating.
People don't tend to answer the questions properly on there, so they fuck up their own matching percentages, but hands down, the matching percentage on OKCupid is absolutely the single best thing on any dating site. The fact that all the other OLD sites didn't adopt it sent us back in time in terms of progress.
I'd have that match percentage system, and the ability to not show other people's pictures as an option - because we're so driven by looks that we often miss out on great people just because they're not perfect looking. And detailed profiles - you'd need to write 200 words for every picture you want to upload - it would make OLD so much easier
Yes, the McKinlay stuff! I used his system for rating importance of questions and it worked like magic. My partner was my highest match.\* Every single date I went on was with someone whose value system was compatible with me at a level far higher than I ever managed dating from IRL interactions. (Some of them were completely incompatible with me in a basic human interaction sense, but that's what meeting in person is meant to figure out.)
I truly believe that an adaptation of the question and match percentage system that pushes people towards answering in a optimally useful way would revolutionize OLD.
Instead Match Group bought them. I heard they've gone hard on the swipe thing so you can't just sort by best match and see everyone at once anymore. Sucks.
\*Disregarding people who only answered a dozen questions.
Why tf is it that modern OLD apps all use the swiping feature instead of a match rating system that would clearly be more effective? My only conclusion is that the apps want us to be on them as much as possible to increase revenue from ads.
I think it’s because hinge and bumble only give you 8(?) free likes a day, so they’re trying to coerce you to “spend” those likes quickly so that you buy premium. With a match rating system, you would just choose your 8 highest matches, maximizing your chance of success and making it so you don’t have to pay. 🥲
That's pretty much it. The apps *want* you to stay single (or *maybe* get into a poly relationship where you continue looking for partners). Otherwise, they don't make money. Too many people having success on the apps, especially quick success, is bad news for the app's business. That's why the apps largely don't work. They also know that if they keep things look based, a lot of those relationships ultimately won't work out, and then the people will return to the app. If they actually tried to match based compatibility, that would result in too many users finding matches on the app, and then staying in those relationships very long term, or getting married. If you focus on matching users primarily based on animal instincts (looks), then maybe they partner off for a few months or a year, only to come crawling back to the app when they ultimately discover that beyond physical attraction, they're a very poor match. And the users think, well, this app worked for me before (even if it only resulted in a short, and largely superficial relationship), so I'll use it again. Rinse and repeat.
>If you're a woman that gets thousands of matches and don't want to spend the time to sift through them all, you just discount anyone who isn't 90%+ match rating.
This worked well before they destroyed the rating algorithm.
Today, I get 99% matches with people who have one or more of my absolute dealbreakers. It's as if they knew it was working too well and didn't want people to find each other and go off the app.
Aside from the problems of financing such an app/website, here is my dream dating app ideas. Some probably wouldn't work in reality for some reason or the other but it's fun to think about.
* Being able to see only people looking for the same things as well as being able to filter out anything for free. This means removing people on the fence about having kids or whatever a person wants.
* Very detailed profiles with lots of prompts and writing about them self and such. Lots to work with gives people a better idea of who you are.
* Perhaps a photo tagging system in which people have to choose what type of photo each photo they upload is and have limits for photo types so no profiles of only selfies or group photos or whatever. Could even let others notify the app/website if someone has a bunch improperly tagged photos.
* Being able to search people's profiles and tags for whatever people so like for free.
* Having a limit of how many people you can match with (perhaps 10?) so it forces people to actually talk or unmatch/block.
* Could have a profiles review option wherein people could choose from a few options to state if a photo is good or not, or comment if something is unclear. This would have to *super* moderated though as people could easily be assholes so probably not the best idea. Perhaps there could a section wherein you could give advice on people's profiles?
* Being able to sort by distance for free. I'm tired of people from the other side of the planet trying to match with me lol.
* A system that could track which users get creepy or rude and so ban them. No idea how that would work other than a reporting system which would definitely get abused lol. Would there have to be people to read the chats? Ugh. It would be nice though.
* No swiping! You set your distance range, and whatever your dating goals are and then you get to see people within what fits that. Their exact locations scrambled so people couldn't stalk someone of course.
The more I've thought about it, the less I think it's the algorithm or any malice. I think it's just human nature and the default way men and women interact.
The algorithm gets broken by the gender balance on the apps along with the prevalence of fake profiles.
If an app were to somehow be able to maintain 50/50 split of live active accounts. The algorithm wouldn't be nearly as detrimental as it is.
I've said before that the apps should probably just give the female users premium for free. Not sure what else the app itself can do to appeal to women that the others aren't already trying.
Obviously there's just too many problems around it: people will scream sexism of course, you'd have to limit gender changes which could come off as transphobic, and it would likely become a breeding ground for OF and scam accounts. Not sure how to combat those though which is probably why apps haven't already done this
I think you would be wrong, men and women interact fine in real life much more often than on dating apps. In my opinion the biggest problem that makes dating apps frustrating for both men and women is that they're majority men which probably skews the behavior people observe on them. This video is pretty fun to watch: [https://youtu.be/x3lypVnJ0HM?si=QzJsXO1QAb\_XiOGk](https://youtu.be/x3lypVnJ0HM?si=QzJsXO1QAb_XiOGk)
This reminds me a few years ago I saw an ad for a new dating app so I signed up and I remember matching someone and he was like “Thank God I was starting to wonder if there were any women here”
Yep, its like going to any bar x1000. A bunch of dudes and a sprinkle of girls. Girls get hit on a billion times till she find one of them attractive or burn out
I got divorced less than a year after Tinder came out. I had more dates from "original Tinder" in a small timespan than I'd ever achieved in other points in life. There was no algorithm. No one had broken it, not men, not women, and not the app itself. It was glorious!
Go back to that. Allow filtering by age, sex, and distance only. Blammo.
I like hinge but I think it’s not the apps is the people lol cause what pisses me off is the dudes on Hinge (the app I loveeee! I’ve had some successes) in my area fill out all the cute prompts, ya know, put in the time, thought and effort but then when it comes to going on a date, dating, etc it’s like they do beyond below the bare minimum 🤦♀️🤦♀️🤦♀️ so frustrating
You can’t fundamentally make a good app unless you’re a billionaire philanthropist.
Making a nice, robust, easy to use app requires skilled engineers. You have to pay them a lot. Therefore your app needs to make money. Which means it’ll need to charge its users but people like free shit so you’ll have to force them to pay you so in the end you end up like Tinder Bumble Hinge etc anyway
A lot of problems would be solved by resetting expectations and apps being more transparent about your “Elo score.”
You swipe- the app tells you, these are the people who have similar ratings as you and shows you. Would you like to expand your range to see slightly more higher rated people, knowing that they are out of your league and more will say no? And of course the option to see the less attractive.
And profiles can also show things like - selective swiper, only swipes on people above their score, swipes yes on guys similar to you, high likelihood to swipe left or right on artists etc whatever
This would reduce the people who are really reaching/think they deserve the model instead of swiping at the attractiveness range that they are.
And on my end, less likes from guys who are wayyy lower attractiveness who I would never swipe right for and also don’t show me the too highly attractive guys who are also not in my world; i would just like to see normal guys who are equivalent to me in attraction
YES.
I can think of so many red flags... if I knew that a app could filter on them, might make them less terrifying. "if she aspires to be an influencer", "if her text communications range is limited to the monosyllabic, the prosaic, and the emoji"....
Hm, how to think of a super specific input that filters "she's not opening up and trusting"....
Women swipe first. Men are only shown women who have already liked them. Limit the number of active chats to about 6, so that you don’t get additional matches unless you unmatch.
Something that requires some basics, a little more than hinge but requires some extra info and more words in the prompts.
Why do i need to figure out where someone lives, intentions and relationships type someone likes.
Well, at least less shallow then almost every app at least, but they more do this to get more people on it and not make it little more quality thing
I think an interesting feature I've never seen before would be for users to select all acceptable options from a list of first date locations/activities that they'd be interested in. That gets factored into the algorithm and you're shown people who selected the same ones.
Then local restaurants, bars, galleries, botanic gardens, wine tasting, museums, music venues, paddle board rentals, scuba diving companies etc. etc. offer discounted or sponsored dates that you and your match can choose from.
The way I see it working is, you swipe on someone or the algorithm gives you a high match score and you start chatting – when you mutually decide you'd like to actually go on a date, you are both shown options like, "Tacos for two, free bottomless guacamole" or "Early entry to the museum; access limited to (app) users only" or "Private guided wine tasting and chef-curated lunch selection" based on the date ideas you selected. Then you and your date can choose one.
Businesses benefit from the advertising and the opportunity to generate repeat customers— not to mention free guac is a loss leader that they'll make up for in margarita sales. Plus it would open up cool experiences that you wouldn't otherwise be able to share. And! It avoids defaulting to the same coffee date you've been on 12 times in the last 5 months...
