> Call it the dating app paradox: dating apps are supposed to be matching lovebirds together, but once they do, the lovebirds fly away — and take their money with them.
I wonder if Feeld, Bloom, etc in the ethical non monogamy / polyamorous dating landscape will escape “enshittification” because their happiest users (who find good matches) stick around looking for more friends.
That was sort of my reaction to the article too, like the assumption that "your users want to pair up such as to stop using your app" is an obviously incorrect assumption in many cases.
It also occurred to me that there's also an obvious expansion, which is into couples relationship and sex coaching/therapy/tools. I did some data analysis work with an app company with a lot of parallels to dating apps, and they kind of went that way: they figured out the needs of their users after their initial app was "done" and then offered another app, or expanded app to cover their subsequent needs. They actually did this twice very successfully, by branching out after a major stage of user need, that was the focus of the existing app, had been reached.
These dating companies could easily turn into relationship coaching or therapy or relationship tool apps. There's plenty of possibilities.
I meet most of my partners in real life just out and about, and only used online apps for very specific kinky stuff (which has caused me to get banned from regular dating apps lol). I still lament the loss of craigslist, so I installed Feeld.
However, Feeld is fucking terrible. One of the worst apps I've ever used in my life.
The design is good in theory, you can swipe through profiles without having to make a decision, then go back and say yes or no to partners at your leisure. You can list pretty much whatever you want in your profile as long as you keep the public pictures PG13 to keep the app store gods happy. You can pay for more matches or to send pings (extra notifications that people can see without matching you), or pay a fee to see everyone who has ever matched with you. The business model is super straightforward, no deception there.
But it is honestly the buggiest app I have ever used in my life. I would get a message notification and I would have to restart the app each time to view a message. I thought maybe it was just my cheap-ish Android phone, but I confirmed with my friend who uses a more expensive iPhone that the same thing happens for him. He could barely get it to work as well. We are both tech professionals.
They also never seem to address key complaints in design. To keep it hacker news safe, let's say you are interested in spanking. You can list "spanking" in your interests area, but there is nothing to indicate if you want to spank someone else, be spanked, or both.
I think they are clearly coasting on the lack of competition in the space, and after a major update it got even worse.
I decided I would no longer use it because I don't want to meet people with such low quality standards for software, because what else might they have low standards for in life?
> Call it the dating app paradox: dating apps are supposed to be matching lovebirds together, but once they do, the lovebirds fly away — and take their money with them.
I wonder if Feeld, Bloom, etc in the ethical non monogamy / polyamorous dating landscape will escape “enshittification” because their happiest users (who find good matches) stick around looking for more friends.