Ask HN: Why are dating apps so bad? Why hasn't anyone made a good one?
91 comments
·June 1, 2025wryoak
The number one problem with dating apps is that they position themselves for self-selection and most people fail to select appropriate mates when given a whole shopping mall’s worth of candidates. I would never have swiped right on my current partner (7ish years). Or my first spouse, either. Two highly fulfilling relationships in my life that I never expected or tried to manifest initially.
People can generally identify when they have chemistry with someone, but not when they will have chemistry with someone, and most dating apps are run on the idea that you select whom you want to have chemistry with. Not whom you can or will, but want to have. All dating apps will converge to garbage because they focus on choice in love, rather than chance. They don’t throw you into a room with random people and let the real relationships blossom and the false ones fall away, they tell you to pick from a lineup of people whole you have never talked to (and to be honest probably will never talk to), but in real life we talk to random folks, sometimes that unattainable hottie and sometimes the perhaps homely but amiable passerby, and find out the brute force way which ones make us spark. It’s not about the subscription fees or the with dating apps, it’s about the fundamental disconnect between the freedom of election and the inability to act. The promise of consumption without the serendipity necessary to facilitate it.
netsharc
Serendipity makes me think of Omegle. Which makes me think of a "Speed-Dating" app: you get connected to a random person like Omegle, but there's a time limit, say 3 minutes, and at the end of it you can decide to either extend the conversation or record a "nice talking to you, but I didn't feel any spark" video (a recording makes rejecting them less confrontational).
Users can give feedback whether the opposite user was rude or offensive, and the service should be quite strict about bans.
I wonder if it'd be a turn-off though, if you spend 30 minutes to talk to ~10 people you don't find attractive. Maybe there should be a Tinder-esque selection process, so when you're online, you'll get offered other profiles which are also online, and if you both swipe right you'll get to a video-chat within seconds.
Ouch, imagine the pain if you're online, swiping right, but never get connected to anyone. Another problem is that the hot people will always be in a conversation and their profiles will only rarely show up (since they won't be instantly available).
toomuchtodo
n=1, a friend met their husband on Omegle on opposite sides of the world. Might be on to something.
thatguymike
Harder to swipe in the bathroom as well. I reckon the meta would mean you have to be dressed nice and put on makeup just to sit down and scroll this app, which isn't usual app behavior.
netsharc
This app should've launched during Covid times, it'd be a replacement to getting dressed and going out on a Friday night. Well one would still dress up...
During Covid, friends had their work send them cocktail preparation equipment and have Zoom dates making cocktail with colleagues.
fragmede
maybe that app wouldn't need to support that use case. if you're not comitted enough to find a relationship, maybe that's why they're not in one.
jmye
> I wonder if it'd be a turn-off though, if you spend 30 minutes to talk to ~10 people you don't find attractive. Maybe there should be a Tinder-esque selection process, so when you're online, you'll get offered other profiles which are also online, and if you both swipe right you'll get to a video-chat within seconds.
And here I was going to one up this - make it a three minute convo without video. If both people choose to continue, the video starts afterwards.
I think a not-insignificant number of people will find someone who was fun to talk to more attractive then they might at first glance. Might still be some misses, and the number of people who’d sign up is probably low, but I think you’d see more successful matches.
IAmBroom
I think that would produce a lot of false positives, and therefore a lot of disappointment for physically unattractive people. Some people aren't particularly motivated to pick only 9s & 10s; most people accept people in their own range or higher; and sure, some people who are 6s end up happy with 2s. But "We're really hitting it off!" followed by "Um, oh, sorry, I just remembered I left a pot on the stove BYE" is much worse than just not getting any "likes" at all.
dobladov
I have not tried it, there's this German app where the choosing of your matches is done by your friends, not yourself, and given that many people meets their partner in real life thought friends it seems like an interesting idea.
spacemadness
I think The Medium is the Message applies. Breaking down humans into some tables in a database is never going to be great and lends itself to superficiality. It’s transactional at best most of the time and makes a lot of people bitter. The app makers are incentivized to keep you on the platform. None of this is in your favor.
frizlab
happn was built on the concept of serendipity. “Find the people you’ve crossed path with” (tagline has now changed though).
nasalgoat
I was a founding member of a dating app startup and worked there for 10 years until it filed for bankruptcy. I have some insight.