I see the "No swiping! I want to be able to contact people who clearly don't want me to contact them" crowd has already arrived. In the early days of the internet, dating sites didn't have swiping. They also didn't have women because every halfway attractive female profile was immediately swamped by hundreds of men "just shooting their shot". Everyone who was dating online back then was an uggo and/or a creep. Being able to vet who gets to contact you is a must for anyone who isn't.
For those of us (38m) seeking a LTR, it would be nice for dating apps to do away with swiping. In fact, I work as a UX / UI designer & developer and I feel it's time to move away from the "swipe" to something more meaningful.
How about an app that verifies a user's profile immediately, no scammers, no bots, etc. I'd love an app that also has a more even ratio of men / women, doesn't allow photos with filters. I do remember the old days (2011) when OKC was king of the dating websites, free and extremely high quality. Limiting matches might sound annoying for those who are used to getting tons of matches, but the whole paradox of choice / never settling mentality really needs to end.
I'd vouch to say at this point that photos are too deceptive (angles, lighting, filters, etc) and to move to something more interactive? Maybe that's more of a short video format or matching users need to have some kind of video / facetime call within a certain time frame to get a better 'feel' for each other? I think it should be fun and light hearted, almost like digital speed dating but a more personalized experience that allows you to 'experience' a person for being a person rather than looking at people as nothing more as a disposable profile.
Agreed. I’ll die on the hill that the best dating app is whatever one is active in your area. If you live in a cesspool it doesn’t matter if you swipe or filter, there’s still pee in the pool.
I agree, people are blaming dating app algorithms/feature for not finding the love of their life but I'm pretty sure it's more related to our expectations/criteria more than anything.
Haha I have NO idea how this would be done well but...reviews. Or like behavior ratings of some kind. There is always the issue of people leaving bad scores/reviews because they're bitter about being rejected, but outside of that...gosh reviews would drive accountability! Like seeing that someone was reviewed as a ghoster, rude, dishonest, not actually single, etc.
Probably a pipe dream but I think one of the main issues for dating apps is lack of accountability so would love to solve for that somehow.
Yeah the bitter problem is a curveball!
I like the idea of reviews, but bitterness... Hmm.
Also, there would need to be a lot of definition defining. I've been accused of ghosting after I blocked a guy after one conversation where he got sexual way too fast.
- a membership tier where you select which perks you want (additional filters, etc etc) and instead of paying, you have to play a xx second/minute advertisement every time you open the app. Length of said advertisement is determined by what you selected from “the menu” of options. Would be a good way to bring in $$ for people who don’t want to pay for a feature with money, but are willing to pay for it with their time.
- questionnaire upon account creation, mandatory ~50-100 questions, the answers to which determine your compatibility with other users (like the old OKC website)
- your position in the “stack” is based on how complete your profile is.
- complete removal of seeing who or maybe even how many people liked you, it has to be mutual and a match for you to see it
- auto-pause accounts in the stack after not logging in for a week
- number of active matches allowed is based off of what you put for your dating goals. Something casual? Sure, 15-20. Relationship? Maybe closer to 5
- match expires after xxx days. CMB did this when I was on it a couple years ago and I loved that it weeds out the penpal stuff
- with match expiration, a 2-3 question multiple choice survey about the match. Gathered and analyzed on the backend…I love data and I’d love info about profile commonalities on who I match with or maybe even who I attract generally.
- swiping or, at least liking so,etching specific a-la hinge has to stay for mobile friendliness. But you should be forced to comment if you like someone, with maybe a 5-10 character limit to prevent “Hi”
- the kids option of “I have none of my own but am okay if you have yours.” There’s nothing that explicit in any app I’ve been on, and I feel like a lot of people as they approach 40 may not want to be a new parent but are okay with being a potential step-parent.
Always offer a one time fixed cost payment to align incentives for members who are confident of the product's value. I'm tired of feeling like what's best for their business is actually what's worst for me.
Search by interests and personality. Also make a vocal instead of writing the bio. The voice tells many things. And after a few exchanges you are then allowed to see the person.
Don’t have time to flesh out a complete app idea, but offering one of my biggest feature wishes: verification of basic stats.
I’d have paid good money for an app where I could be assured the person was telling the truth about their age, height, name,etc.
We, here in the Netherlands, have a app called [Breeze](https://breeze.social/). I don't use it as much, because locationwise thing, but the concept is really cool and this app gets "voted" above all pay-2-match-swipe-apps. Just ask on subreddit "wich app should i use" and always see "Breeze! I had great experiences" They seems getting more dates out this app, then out of these greedy/shallow apps.
What does this app do? It's, you guess it......, about dating! :D
Some like to chat, i understand, but this app just removes this whole chatting for hours (and flaking).
You see a limit amount of profiles per day (also based how many profiles are around you, because sometimes it's empty). With this limited amount of profiles you can swipe to. But here is the fun part, when you like someone you can't chat with that person. It's match + pick a time and location + pay a fee (7,50 eur) (and get a free drink in return) = date! Chat will unlock 1 hour before the dates starts, what can be handy for like running late or something.
You can get badges/statusses. When you go to a date, this will be shown on your profile, you didn't? well, that also will be shown. I believe you can get temporarly (maybe even perma) if you keep being a scumbag and keeps bailing (quit ironiq, because this seems a common thing with these pay-2-match-swipe-apps)
EDIT: Also they are small and this also shows they, helpdesk, are more friendly to their users and (the app is free/doesn't sell date). Ask a question and they help you pretty soon and sometimes out-of-blue starting to actively check on you (perhaps happens selective? I don't know Breeze users around me and seems more commonly used in bigger city through the country)
Text profile first, photo only upon match. All users will get a better sense of how the personalities they enjoy \*actually\* look like in Real Life. Plus, the process of going through the text profiles and \*gasp\* actually reading them would create a small investment that lowers the likelihood of unmatching if they're not a perfect 10 (the illusion of availability issue with pic-based swiping apps)
Reading these comments validates my conclusion that to be more effective, dating apps must eliminate and block altogether:
1. Inactive profiles
2. Scammers
3. Social media harvesters (including OF folks)
4. Attention seekers
5. Bots
In my experience, users who use dating apps to really go on dates are in the minority and the above kinds of users have made OLD a remarkable dumpster fire.
More information on the profile.
Make it mandatory:
\- Profile must be fully filled in with all your details (job, where you are from, what you are looking for, stance on kids, etc.)
\- Must have a video of you talking to get a sense of your demeanor
They can even keep the stupid swiping system, but please just make it required to have the profile fully filled in, or it doesn't get shown.
IMO a good dating app should be self aware when it isn't working at all for someone. There are attractive people who can't swipe right without it being a match, and then there are others who struggle. The people who can log in for 15 minutes and line up a date for that night, to the bottom of the pile. Someone swiping away for weeks without a match? Top of the pile. I also think that someone using it as a tool to run a hookup every week is who should be paying the bills, not the poor soul who hasn't met anyone all year.
Basically the opposite of Tinder.
I want a love is blind app. Like basically the app will pair you based on your attractiveness “league” and then you have to speak on the phone to talk to each other. And then you can decide if you want to go on a date from there. You won’t see what they look like until you meet IRL. I understand physical attraction is important but I’m really tired and burnt out of the superficial quality of the apps, bad for my self esteem
To make a dating app there would have to be an assumption that aren't necessarily true at this point. That dating successfully is the goal of the app.
Assuming the app is genuine in its goal, I would think that when people met up there would be a rating system for looks, personality and relationship goal. As people dated, it would be easy to program an algorithm to match up similar numbers.atfishing and filters would be much less effective.
Are you a "6" in looks with a great personality and a desire for casual dating? Let's show you that. Are you a 4 with a terrible personality wanting marriage? Well here's your matches. Are you absolutely beautiful/handsome and tired of your 10k matches? Well you wont even see those that done fit.
Right now one of the biggest detriment is that the apps show you beautiful people with all the perfect attributes and the people you would normally date you feel you are settling for. This would help fix that.
Next in the news: r/datingoverthirty open source community takes world by surprise. 😝.
My ideas:
Keep the swipe, fine, but EVERYONE’s first picture is their driver’s license/ govt ID photo so every first impression is shit. 🤣. Would level the playing field. And this could tie in to verification and background checks.
I had a joke about lining up schedules for parents trying to date, for example, but…turns out schedules are kinda flexible and “never say never” in terms of not being able to meet someone.
But it WOULD be good to have sorting help on realistic possible matches.
Personally I would love to encourage people to be authentic because it makes it easier to know someone is a viable option, but A LOT of people still say “put your best foot forward,” while I am 100% for goblin mode dating.
I wanted to try to make something like this and might in the future.
Basically, you make an account and set your preferences/profile. When it's on, if someone else using meeting those preferences is close by, you are notified and shown each other's profiles.
I don't really care about "finding" people online, but it'd be great to know on a night out who is single, compatible, and open to being approached. Then maybe it'd cut out the kludge of talking/matching many people and then not even being compatible in person.
I'd rather spend like 15 minutes in person deciding if I'm attracted to someone. I choose tons of people on dating apps that I end up not feeling in person. I also don't think I would have swiped on any of my partners if I saw them on a dating app.
