They're recommender systems already, which is AI-powered, so how exactly are they changing?

Indeed, I initially thought this was about a dating app called Swipe.

Dating apps are really good for women, particularly young women. Several of my women friends have said they can have a decent partner for an evening or a weekend with as little as 30 mins of time investment.

So we should ban recreational kickball?

Seems foolish to me to ban technology from dating given how much time people invest into it.

Finding a partner was never free, even if no money was involved, at least one of the partners has to invest and demonstrate the resilience and commitment, that involves time and often also money like paying the bar tab for the date in the simplest case.

(and yes, I found my wife by paying for a membership in a dating app. We wouldn't meet otherwise even though we lived in the same city)

Dating apps were fine before the Silicon Valley DAU-maxxing, microtransaction-to-IPO pipeline obssessed twerps entered the picture.

Before swipes, before "buy Premium to un-hide these people who like you" paywalls, dating apps let you message people directly in exchange for showing some Google ads that were unobtrusive.

No surprise at all that an out-of-touch, billionnaire CEO thinks that the missing ingredient is AI.

I continue to be furious at how Match destroyed OkCupid. OkC of the 2010s was a fantastic and rich community full of interesting people. I met my wife there. I learned about Polyamory from the message boards. Now they've ripped out everything that ever made it good, it's just another Tinderlike

> Dating websites were the less exhausting alternative to going out drinking or finding new social circles

The per-event odds of finding love by going out drinking and joining new social circles are low. But the odds of making some great memories and good friends in the process are pretty high*. At least better compared to the alternative of sitting at home and swiping on an app.

* There's an entire TV show based on this premise. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_I_Met_Your_Mother

Its a little bit of a balance act, they want to match you with someone that's good enough to date a couple times but not enough to date long term.

I think the mathematics work better if they match you with "mostly compatible" people rather than "not compatible at all". Success stories are important because that's how you build recognition.

Now a days though, match group owns all dating apps so they have a monopoly in dating. Whenever a new app comes to market that's "better" (which will be, in its initial stages) they acquire. Users migrate and then they ruin. Rinse and repeat.

They recently acquired sniffies (a gay cruising app) for like 100M. Go figure.

There's 3 glaring problems here.

1. There's a steady stream of unmarried individuals so as you match people up there's more people (either just from growing older or divorce) that can use the app.

2. If you don't already own a dating app, then even if you cannibalize the market you can still make a large sum of money. Akin to mining all the gold in a plot of land; sure your company needs to close once its gone but you made money in the interium.

2.5. If you do already own a dating app, if you're known for not working then people will stop using the app and go to a competitor (assuming you didn't buy them all ...)

I actually think a Facebook or Instagram might be in the best position to offer dating with the goal of permanent matching.

* Recruit friends to make recommendations mimics classic searching techniques

* Can scope out a more complete bio early in the process, for both AI and Human filtering/matching

* Their long term incentives will be meet if they post cute couple pictures or generate new long term users

That is only the case if people enter exclusive relationships. But if someone has access to a dating app or system that works really well, there is little reason to do that.

Breeze has a really cool formula in which you pay exclusively for each date. And a date is organised automatically for each match, without any possibility to chat beforehand.

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> without men and women having reasons to be in relationships--especially long-term reasons--then relationships won't happen.

I'm actually fine with this. I'm not sure I want to be around the same person constantly for longer than a few years and I'm glad modern life allows me to do that. Leaving my family when I became an adult was the best thing I ever did.

I'm sure someone out there's thinking or about to say "families are the basis of a stable society" and that's incorrect. The basis of a stable society is having enough money. Without that, families are simply going to be a performative thing to satisfy angry people and/or busybodies.

>I won't go into my personal explanations here as I'll just be downvoted into oblivion

Enlighten us.

The problem is that doesn't actually work. I've spent my entire life active in communities of faith and that certainly has never involved, helped with, or facilitated a date let alone a long term relationship.

Church is one of the worst places to try to date and that’s not the purpose. The only purpose of church is worship, not socialization or politics or pushing an agenda or judgment

Solid formula and it's great you're happy with it. But it doesn't apply to everyone.