The dating racket
Why dating services would rather you didn’t find love.
In an earlier post I described online dating as a hamster wheel of high expectations and disappointing dates. This might seem pretty odd for a business purportedly designed to deliver romance. Well, I’ve got news for you. Dating services (not just online dating and apps, but matchmaking services too) are not designed to deliver romance.
Like most businesses, dating services are designed to make money. And they make money by selling membership subscriptions, or sometimes selling advertising or access tokens to specific features, events and even commission on your first drink. All of which result in the following:
Dating services make more money the longer you use the service.
Let that sink in.
This corollary should now be abundantly clear to you:
The last thing they want is for you to leave their service, by actually meeting a partner.
That’s right. You heard me. They want you to stay single. That’s how they make money.
Think that’s too cynical? I recently chatted to the ex-CEO of a successful dating platform. They were pretty cynical about some dating industry practices too, as well as the short-term gratification problem of modern apps, and are now planning to release a new app to address these issues, and deliver a service that actually, you know, works. But their monetization model will still be subscription-based. So it was of no surprise that when I raised the question of customer outcomes, I was told that “no service can guarantee love” [more on that at a later date], that monetizing based on customers finding love would be commercially unviable, and that all you can really offer is “hope of finding someone”.
And that’s just it. That’s what they’re marketing. Hope. These services want you to believe, for as long as possible, that your perfect partner is just around the corner. It really doesn’t matter if it’s true or not, to them, because that’s not what makes the money. Now that hamster wheel is starting to make sense. All that choice is so enticing. And it really feels like that perfect partner is out there; you’ve just got to keep the faith.
Of course, dating services have their successes. Firstly, nobody would use them if they didn’t. Secondly, if you’re connecting people who all want to find love, no matter how badly you do it, at least some are actually going to find it. The real question to ask is
“How many of a service’s users actually find love?”
Trying to find the stats on success rates on any online dating site is nearly impossible. The reason is simple: they’re really bad. Back in 2010, OKCupid’s founder, Christian Rudder, published a blog post entitled “Why you should never pay for online dating” which used publicly available data to suggest that the average single American was twelve times more likely to get married in a given year than a Match subscriber. Of course, this post was taken down following OKCupid’s purchase by Match in 2011.
Instead Match presents us with a blog of anecdotal success stories from the lucky few, implying that this will happen for us, despite the fact that the odds are stacked firmly against us.
So it’s no wonder that the industry believes that monetizing based on users finding love is commercially unviable — they’re making it harder! Yet the conventional wisdom in the dating industry is clear from the conversations I’ve had — “There isn’t any other way.” Well, I beg to differ.
So what would a business that actually wants you to find love look like?
Most importantly of all, they would incentivize themselves differently. To be correctly incentivised, a business that wants to focus on delivering X should set itself up to earn revenue only when it delivers X.
If a business wants to deliver love, then it would charge its customers only if it delivers them love.
Now, a literal interpretation of the above statement inevitably raises concerns. How do you define love? Wouldn’t people lie about whether they’re in love? How would you get them to pay up after they’ve met someone?
There are ways round all these issues, for businesses willing to tread that path. At their core will be a capped fee and a guarantee of a full refund if you don’t meet a partner. So if you find a service with the integrity to offer that, I recommend you use it.
In the meantime, escape the dating trap, and start looking for love in the right places.