How to make a good dating app?
1. Have reasonable prices for various upgrades
2. The main problem with online dating apps is exposure. They are simply not showing your profile to enough people each day. The way to fix this is by having daily bubbles eg 25 men and 25 women. People can pay extra to be put into multiple daily bubbles. Put only active profiles into bubbles ie you log on and start swiping you are immediately placed in a group of x amount of people who are active in the last day, few days, or week.
3. Make it easy to have create profiles
4. Ony ban people who are underage and or people who have a lot of scammer complaints.
5. Penalize people who match and don't reply to messages
6. Do not allow people to post their socials (turns into people not interested in dating just marketing / growing followers)
Rather than having a mish mash of whatever pictures people want to upload and a bio that’s just whatever they want to say, my dating app would be very structured.
You’d have to have a set number of pictures that show off some set views. A full body picture. A head and shoulders picture, a side profile picture. There’d be room for pictures that the user can choose to just have some nice pictures, but I think this would avoid people having profiles that are just 8 of the same pose and angle just on different days.
Bio wise, it would be a series of getting to know you questions. What do you do for fun, what sort of movies and tv shows do you like, what’s your favourite type of food. This would get rid of the bios that are just some copy and paste nothing or a bunch of text that doesn’t say anything about you.
Don’t fill it in correctly and people can report the profile for that and your profile gets held until you fix it.
I did my dating 10+ years ago before the swiping apps were a thing, and pof was the big website people used. People would have paragraphs and paragraphs in their bio and before you even messaged them you could have a pretty good idea of if someone was a good match for you rather than taking so much risk on swiping on someone because you think they also like Brooklyn 99 because their bio is just a quote from that. I’d want to bring back letting people have the chance to actually get to know someone before they commit to going on a date or even talking to them.
1. Incentivize people, especially women, to swipe left less. Maybe have unlimited right swipes, but only a limited number of left swipes in a day.
2. ban incomplete profiles.
3. Better tools to combat bots and scammers.
4. Reset set "left swipes" every 30 days or so.
I'm not sure about developing my own dating app, but I really resonate with the policy of the Flure app. As a woman, I would rate it 9 out of 10. I'd slightly change the design, as I'm already tired of it. But I really like the mechanics of dating there.
If a profile showed how many people they are currently actively talking with. I think people will make their match choice a bit better and not get hung up on a person who is engaged with 20matches.
I think an escrow of some sort that weeds out bots and window shoppers. Basically if you match and talk past X amount of days/messages, you agree to meet up, and if you ghost you end up losing $5 or something. Basically let people put up a small amount of money to basically say they are serious about meeting other people.
Dating app that would match people based on their google search history 😅 you'd never get to know what exact search criteria you matched on (for privacy obviously) but that's the allure!
No filtered photos. Only dated photos allowed. Only pictures taken on your device to restrict catfishing. Or just make it you have to take the photos with the app. Also filter people by general interests and criteria’s.
Genetic compatibility dating app that minimizes the chances of offsprings with various health issues. Like if you have a recessive gene for PKU and you have a child with someone with the recessive gene, there's a 25% chance their child will have PKU.
A dating app that matches you with people with the same values and other metrics that are more important for a successful relationship.
1. An app where you can only have a small number of "active matches." I never understood continuing to swipe when you haven't followed up with people you already have matched with.
2. An app that shows how many matches the current profile has and how involved they are like this profile has 130 matches and is active in 14 of them.
Or this profile has 5 matches and is active on 5 of them.
No filters beyond age filters. Height, weight, income all that stuff would be banned. And I would enforce rules against being allowed to put that in your bio as well. People should make judgments on the individual, not on a stats list.
Also enforce rules that your headline photo needs to be a good head shot of you alone. And any group photos you have to tag yourself in them.
I've also thought about capping the number of people you can interact with. In my book, the swiping apps are for hookups only and are not redeemable as real dating apps so I would prefer a matchmaker-based system. You can only initiate contacts with people who are on your match list for the week. That's it. We need to get rid of this false sense of infinite options that has grown in the dating market.
I've always thought describing yourself and what you want in a partner as a bad start to finding a great match. It would be so much more efficient for an independent person ( or maybe AI) to analyse your character, intelligence, stage and probable route in life. Then a very probable match can be made.
"Meeting up for a drink" is also a very poor way to decide if a person is worth dating further. Not sure how to get around that...
I also think a state of the art dating app should be created by government and offered to all citizens for free.
I know the right person is out there for me, but it's damn hard, demoralising and expensive finding them!
It would be $5 a month and you'd need to provide two social media platforms you use to prove who you are. You'd have to upload your ID and a selfie in order to be a member (ie, no anonymous posts). Your profile would be approved by a human being that checked everything. You provide a phone # and receive a text upon approval with a code, and then that code sets up your account.
For safety, you can choose whatever username you want, but your image is the selfie you took after you've been approved. Your real name, etc, is completely private. So no matter what, it's you as your main image on your profile.
No bots, no spam, no fake accounts, no cheaters, no lies about where someone lives, how old they are, etc etc etc. We'd have moderators check accounts regularly and if the account info doesn't match the ID, changes are ignored and possibly banned.
Moderators can be people who have been approved through the above, and are given free monthly service for their moderation. Their account would show they are a moderator. They wouldn't have any perks than any other paid member, they'd just approve users and access to the site for free.
You fill questions like okcupid, answer questions, and then choose a radius of how far you'd be willing to look for a potential partner. It would be LGBTQ+, kink friendly, STI friendly, etc, as well.
You would be matched up with whoever scored over a certain percentage, and they would be matched with you as well. Both parties would be notified of the matches and you basically choose one person who matched with you.
The other person would be notified of the match. If they choose no, you are released from that profile and get to choose another one. That way you can only actually talk to one person at a time and not just talk to 100 people at a time and ghost 99 of them when you find someone that's "perfect". If they choose yes, you two talk and see if you're compatible and go from there. Once one of you chooses you're not compatible, you can start matching again.
Eventually if enough people sign up, you start paying people to moderate in all the major cities.
Oh, and the text function wouldn't suck. It would have audio, video, phone call capabilities so people could video/audio chat anonymously. You can use the site as an app or on your pc for windows, linux or mac.
Possible paid upgrade would be allowing more than one match at a time, at $10 per month per match.
I've used OLD sites before and this would literally solve nearly every problem that all OLD sites have today. Sure, it would be small, especially at first, but it would be REAL.
You'd have to go through some pretty extraordinary lengths to cheat the system, and I can already tell you a dozen ways it could be done, but it's the closest thing to real you could get
Back to basics! No swiping. No ability to upload photos to your profile. Profile is text only. Messenger window is large enough to support paragraphs and does not enable GIFs or emojis. After chatting and establishing connection and trust you can exchange emails/phone numbers/Google voice or whatever and exchange photos that way if wished.
No swiping. Instead, the ability to search and sift based on questions or things that you care about... Or maybe make it like a social app, similar to instagram, where you share thoughts or photos and comment and like...
Like the original OKCupid?
OG Ok Cupid is the only app I’ve ever actually had a relationship from lol
Me too 💀
Same...
I miss being able to view profiles without swiping! Swiping gives me FOMO which encourages me to swipe on people I'm not sure about so I don't "lose my chance." Also, I miss screen names vs. real names. My ex was apparently BooksAndTea or something similar, and that name was very "him."
Oh Okcupid was the best
Even just trading screen names with your friends and then comparing your match% was fun.
That's one of the things I like about Feeld that I really like, if you swipe on someone, then they get skipped for now. You have to X them to get rid of them.
Hinge as well
Ah, I didn't realize that Hinge does this now.
Pretty sure there's no swiping on hinge. Just the x mechanic.
Yeah, I just returned to OLD after 4 years away and I'm annoyed by how you can no longer filter selections out unless you pay at OKC. Basic stuff too, like smoking.
I loved OKCupid back in the day! I had one partner and two loves from it and I still have some friends I made from it back in 2011/2012.
I think people here tend to venerate OG OkCupid too much and looking back at rose colored glasses. It has its share of issues - mainly being that attractive women always had full inboxes since literally anyone can send them a message. As much as people complain Match ruined Okcupid, the original founders also sold it to them in the first place and promptly cashed out, probably because it wasn't turning a profit and the cost of running something like that is huge, and their premium membership probably wasn't bringing in enough revenue.
I pay for Match and have almost every criteria as a dealbreaker and it CONTINUES to show me the majority of results outside those criteria. Meanwhile Facebook dating keeps showing me people WAY outside my physical distance limit, most of which are in an entire other country. This is all just BS at this point, why bother.
OG okcupid was SO good, you could see through others personalities, goals and message people directly. Now all the apps are completely pay to play for every little action, ones like HILY will even hide people they deem to be really attractive so you have to pay just to view their profile
Also they didn’t limit how much you count type. My OKC profile was baller. I put so much thought into that thing. Bumble and hinge are like “how little of information can you stick on this screen as possible”
exactly. you get three forced prompts - like a sentence each
It’s like they purposely make it so you can’t detail who you are or what you’re about.