The number one reason dating apps suck is money, or the ability to make money is antithetical to the purpose of getting people together. A dating app is successful when people don't use it anymore, so that user churn is a serious impediment to earning a profit. Thus, the apps are designed to keep you paying that monthly subscription.
In that same vein, apps have to work way harder than websites to turn a profit because of app store fees. Our app would have been profitable if we didn't have to give Apple 30% of our fees, so we had to do way sketchier shit to increase profits to compensate.
Second problem is the wildly unbalanced male/female ratios in users. We had one of the better ratios in the market but it was still 70/30 male to female. Straight men and women simply do not have the same motivations around dating and trying to balance those is a hard problem. There are many videos out there about this problem, no need for me to go into detail.
Third is reach. We spent a lot of time trying to find ways to advertise or optimize for store placement and the restrictions placed on us were almost puritanical. For instance, Facebook wouldn't let us advertise because our relationship settings had "married" in the list, so we were forced to remove that option in order to place ads on Facebook. There were other compromises we had to introduce in order to qualify for other stores or advertisers.
Lastly, the Match Group is the 800lb gorilla of the industry and they buy all the good ones (OKCupid, Plenty of Fish) and grind them into maximum profitability like a hedge fund, thus removing any distinctiveness they had in favour of the Match methods.
What it comes down to is the ecosystem is gamed to make good datings apps impossible.
josephcsible
> The intent of these apps is to keep you single and spending money.
Perhaps a different monetization model would fix that. The ideal outcome of a dating app for you, the user, is that you find someone to marry and spend the rest of your life with, and that means you won't need the app anymore. This means that for apps where the user is a source of ongoing revenue (either paying directly, or through ads), there is an perverse incentive for the app to want exactly what you said. An idea I've heard before would be an app where there's a one-time payment to join, and that's the only revenue ever generated by each user. Then their incentives would be aligned with yours.
IAmBroom
You're describing old-style matchmakers.
I paid one about $200 circa 1998. She promised matchups every month until I cancelled, more or less. She wanted me to match so I'd quit draining her time & effort. Within 3 months I had a girlfriend, and we both dropped out. We had a grace period where we could re-up if it didn't work. Obviously, if one of us cancelled and the other asked for more matches, that deceipt would have been quickly revealed.
In short, you paid a larger finder's-fee upfront, and the service is motivated to match you ASAP.
JohnBooty
Perhaps a different monetization model would fix that.
The ideal outcome of a dating app [...] means you won't
need the app anymore.
I get what you're saying. In a way, yeah: your ideal moneymaker is somebody who signs up for a $20/year recurring subscription and forgets about it for the next 30 years.
But that was not how I viewed things. There's always a fresh "supply" of people who are looking for connections.
Think of a college bar. You don't need people to become "lifer" customers. There are always new people coming into town.
In some senses, if you're running a "pure" dating site (ala Tinder, as opposed to something with more of a community/social slant) it's probably not even advantageous to have the same people hanging around the site indefinitely. Most people want to date local people, and they would like to see a constant supply of new local search results/recommendations rather than the same people over and over.
throwaway314155
> Perhaps a different monetization model would fix that. The ideal outcome of a dating app for you, the user, is that you find someone to marry and spend the rest of your life with, and that means you won't need the app anymore.
You're describing hinge. OP should probably try Hinge.
sxp
I recently canceled my subscription for Hinge. And the number of matches I'm getting in my last week is higher than the rest of the month. Hinge has the same incentives optimizing their algorithm as everyone else.
chneu
Hinge's algorithm has gone to crap. It's very obvious when they show your profile and when they don't. If you don't use their roses then the chances of a match go down drastically.
lesam
A quick search says Hinge charges a monthly subscription, is that not correct?
maroonblazer
One of Hinge's marketing messages is something along the line of "The app you're meant to delete."
throwawayffffas
> Definition of a good dating app: An app with no dark patterns where you can find dates and relationships.