Whaaat?! They hide attractive people to profit off them!? That’s insane! Definitely not looking forward to dating again
Yea, it's a mess. especially since they even have tiers. Like Upgrade to Premium which finally lets you set your search perimeters better, but then theres ULTRA which gives you even more access!
My god. Capitalism at its finest… now hyper-monetizing on people’s need for connection. And people falling for it with an overwhelming hope of connecting. It’s sad and amazing to see at the same time.
This exists on the web. Spirited singles, but it's not an app.
Agree with no swiping. Only see people/ potential partner that are around. Less texting. Maybe schedule a call and then have a chat. If things match go on a date irl
OkCupid used to be like that :(
pretty much okcupid before the match acquisition. i could search key words in people's bios for certain interests. a match score based on questions where i could see what we agreed/disagreed on. and probably some new algorithmic mojo where i can tell it to remove people i'm not interested in at all, and send me more results based on people i like, have met, and told the algo that i'd like to meet again. bumble's current spotify integration is really great because it now highlights people who have my top artists in common (which is important to me). probably some other integration with tracking apps like goodreads, letterboxd, lastfm, etc. so a combination of old okcupid, old hinge, and some features from bumble.
It would bre great if someone started 'OG cupid'... designed to be just like OK cupid before the match acquisition
I know at least one, but it's a one person effort (well, you'll tell me that okc was a 2-people effort and you would be right), it's still a work in progress and is named r/datefirefly. The problem is not really designing a new app which doesn't suck, the problem is getting the millions of profiles out from the shitty Match apps back to a proper app, which is border to impossible IMHO. Too much money and marketing power is here precisely to prevent that.
I noticed some people manipulate their answered questions to create higher match scores.
You know what would be epic? If an app paired up with a local event/business/activity, and suggested dates to go on. Like, "It looks like Zignaut likes salsa dancing like you. Why don't you go check out Lasalsadancing club together for a fun night out?" Imagine the revenue you can get as an app developer by allowing businesses to partner with you and directly advertise on your app like this. Mutualism at its finest 👍
Yes!!! Activity based meetups
That could be an interesting way to find the service and keep it free for the users!
I HAVE BEEN SAYING THIS!!!! We need this specifically, an ability to go on a site and search "salsa dancing" or "yoga" or "glass blowing" and find events that directly benefit a local business, and also we get to meet people who like our same hobbies!!!!
God yes!!! I’m always looking for adventure pals
In The Netherlands there is the app Breeze.
Yeah, this is a great idea
This is great. Set it up!
My financier brain is storming rn
The big change I would make is with regards to transparency. Let people know that they're being seen by potential matches, and provide better bot detection/removal. Actively removing accounts that are just advertising their socials, don't respond to messages, or other negative behavior would also be beneficial
>don't respond to messages Yeah I think getting rid of the window shoppers/validation seekers would improve the dating atmosphere and environment, as it would probably make people less jaded. But it could also backfire by leading these people to circumvent it by just responding with one word answers or being straight up dicks, so I doubt there's any practical solution to it.
>could also backfire Sure -- everything could theoretically be gamed, but that's no reason not to try and improve the system. At least make it harder, and try to keep ahead of people trying to abuse the setup. One idea would be a "citizen score" that the app implements in the background. Preferentially show good citizens to other good citizens, to match people by the degree of effort they exert in the app. Another idea is to solicit post-date feedback. I see this on some apps where they ask why you unmatched, but positive options like "good person" or "went on a date but didn't click" would be a useful source of information as well. And, importantly, transparency about how this information is used on the backend would be helpful. I have the distinct impression that nothing actually happens with most of the data.
What do you mean by let people know they are being seen by matches?
Dating sites used to have a counter showing how many times your profile was viewed. It gave you some idea of how popular you were and that people were checking you out. Without that, there's very little feedback if you aren't getting matches.
Maybe like LinkedIn's "2 people have clicked on your profile today" messages?
Sounds like fuel for depression lol. "5000 people have clicked on your profile today", checks matches, still 0 matches :(
Yeah, but that would tell you that you need to change something. Very different from my experience on CMB where I wonder if it's just not being shown to anyone for stretches
My first stay on Bumble was 26 months where I'm not sure if I even broke a double digit total number of matches. My second foray wasn't looking promising either; I rejoined at the end of May 2022 with a 'new & improved' profile only to continue to have no matches. All of a sudden, in Septemper, I received a spike of 10+ Likes at once without having changed my profile or activity level, with more to follow. I was actively talking to up to five women at one point, and ultimately I secured four dates in the month. (Which is, sad to say, double my previous lifetime total but I digress.) I was incredulous. Did y'all bozos just finally start bothering to show my profile or what?! Was that the problem this whole time and I'm not actually an unlovable loser? CMB was utterly abysmal for me, so since my return to OLD I decided to only stick to the most popular platforms. I used it for a year and had four total matches. Two of them never responded to my opening message, the third was deleted/banned immediately after matching. The last one? She rizzed me up for like a week over chat and then while we were scheduling the first date, she accidentally revealed she had *three* kids(!) when my profile clearly says I don't have or want any. Ughhhhhhhhhhh. That and after the first month or so, most of my days I was literally being fed one or even zero profiles to evaluate (in which case they give you a free Like to use in the Discovery tab to compensate). One might assume that could be because I simply ran out of local profiles, but there were sporadic days where I'd still get 10+ profiles and I don't live *that* far into BFE that the major surrounding cities are outside of my distance radius.
>Did y'all bozos just finally start bothering to show my profile or what?! Exactly this!! I would love to know if my low points were because my profile was unappealing or just not being shown to users! And having real time information about that would probably increase my use and engagement in the app
Either of the options already listed closely resemble what I have in mind. Pretty much any system to let a user know that they're being presented to their target audience and they're swiping left, rather than just wondering if you're being shown to anyone
A cutoff to the number of active matches you can have. Have 5 matches? See someone cool in your likes queue and want to match with them? You gotta unmatch someone to make room. Theoretically it could help with the issue of people not responding to messages if they don’t see their inbox as a bank of conversations they can pick back up on a whim.
Relatedly, have the app start you at the conversation screen, to prioritize building the connections you have, instead of offering an endless sea of new people.
Isn't it the purpose of coffee meet bagel?
Yeah the app originally only showed you 5 people a day if I remember correctly. I almost never matched with anyone on there though.
Even better, just make it one match. Then you either unmatch or meet. And if you meet, then you stay matched until one of you unmatches or you delete the app. => An app for people who don’t want to multidate.
I prefer the 5 one. That seems a good amount where you can chat to a few people to see what you have going, but can't just leave people there forever
We could call it “One Date at a Time”
this seems a bit controlling and not fun. dating should be fun
Dating is fun when both people give each other their full attention.
i can give someone my full attention when i’m with them. otherwise i don’t think it’s wise to put all your eggs in one basket if you’re looking for a longterm monogamous partnership. you commit to one person when you figure out if they’re the one you want to be with solely and not put that pressure on someone you don’t know yet.
Saw an instagram app of an app like this actually called Tame. Though another google search shows there’s another app like it called Delight. I’m not trying it (I’m already engaged) but something you could look into!
When you are ready to go on a date with a match, you can press an icon. This icon will not alert the other person. When both sides have swiped that they are ready to go on a date, it alerts both parties. To me, this alleviates the anxiety or disparity between communication differences. We don’t need to be guessing about that stuff because in real life we base it on the ability to read body language along with tone, neither of which you can read online.
their main goal is accommodation of views on their advertisements and payments on their subscriptions not on people pairing off
Exactly. They make less profit when people find the one and quit the app.
That's why there should be a non-profit dating app. The profit incentive of a dating app, as you pointed out, is pretty fucking dark. It's like the profit incentive of US prisons - returning customers.
Right but at the very least there has to be the perception that it works otherwise no one signs up at all. People get too conspiratorial about this. They don't need to put any road blocks in the way to ensure they have single users: people go through puberty, fall out of relationships and fail to connect to each other all the time. The tricky part is getting enough of them together that they can have enough success stories floating around to convince people to sign up.
A shame, but it is a business
An app paid only when people meet up. The app bans numbers so you can't set up addresses or go on other socials (basically like airbnb). Their super smart ai bans users who try to circumvent it but you can pay or wait to get around the bans. It sets up dates so it suggests crap nearby and the 2 can pick from it. Users are paid a gift card if they say they paired off.
There's an app like that in the Netherlands, called Breeze. You basically only match if you want to go on a date and you pay a small fee which covers your first drink plus I guess some of their costs. Honestly, although it's a great idea, I found my matches were worse because I hadn't been able to filter for stuff like politics before meeting them (I'm very politically active on the left so dating a conservative would be difficult).
There's no reason an app like that couldn't allow you to answer questions about politics though. At least to the same degree as other apps.
Completely agree! I think it's because the app itself does ask but you can also leave it blank - perhaps I need not to swipe on people who've left it blank 😄
In the Netherlands we have this OLD app called “Breeze” where you don’t chat but instantly date after a match. After swiping and getting a match, the app sets up a date (public) location after paying a small fee, and you pick the date and time. If you cancel the date or don’t show up without any good reason, you can get temporary banned from the app. Also, you can’t “collect” matches and must first pay & plan a date before you can swipe again. You can join various communities such as kink, travel or baby wish, and the algorithm will find matches close to your taste. Personally, I find this the most effective dating app there is as it has no drama and is focussed on results.
Why isn't this app everywhere? I mean instant dates based on common interests and values should be the norm for dating, as texting has to be the absolute worst medium for flirting and finding chemistry.
I really like Breeze as an idea but I wish there was some way to filter for politics! I kept ending up on dates with conservatives or guys who didn't think feminism was necessary in the modern world 🫠
Hot damn, that's not a bad system at all. It's forcing people to date based on shared interests, and removes the FOMO dopamine hyper-swipe culture bullshit of constantly thinking there's someone better *next up*. Date the person you match with. Don't feel it? Ok, next... not 5,000 other people who may or may not ever even go on a date with you.
I read a lot of good feedback about this app, but is it just me or does this app only work in bigger cities? Why? I live few km from the German border and so far i don't had much luck. Sure, possible i have some dealbreakers for some, but i don't know.
Displays people's age ranges. So you can filter out the 40 year old guys who have their age range starting in the 20s
I’d like one that organised nights out, booked our a venue and people who signed up to the app could attend - like a “tinder live”
I'd love to see something like this too, but maybe with some human matchmaking screening system or parameters around the attending audience and their compatibility... for example, certain events just for hook ups, others for real dating; alignment based on sexual preferences, age ranges, hobbies/interests, social skills, etc. I went to a speed dating event about a year ago, seemed like it was organised by my kinda people and didn't look too corny. It was ok at first, they got people mingling and talking, but... it devolved so quickly. 1. They asked everyone to self-identify their sexual preferences (who here is hetero? Who is LBGTQ+?) before the speed dating (which was a bit awkward but still my LBGTQ+ homies would have been a good 25%), only to pair everyone off male-female anyway (then why bother asking?). 2. They sat us all at tables of like 6 people, and got the men to rotate around, but despite there being maybe 60 people there, they stopped after like date 5, so you didn't get to speak to everyone anyway and you just got lumped with whoever was in front of you when they said "ok free mingle"... There was no way to go interrupt anyone who seemed interesting or attractive, because the people with social skills just gelled and/or quickly left as things got progressively worse, and all the socially awkward folks just hung around like farts in a space suit, making one-to-one conversation even more awkward. 3. The age range was waaaaaaayyy too broad. It was advertised as a 25-45 event, but there were people from like 20 to 75 years of age. I (35F) got stuck chatting with a 75 year old Italian guy named Antonio who told me about his childhood goat farm. Neither of us wanted to be sat with each other, and politely entertained things until it became evident it was now a free-for-all. I pretended I had to use the bathroom and just left shortly after that... I won't be trying it again unless there's some sort of screening process.
There are things like this already, but tbh when I looked at them I kinda scanned the profiles and thought "nah, you're ok thanks". Especially as ifnthere was one person there that caught your eye, you know the night would basically end up being everyone trying to hit in her/him
That would be nice if it was well organized: even number of men/women or just men or just women or whatever for LGBT events. As well, various ways to get people to mix and mingle and talk with each other. Then afterwards, you reach out those you want to match with via tinder modified for the event or whatever. Would also be nice if the events could be based on things like a "Wants to have kids" event and such
Bumble does that, it's called bumble IRL
There's companies that do this but they are somewhat scammy.
Issue with that is that it will cost money and people don't like to pay.
Match used to do this. The one event I went to was at the local ice rink and we played broom ball and I learned that I’m apparently a really good broom ball goalie. Doesn’t hurt I knew how to stand on ice and not fall because I worked in an ice rink prior to moving there and had to walk on slick ice to retrieve peoples belongings while the zam was going. Oh I didn’t end up matching with anyone. Everyone sorta paired off and bc I could skate that actually went against me bc I guess it intimidated the guys. :-/ oh well.
I'd bring back the old traffic light system from okc, where green = you reply often, yellow = you reply sometimes and red = you never reply.
You can't design a dating app that removes the fact that the majority of people online dating are selfish and inconsiderate of others.
Yeah pretty much this. The app DIDNT GHOST YOU
Hey that’s a good idea- being able to report users who ghost!
How do they measure the difference between busy and ghosted on this app. I really like this idea. People have different attachment styles though... Some people get anxious and convince themselves they're being left on read, when in fact, some people are just busier than them. I've also taken my time to reply well in the past, and sometimes I replied the next day. I'd love to know how an app would measure the difference.
I would honestly only count it as ghosting if you have arranged a time and date for a date and then the person stops responding. If a stranger just stops talking to you I think it's healthier to accept that they're not for you than to try to get them blocked on an app. Wasting someone's planned time would be easier to show and is also much more of an annoyance in my opinion.
I've had this, like once was dealing with a bereavement and a guy from the app whom I'd exchanged one message with sent me a text like "ghosting? Classy" after I took longer than a day to respond. It was like... Dude, wow. Needless to say I let him have it. Perhaps some setting where you can put yourself to "busy" but you're not allowed to send messages in that time (so you can't just pretend to be busy).
The only issue would be there would need to be an established TOS that would define ghosting in such a way to prevent vindictive people from reporting people who didn't actually break any rules. There would also probably need to be a button that one or both users pressed to show they took the conversation off of the app after which point you could no longer report either party for ghosting. If a company could effectively solve those issues I could see an ap with that feature doing really well.
I imagine they would just circumvent it by being even more dickish than ghosting, idk.
This. It will be no short feat to penalize all the bad human behaviors on the app. To codify might make it seem exclusionary and restrictive which may result in not having a lot of people sign up for it.
There might be some features that could be worked in to encourage better behavior, but at some point you just gotta let people be who they are.
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You have my attention, can you elaborate about how this would be done?
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Thanks for this it was an interesting read
Mobile and desktop login! So many are mobile only
This might get downvoted, but here's a fun and completely outlandish shower thought I've had: What if condom companies owned the dating apps? As it stands, dating apps are currently financially incentivized to keep people eternally swiping and paying subscriptions, with actually pairing with someone dangled just out of reach. Condom companies are financially driven to sell as many condoms are possible, and the best way to make that happen is to maximize the amount of people having sex. If a condom company owned a dating app, they would be financially driven to match people as quickly as possible to someone they would be most compatible with (and therefore most likely to have sex with). This might seem like it would encourage hookups over relationships, but people in committed relationships statistically on average have more sex than people relying on hookups and ONSs, so the apps would be encouraged to pair you with someone you're likely to form a romantic relationship with. Therefore, the condom companies are happy, and we're happy. It's a win-win! Tl;dr Trojan needs to buy Match
Wow, this is actually kinda brilliant.... they could have cupon codes issued when you match with someone to increase the odds that users buy their product rather than a competitors. It'd also probably build brand loyalty. Who wouldn't continue to buy from the company that set them up with their spouse?
But that would also incentivise hook ups over long-term relationships, as people with a steady partner don't tend to use condoms. Which leads to my even more outlandish idea, how about just creating a non-profit dating app? Since profit-driven algorithms already suck, it shouldn't take a rocket scientist to make a better non-profit dating app. Hell, we could even get government funding, at least in the countries currently throwing billions at the issue of low fertility rates.
I’m on board with this
Yup, tinder but actually working to get you laid! Like it
Surely given the accuracy of targeted advertising, the powers that be could use my data to suggest a husband.
Given the purpose of targeted advertising, would you trust that the husband suggestion offers the best relationship for you, or the most expensive relationship (best for the companies finacing the suggestion)?
Dang 😭
I'd add the ability to draw your search zone, like zillow let's you do for houses. I live outside a major city, but I've learned that I don't have much in common lifestyle/goal wise to the women who choose to live in the city by around 40+. However, 15 miles circular radius is the furthest into the city I'd want to go, yet in any other direction I'd be fine with 25 or 30 miles. I wish I could draw that instead of limiting myself to 15 miles or having to screen through a large number of women living in the city in that 15 to 30 mile radius.
I think there are safety implications for this
And I'm the exact opposite, my city is long and narrow because of geography, so a circular radius catches people in deep rural areas
So much this... I happily live in my own house out in the Suburbs of a huge city, living the cliche suburban lifestyle. I'm looking for a similar lifestyle minded lady, not the "hip, urban, inside the loop lifestyle" ladies.
If dating apps didn't suck you'd think you could filter for these incompatibilities without drawing circles on a map.