Yep that's not going to happen. Taking all the dark patterns out is the easy part. But the find dates and relationships part is not a thing you can do on an app. Unless you are like a 9.
Most people are average, and to find a date and have a relationship they have to be in an environment where whoever is doing the picking does not have infinite options and may be open to lower their standards. Like say in a bar where the options are the people in the bar and their standards might be lower because of beer goggles.
In an app people get to be picky and gravitate towards the most desirable end of the bell curve.
JohnBooty
This contradicts reality as I have experienced it.
I think people tend to select people they perceive they'll actually have a chance with. Obviously, not everybody has a good handle on how desirable they are (or aren't) but generally, yeah.
Your logic -- which sounds a bit like incel logic -- also kind of assumes a 1-dimensional scale of 0-10 based on, what? Solely on conventional physical attractiveness? Not everybody buys into that, at least not as a sole criterion.
I know a lot of "not 9s and 10s" who found relationships/hookups online.
I actually used to run a sort of dating site back in the day. Hundreds of examples on there, and I know many more people who've met partners online outside of the one I ran.
What you are describing is certainly true of some places like Tinder that lends themselves to quick impulsive swiping and snap judgements based on looks alone.
toomuchtodo
A profitable dating app is orthogonal to what humans need to make meaningful connections.
liquidise
If you built an ideal dating service, where 100% of your customers pair with someone they would marry, you could charge huge sums and you'd have an endless stream of customers as people grew into marrying age.
Today's market dynamics are different (no such ideal exists), but all the drivers remain: at some age people care deeply about meeting someone and will pay for a service that gives them s fighting chance. As a former dating app cto, i believe the reasons we don't have services that brag about their match or marriage rates is not capitalist greed standing in the way of love. The problem of matching people via an app is a genuinely difficult problem for a number of fascinating reasons.
toomuchtodo
Indeed, but what you describe is a matchmaker service, not a dating app. I strongly believe and agree such a service can charge a premium, be successful, and brag about its stats. I just don’t think it works in the form of a dating app due to logistics and customer expectations.
JohnBooty
As a former dating app cto, i believe the reasons we don't
have services that brag about their match or marriage rates
is not capitalist greed standing in the way of love. The
problem of matching people via an app is a genuinely difficult
problem for a number of fascinating reasons.
(FWIW, I used to run sort of a dating site too, very small/niche, one person operation)
drekipus
this is the whole thing.
lesuorac
I'll agree its more profitable if you never lose customers and gain them over time but selling a product that doesn't do it's job will eventually cause customers to leave and never come back.
Why won't the end game be people just stop using Match Group's products?
Alternatively, if you're not already in the dating industry then making a successful match making product is just profit (and then you can pivot to not working ...).
tibastral2
Let's pretend you have good dating apps and bad dating apps at the time T. As soon as you find love on a dating app, they "lose" you as a user, you stop paying your monthly fee, and you leave the app. So I have a theory about dating apps. They give you somebody average, somebody that you could like enough, but not for too long, because YOU NEED TO COME BACK TO THE APP for them to succeed. So only the bad dating apps darwinely are being used more and more by people. They have more and more profiles (who doesn't find love).
It's called retention my friend, and it's the key metric for apps.
thorncorona
Or put the other way, only users which do not succeed at finding someone will stay long enough to grow the user base enough for the app to spread.
JohnBooty
(FWIW, I used to run a very small/niche, mildly profitable social/dating thing.)
As soon as you find love on a dating app, they
"lose" you as a user, you stop paying your monthly fee
As a business, you are competing against an endless array of other options. How many dating apps are there? A billion? If people don't like the matches you're serving up, they'll try one of the other options... not just hang around your app endlessly, hoping it improves.
lmm
> So let's assume there is a deficit in the market for dating apps that are actually good. So why hasn't one been made?
What's the market? How are you going to get people to pay for a good dating app?
Fact is people (specifically women, since they're the audience that matters for dating app success) vote with their feet for dark patterns.