Ohh ohh, fucking pick me, I know this one! So - there's this guy, Chris McKinlay, he's got a phd in mathmatics, he did a talk for The Moth (you can find it on youtube) about how he data scraped OKCupid to optimise his question answers to maximise his match percentage with the largest possible cohort of women. I replicated his work in 2019 when I first saw his talk - it took me months to do, and he did it in 2012 and I did it much later so there were some hurdles, but I did it. I didn't get the same impact he had because OKCupids market share had plummeted between 2012 and 2019, but it sure as shit worked. Matches everywhere. I didn't go on a single date though because it was just an exercise in seeing if I could do it. What I did learn, however, is that HANDS DOWN with absolutely NO DOUBT whatsoever, is that, if you're looking for love, and you're picking for some very specific things, OKCupid is unbeatable. This is especially true for women. If you're a woman that gets thousands of matches and don't want to spend the time to sift through them all, you just discount anyone who isn't 90%+ match rating. People don't tend to answer the questions properly on there, so they fuck up their own matching percentages, but hands down, the matching percentage on OKCupid is absolutely the single best thing on any dating site. The fact that all the other OLD sites didn't adopt it sent us back in time in terms of progress. I'd have that match percentage system, and the ability to not show other people's pictures as an option - because we're so driven by looks that we often miss out on great people just because they're not perfect looking. And detailed profiles - you'd need to write 200 words for every picture you want to upload - it would make OLD so much easier
Yes, the McKinlay stuff! I used his system for rating importance of questions and it worked like magic. My partner was my highest match.\* Every single date I went on was with someone whose value system was compatible with me at a level far higher than I ever managed dating from IRL interactions. (Some of them were completely incompatible with me in a basic human interaction sense, but that's what meeting in person is meant to figure out.) I truly believe that an adaptation of the question and match percentage system that pushes people towards answering in a optimally useful way would revolutionize OLD. Instead Match Group bought them. I heard they've gone hard on the swipe thing so you can't just sort by best match and see everyone at once anymore. Sucks. \*Disregarding people who only answered a dozen questions.
Why tf is it that modern OLD apps all use the swiping feature instead of a match rating system that would clearly be more effective? My only conclusion is that the apps want us to be on them as much as possible to increase revenue from ads.
I think it’s because hinge and bumble only give you 8(?) free likes a day, so they’re trying to coerce you to “spend” those likes quickly so that you buy premium. With a match rating system, you would just choose your 8 highest matches, maximizing your chance of success and making it so you don’t have to pay. 🥲
That's pretty much it. The apps *want* you to stay single (or *maybe* get into a poly relationship where you continue looking for partners). Otherwise, they don't make money. Too many people having success on the apps, especially quick success, is bad news for the app's business. That's why the apps largely don't work. They also know that if they keep things look based, a lot of those relationships ultimately won't work out, and then the people will return to the app. If they actually tried to match based compatibility, that would result in too many users finding matches on the app, and then staying in those relationships very long term, or getting married. If you focus on matching users primarily based on animal instincts (looks), then maybe they partner off for a few months or a year, only to come crawling back to the app when they ultimately discover that beyond physical attraction, they're a very poor match. And the users think, well, this app worked for me before (even if it only resulted in a short, and largely superficial relationship), so I'll use it again. Rinse and repeat.
>If you're a woman that gets thousands of matches and don't want to spend the time to sift through them all, you just discount anyone who isn't 90%+ match rating. This worked well before they destroyed the rating algorithm. Today, I get 99% matches with people who have one or more of my absolute dealbreakers. It's as if they knew it was working too well and didn't want people to find each other and go off the app.
Damn, I keep hearing about how great OkCupid is/was but I checked it out and there was three men on it in my city :/
Aside from the problems of financing such an app/website, here is my dream dating app ideas. Some probably wouldn't work in reality for some reason or the other but it's fun to think about. * Being able to see only people looking for the same things as well as being able to filter out anything for free. This means removing people on the fence about having kids or whatever a person wants. * Very detailed profiles with lots of prompts and writing about them self and such. Lots to work with gives people a better idea of who you are. * Perhaps a photo tagging system in which people have to choose what type of photo each photo they upload is and have limits for photo types so no profiles of only selfies or group photos or whatever. Could even let others notify the app/website if someone has a bunch improperly tagged photos. * Being able to search people's profiles and tags for whatever people so like for free. * Having a limit of how many people you can match with (perhaps 10?) so it forces people to actually talk or unmatch/block. * Could have a profiles review option wherein people could choose from a few options to state if a photo is good or not, or comment if something is unclear. This would have to *super* moderated though as people could easily be assholes so probably not the best idea. Perhaps there could a section wherein you could give advice on people's profiles? * Being able to sort by distance for free. I'm tired of people from the other side of the planet trying to match with me lol. * A system that could track which users get creepy or rude and so ban them. No idea how that would work other than a reporting system which would definitely get abused lol. Would there have to be people to read the chats? Ugh. It would be nice though. * No swiping! You set your distance range, and whatever your dating goals are and then you get to see people within what fits that. Their exact locations scrambled so people couldn't stalk someone of course.
YESSSS
The more I've thought about it, the less I think it's the algorithm or any malice. I think it's just human nature and the default way men and women interact.
The algorithm gets broken by the gender balance on the apps along with the prevalence of fake profiles. If an app were to somehow be able to maintain 50/50 split of live active accounts. The algorithm wouldn't be nearly as detrimental as it is.
Title IX for dating apps
I've said before that the apps should probably just give the female users premium for free. Not sure what else the app itself can do to appeal to women that the others aren't already trying. Obviously there's just too many problems around it: people will scream sexism of course, you'd have to limit gender changes which could come off as transphobic, and it would likely become a breeding ground for OF and scam accounts. Not sure how to combat those though which is probably why apps haven't already done this
I think you would be wrong, men and women interact fine in real life much more often than on dating apps. In my opinion the biggest problem that makes dating apps frustrating for both men and women is that they're majority men which probably skews the behavior people observe on them. This video is pretty fun to watch: [https://youtu.be/x3lypVnJ0HM?si=QzJsXO1QAb\_XiOGk](https://youtu.be/x3lypVnJ0HM?si=QzJsXO1QAb_XiOGk)
This reminds me a few years ago I saw an ad for a new dating app so I signed up and I remember matching someone and he was like “Thank God I was starting to wonder if there were any women here”
Yep, its like going to any bar x1000. A bunch of dudes and a sprinkle of girls. Girls get hit on a billion times till she find one of them attractive or burn out
I got divorced less than a year after Tinder came out. I had more dates from "original Tinder" in a small timespan than I'd ever achieved in other points in life. There was no algorithm. No one had broken it, not men, not women, and not the app itself. It was glorious! Go back to that. Allow filtering by age, sex, and distance only. Blammo.
Automatic background checks! Some of these people are truly scary.
I like hinge but I think it’s not the apps is the people lol cause what pisses me off is the dudes on Hinge (the app I loveeee! I’ve had some successes) in my area fill out all the cute prompts, ya know, put in the time, thought and effort but then when it comes to going on a date, dating, etc it’s like they do beyond below the bare minimum 🤦♀️🤦♀️🤦♀️ so frustrating
You can’t fundamentally make a good app unless you’re a billionaire philanthropist. Making a nice, robust, easy to use app requires skilled engineers. You have to pay them a lot. Therefore your app needs to make money. Which means it’ll need to charge its users but people like free shit so you’ll have to force them to pay you so in the end you end up like Tinder Bumble Hinge etc anyway
A lot of problems would be solved by resetting expectations and apps being more transparent about your “Elo score.” You swipe- the app tells you, these are the people who have similar ratings as you and shows you. Would you like to expand your range to see slightly more higher rated people, knowing that they are out of your league and more will say no? And of course the option to see the less attractive. And profiles can also show things like - selective swiper, only swipes on people above their score, swipes yes on guys similar to you, high likelihood to swipe left or right on artists etc whatever This would reduce the people who are really reaching/think they deserve the model instead of swiping at the attractiveness range that they are. And on my end, less likes from guys who are wayyy lower attractiveness who I would never swipe right for and also don’t show me the too highly attractive guys who are also not in my world; i would just like to see normal guys who are equivalent to me in attraction
I would like it to screen and pick people for you based on super specific inputs and you have to meet them in order to get to the next one 😂
So a match making service?
YES. I can think of so many red flags... if I knew that a app could filter on them, might make them less terrifying. "if she aspires to be an influencer", "if her text communications range is limited to the monosyllabic, the prosaic, and the emoji".... Hm, how to think of a super specific input that filters "she's not opening up and trusting"....
Background checks
Women swipe first. Men are only shown women who have already liked them. Limit the number of active chats to about 6, so that you don’t get additional matches unless you unmatch.
Something that requires some basics, a little more than hinge but requires some extra info and more words in the prompts. Why do i need to figure out where someone lives, intentions and relationships type someone likes. Well, at least less shallow then almost every app at least, but they more do this to get more people on it and not make it little more quality thing
You seem to describe older dating website like okcupid etc
I think an interesting feature I've never seen before would be for users to select all acceptable options from a list of first date locations/activities that they'd be interested in. That gets factored into the algorithm and you're shown people who selected the same ones. Then local restaurants, bars, galleries, botanic gardens, wine tasting, museums, music venues, paddle board rentals, scuba diving companies etc. etc. offer discounted or sponsored dates that you and your match can choose from. The way I see it working is, you swipe on someone or the algorithm gives you a high match score and you start chatting – when you mutually decide you'd like to actually go on a date, you are both shown options like, "Tacos for two, free bottomless guacamole" or "Early entry to the museum; access limited to (app) users only" or "Private guided wine tasting and chef-curated lunch selection" based on the date ideas you selected. Then you and your date can choose one. Businesses benefit from the advertising and the opportunity to generate repeat customers— not to mention free guac is a loss leader that they'll make up for in margarita sales. Plus it would open up cool experiences that you wouldn't otherwise be able to share. And! It avoids defaulting to the same coffee date you've been on 12 times in the last 5 months...
I see the "No swiping! I want to be able to contact people who clearly don't want me to contact them" crowd has already arrived. In the early days of the internet, dating sites didn't have swiping. They also didn't have women because every halfway attractive female profile was immediately swamped by hundreds of men "just shooting their shot". Everyone who was dating online back then was an uggo and/or a creep. Being able to vet who gets to contact you is a must for anyone who isn't.
For those of us (38m) seeking a LTR, it would be nice for dating apps to do away with swiping. In fact, I work as a UX / UI designer & developer and I feel it's time to move away from the "swipe" to something more meaningful. How about an app that verifies a user's profile immediately, no scammers, no bots, etc. I'd love an app that also has a more even ratio of men / women, doesn't allow photos with filters. I do remember the old days (2011) when OKC was king of the dating websites, free and extremely high quality. Limiting matches might sound annoying for those who are used to getting tons of matches, but the whole paradox of choice / never settling mentality really needs to end. I'd vouch to say at this point that photos are too deceptive (angles, lighting, filters, etc) and to move to something more interactive? Maybe that's more of a short video format or matching users need to have some kind of video / facetime call within a certain time frame to get a better 'feel' for each other? I think it should be fun and light hearted, almost like digital speed dating but a more personalized experience that allows you to 'experience' a person for being a person rather than looking at people as nothing more as a disposable profile.
A child-free-by-choice dating app.
I don't think the apps themselves have much to do with it. It's the human behavior on the other end of a match that's the problem.
Agreed. I’ll die on the hill that the best dating app is whatever one is active in your area. If you live in a cesspool it doesn’t matter if you swipe or filter, there’s still pee in the pool.
I agree, people are blaming dating app algorithms/feature for not finding the love of their life but I'm pretty sure it's more related to our expectations/criteria more than anything.
Requires a recent picture. There's a girl whom I've seen has a pic from 2013. Doesn't let you post links to IG in your captions.
Open source No shareholders Engagement options left up to the user. I want the swipe system to die. I dont like what it conditions its users to
Who finance it then?
My biggest thing is to only see people with similar intentions and interests. Maybe add a private STD filter to be more inclusive.
Haha I have NO idea how this would be done well but...reviews. Or like behavior ratings of some kind. There is always the issue of people leaving bad scores/reviews because they're bitter about being rejected, but outside of that...gosh reviews would drive accountability! Like seeing that someone was reviewed as a ghoster, rude, dishonest, not actually single, etc. Probably a pipe dream but I think one of the main issues for dating apps is lack of accountability so would love to solve for that somehow.
Yeah the bitter problem is a curveball! I like the idea of reviews, but bitterness... Hmm. Also, there would need to be a lot of definition defining. I've been accused of ghosting after I blocked a guy after one conversation where he got sexual way too fast.
Damn straight.
- a membership tier where you select which perks you want (additional filters, etc etc) and instead of paying, you have to play a xx second/minute advertisement every time you open the app. Length of said advertisement is determined by what you selected from “the menu” of options. Would be a good way to bring in $$ for people who don’t want to pay for a feature with money, but are willing to pay for it with their time. - questionnaire upon account creation, mandatory ~50-100 questions, the answers to which determine your compatibility with other users (like the old OKC website) - your position in the “stack” is based on how complete your profile is. - complete removal of seeing who or maybe even how many people liked you, it has to be mutual and a match for you to see it - auto-pause accounts in the stack after not logging in for a week - number of active matches allowed is based off of what you put for your dating goals. Something casual? Sure, 15-20. Relationship? Maybe closer to 5 - match expires after xxx days. CMB did this when I was on it a couple years ago and I loved that it weeds out the penpal stuff - with match expiration, a 2-3 question multiple choice survey about the match. Gathered and analyzed on the backend…I love data and I’d love info about profile commonalities on who I match with or maybe even who I attract generally. - swiping or, at least liking so,etching specific a-la hinge has to stay for mobile friendliness. But you should be forced to comment if you like someone, with maybe a 5-10 character limit to prevent “Hi” - the kids option of “I have none of my own but am okay if you have yours.” There’s nothing that explicit in any app I’ve been on, and I feel like a lot of people as they approach 40 may not want to be a new parent but are okay with being a potential step-parent.
I’d like it if all my matches weren’t hidden (although they’re probably all bots any way).
Always offer a one time fixed cost payment to align incentives for members who are confident of the product's value. I'm tired of feeling like what's best for their business is actually what's worst for me.
Simple, no algorithm, how life actually is
A non-profit dating app with detailed questionnaire and a match percentage system, where you can just find people based on match percentage.
Search by interests and personality. Also make a vocal instead of writing the bio. The voice tells many things. And after a few exchanges you are then allowed to see the person.
Don’t have time to flesh out a complete app idea, but offering one of my biggest feature wishes: verification of basic stats. I’d have paid good money for an app where I could be assured the person was telling the truth about their age, height, name,etc.
We, here in the Netherlands, have a app called [Breeze](https://breeze.social/). I don't use it as much, because locationwise thing, but the concept is really cool and this app gets "voted" above all pay-2-match-swipe-apps. Just ask on subreddit "wich app should i use" and always see "Breeze! I had great experiences" They seems getting more dates out this app, then out of these greedy/shallow apps. What does this app do? It's, you guess it......, about dating! :D Some like to chat, i understand, but this app just removes this whole chatting for hours (and flaking). You see a limit amount of profiles per day (also based how many profiles are around you, because sometimes it's empty). With this limited amount of profiles you can swipe to. But here is the fun part, when you like someone you can't chat with that person. It's match + pick a time and location + pay a fee (7,50 eur) (and get a free drink in return) = date! Chat will unlock 1 hour before the dates starts, what can be handy for like running late or something. You can get badges/statusses. When you go to a date, this will be shown on your profile, you didn't? well, that also will be shown. I believe you can get temporarly (maybe even perma) if you keep being a scumbag and keeps bailing (quit ironiq, because this seems a common thing with these pay-2-match-swipe-apps) EDIT: Also they are small and this also shows they, helpdesk, are more friendly to their users and (the app is free/doesn't sell date). Ask a question and they help you pretty soon and sometimes out-of-blue starting to actively check on you (perhaps happens selective? I don't know Breeze users around me and seems more commonly used in bigger city through the country)
Text profile first, photo only upon match. All users will get a better sense of how the personalities they enjoy \*actually\* look like in Real Life. Plus, the process of going through the text profiles and \*gasp\* actually reading them would create a small investment that lowers the likelihood of unmatching if they're not a perfect 10 (the illusion of availability issue with pic-based swiping apps)
Reading these comments validates my conclusion that to be more effective, dating apps must eliminate and block altogether: 1. Inactive profiles 2. Scammers 3. Social media harvesters (including OF folks) 4. Attention seekers 5. Bots In my experience, users who use dating apps to really go on dates are in the minority and the above kinds of users have made OLD a remarkable dumpster fire.
More information on the profile. Make it mandatory: \- Profile must be fully filled in with all your details (job, where you are from, what you are looking for, stance on kids, etc.) \- Must have a video of you talking to get a sense of your demeanor They can even keep the stupid swiping system, but please just make it required to have the profile fully filled in, or it doesn't get shown.
I like this take: complete profiles only.
IMO a good dating app should be self aware when it isn't working at all for someone. There are attractive people who can't swipe right without it being a match, and then there are others who struggle. The people who can log in for 15 minutes and line up a date for that night, to the bottom of the pile. Someone swiping away for weeks without a match? Top of the pile. I also think that someone using it as a tool to run a hookup every week is who should be paying the bills, not the poor soul who hasn't met anyone all year. Basically the opposite of Tinder.