AStonesThrow
In a world of touch screen devices and OnlyFans fetishes, descriptions of women who "vote with their feet" carry a whole new set of mental images!
beAbU
> The intent of these apps is to keep you single and spending money.
You answered your own question.
A "good" dating app will get the user hitched. At that point the user ceases their interest in the app. How will the app maker make money off this person?
Asking for money up front is a no-go. The user has no guarantee that they will be successful in their endeavours.
Asking for money afterwards is tricky and difficult to enforce at scale.
The really good dating services out there aren't apps, they are more like matchmaking or concierge services. You pay someone a shit-ton of money and they give you access to a network of people that did the same thing, and have the same mindset as you. I'm also not sure how successful these services are, other than being good at extracting money from wealthy single desperates.
Tinder's secret sauce was normalising the DTF lifestyle on a massive scale, giving users an app where they can find their next sexual partner for the coming weekend. Much easier (and cheaper) than going to a bar/festival. Here the model is very much use the app on weekdays, match with a partner, have fun, and come back on Monday for more. Much easier to monetise this with subscriptions, super likes, profile boosts etc etc. The only critical feature they are missing (for obvious reasons) is allowing users to rate one another. This naturally does not work so well for the crowd looking for more long term situations.
I think it really boils down to a fundamental mismatch on incentives. As a service, you want recurring revenue. As a user, you want to stop using this service as fast as possible. The two are not compatible with one another.
9283409232
What if the app is like Tinder meets Groupon? Match you on date then give you discounts on places to take your date? Business model then shifts from keeping you single to getting you on dates because the money is in consumers spending time out at restaurants and events.
sublinear
Because experiencing the actual relationship is done offline and most people have higher standards? Why bother?
This is like asking why nobody has made a delivery app that ensures you never get missing or damaged items. Those things cannot be controlled online. All those issues occur offline.
popularonion
In the English speaking world, the biggest and most important dating app by far is Instagram.
Match Group should be considered an adult entertainment business, like the old Craigslist personals.
Actually, I just checked the market cap of MTCH, it’s $7.3 billion - about in line with the $8 billion valuation being floated for OnlyFans.
mlinhares
I haven't been in the dating market for a while but I kinda have the same feels. Trouble here is that instagram is only functional if you have a real friends group that can seed your instagram, otherwise random people will mostly just ignore you, in that sense the dating apps do have something instagram doesn't.
speakfreely
Yes, Instagram is your social resume. Most people use Instagram to "verify" you even if they find you on a dating app.
dobladov
I wonder how well the dating app launched by the Japanese government is doing.
Having a somewhat high fee to enter, seems like a good way to cut those who are not interested in a real relationship.
> Registration costs 11,000 yen ($77), and membership is valid for two years.
https://english.kyodonews.net/news/2024/09/fce6ff5d9216-toky...
Euphorbium
okcupid was a perfect app before match bought them and ruined it.
crooked-v
That's exactly it. As soon as any dating app has significant traction, Match buys it out and Tinder-ifies it to extract more money from the userbase while coasting on the previous brand value.
mike_hearn
It obviously wasn't perfect for the people running it, otherwise they wouldn't have sold it to their competitors.
Almost all dating apps that have achieved the exponentially growing network effect have been acquired and subsequently enshittified by Match Group. The intent of these apps is to keep you single and spending money. I think Bumble is the only large scale independent app but they've managed to enshittify themselves too.
So let's assume there is a deficit in the market for dating apps that are actually good. So why hasn't one been made?
Definition of a good dating app: An app with no dark patterns where you can find dates and relationships.
Ideas:
- By internet standards, the market is so mature people aren't motivated to download another app. You're never going to get enough of a positive feedback loop from the network effect.
- No one has made a good app yet.
- A majority of humans aren't compatible with online dating for one reason or another. Maybe they prefer dating in person. Maybe they're unattractive (physically or personality wise), bad at selecting partners, egotistical, selfish, lazy etc. So even if the app itself is good, the users aren't, and maybe the app isn't going to be able to fix the above issues.