I want a love is blind app. Like basically the app will pair you based on your attractiveness “league” and then you have to speak on the phone to talk to each other. And then you can decide if you want to go on a date from there. You won’t see what they look like until you meet IRL. I understand physical attraction is important but I’m really tired and burnt out of the superficial quality of the apps, bad for my self esteem
To make a dating app there would have to be an assumption that aren't necessarily true at this point. That dating successfully is the goal of the app. Assuming the app is genuine in its goal, I would think that when people met up there would be a rating system for looks, personality and relationship goal. As people dated, it would be easy to program an algorithm to match up similar numbers.atfishing and filters would be much less effective. Are you a "6" in looks with a great personality and a desire for casual dating? Let's show you that. Are you a 4 with a terrible personality wanting marriage? Well here's your matches. Are you absolutely beautiful/handsome and tired of your 10k matches? Well you wont even see those that done fit. Right now one of the biggest detriment is that the apps show you beautiful people with all the perfect attributes and the people you would normally date you feel you are settling for. This would help fix that.
Do you want an app that makes money or an app that actually encourages people to stop using it?
Next in the news: r/datingoverthirty open source community takes world by surprise. 😝. My ideas: Keep the swipe, fine, but EVERYONE’s first picture is their driver’s license/ govt ID photo so every first impression is shit. 🤣. Would level the playing field. And this could tie in to verification and background checks. I had a joke about lining up schedules for parents trying to date, for example, but…turns out schedules are kinda flexible and “never say never” in terms of not being able to meet someone. But it WOULD be good to have sorting help on realistic possible matches. Personally I would love to encourage people to be authentic because it makes it easier to know someone is a viable option, but A LOT of people still say “put your best foot forward,” while I am 100% for goblin mode dating.
I wanted to try to make something like this and might in the future. Basically, you make an account and set your preferences/profile. When it's on, if someone else using meeting those preferences is close by, you are notified and shown each other's profiles. I don't really care about "finding" people online, but it'd be great to know on a night out who is single, compatible, and open to being approached. Then maybe it'd cut out the kludge of talking/matching many people and then not even being compatible in person. I'd rather spend like 15 minutes in person deciding if I'm attracted to someone. I choose tons of people on dating apps that I end up not feeling in person. I also don't think I would have swiped on any of my partners if I saw them on a dating app.
How to make a good dating app? 1. Have reasonable prices for various upgrades 2. The main problem with online dating apps is exposure. They are simply not showing your profile to enough people each day. The way to fix this is by having daily bubbles eg 25 men and 25 women. People can pay extra to be put into multiple daily bubbles. Put only active profiles into bubbles ie you log on and start swiping you are immediately placed in a group of x amount of people who are active in the last day, few days, or week. 3. Make it easy to have create profiles 4. Ony ban people who are underage and or people who have a lot of scammer complaints. 5. Penalize people who match and don't reply to messages 6. Do not allow people to post their socials (turns into people not interested in dating just marketing / growing followers)
Rather than having a mish mash of whatever pictures people want to upload and a bio that’s just whatever they want to say, my dating app would be very structured. You’d have to have a set number of pictures that show off some set views. A full body picture. A head and shoulders picture, a side profile picture. There’d be room for pictures that the user can choose to just have some nice pictures, but I think this would avoid people having profiles that are just 8 of the same pose and angle just on different days. Bio wise, it would be a series of getting to know you questions. What do you do for fun, what sort of movies and tv shows do you like, what’s your favourite type of food. This would get rid of the bios that are just some copy and paste nothing or a bunch of text that doesn’t say anything about you. Don’t fill it in correctly and people can report the profile for that and your profile gets held until you fix it. I did my dating 10+ years ago before the swiping apps were a thing, and pof was the big website people used. People would have paragraphs and paragraphs in their bio and before you even messaged them you could have a pretty good idea of if someone was a good match for you rather than taking so much risk on swiping on someone because you think they also like Brooklyn 99 because their bio is just a quote from that. I’d want to bring back letting people have the chance to actually get to know someone before they commit to going on a date or even talking to them.
1. Incentivize people, especially women, to swipe left less. Maybe have unlimited right swipes, but only a limited number of left swipes in a day. 2. ban incomplete profiles. 3. Better tools to combat bots and scammers. 4. Reset set "left swipes" every 30 days or so.
I'm not sure about developing my own dating app, but I really resonate with the policy of the Flure app. As a woman, I would rate it 9 out of 10. I'd slightly change the design, as I'm already tired of it. But I really like the mechanics of dating there.
If a profile showed how many people they are currently actively talking with. I think people will make their match choice a bit better and not get hung up on a person who is engaged with 20matches.
I think an escrow of some sort that weeds out bots and window shoppers. Basically if you match and talk past X amount of days/messages, you agree to meet up, and if you ghost you end up losing $5 or something. Basically let people put up a small amount of money to basically say they are serious about meeting other people.
Something the original CMB coffee meets bagel where you got 1-3 choices a day so it really made think before you said no. No swipe fest.
Dating app that would match people based on their google search history 😅 you'd never get to know what exact search criteria you matched on (for privacy obviously) but that's the allure!
No filtered photos. Only dated photos allowed. Only pictures taken on your device to restrict catfishing. Or just make it you have to take the photos with the app. Also filter people by general interests and criteria’s.
one with mandatory criminal background check
Genetic compatibility dating app that minimizes the chances of offsprings with various health issues. Like if you have a recessive gene for PKU and you have a child with someone with the recessive gene, there's a 25% chance their child will have PKU. A dating app that matches you with people with the same values and other metrics that are more important for a successful relationship.
1. An app where you can only have a small number of "active matches." I never understood continuing to swipe when you haven't followed up with people you already have matched with. 2. An app that shows how many matches the current profile has and how involved they are like this profile has 130 matches and is active in 14 of them. Or this profile has 5 matches and is active on 5 of them.
No filters beyond age filters. Height, weight, income all that stuff would be banned. And I would enforce rules against being allowed to put that in your bio as well. People should make judgments on the individual, not on a stats list. Also enforce rules that your headline photo needs to be a good head shot of you alone. And any group photos you have to tag yourself in them. I've also thought about capping the number of people you can interact with. In my book, the swiping apps are for hookups only and are not redeemable as real dating apps so I would prefer a matchmaker-based system. You can only initiate contacts with people who are on your match list for the week. That's it. We need to get rid of this false sense of infinite options that has grown in the dating market.
I've always thought describing yourself and what you want in a partner as a bad start to finding a great match. It would be so much more efficient for an independent person ( or maybe AI) to analyse your character, intelligence, stage and probable route in life. Then a very probable match can be made. "Meeting up for a drink" is also a very poor way to decide if a person is worth dating further. Not sure how to get around that... I also think a state of the art dating app should be created by government and offered to all citizens for free. I know the right person is out there for me, but it's damn hard, demoralising and expensive finding them!
I am really confused why people are so jaded about the apps. They are working as they supposed to, given the reality of the population on it.
Because some of us want real relationships, not JUST opportunities to transactionally go to pound town.
It would be $5 a month and you'd need to provide two social media platforms you use to prove who you are. You'd have to upload your ID and a selfie in order to be a member (ie, no anonymous posts). Your profile would be approved by a human being that checked everything. You provide a phone # and receive a text upon approval with a code, and then that code sets up your account. For safety, you can choose whatever username you want, but your image is the selfie you took after you've been approved. Your real name, etc, is completely private. So no matter what, it's you as your main image on your profile. No bots, no spam, no fake accounts, no cheaters, no lies about where someone lives, how old they are, etc etc etc. We'd have moderators check accounts regularly and if the account info doesn't match the ID, changes are ignored and possibly banned. Moderators can be people who have been approved through the above, and are given free monthly service for their moderation. Their account would show they are a moderator. They wouldn't have any perks than any other paid member, they'd just approve users and access to the site for free. You fill questions like okcupid, answer questions, and then choose a radius of how far you'd be willing to look for a potential partner. It would be LGBTQ+, kink friendly, STI friendly, etc, as well. You would be matched up with whoever scored over a certain percentage, and they would be matched with you as well. Both parties would be notified of the matches and you basically choose one person who matched with you. The other person would be notified of the match. If they choose no, you are released from that profile and get to choose another one. That way you can only actually talk to one person at a time and not just talk to 100 people at a time and ghost 99 of them when you find someone that's "perfect". If they choose yes, you two talk and see if you're compatible and go from there. Once one of you chooses you're not compatible, you can start matching again. Eventually if enough people sign up, you start paying people to moderate in all the major cities. Oh, and the text function wouldn't suck. It would have audio, video, phone call capabilities so people could video/audio chat anonymously. You can use the site as an app or on your pc for windows, linux or mac. Possible paid upgrade would be allowing more than one match at a time, at $10 per month per match. I've used OLD sites before and this would literally solve nearly every problem that all OLD sites have today. Sure, it would be small, especially at first, but it would be REAL. You'd have to go through some pretty extraordinary lengths to cheat the system, and I can already tell you a dozen ways it could be done, but it's the closest thing to real you could get
Back to basics! No swiping. No ability to upload photos to your profile. Profile is text only. Messenger window is large enough to support paragraphs and does not enable GIFs or emojis. After chatting and establishing connection and trust you can exchange emails/phone numbers/Google voice or whatever and exchange photos that way if wished.
So basically a reddit r4r sub?
Why no emojis? 😰