[throwawaysea]

I got this feeling on other websites too, like Match. It seemed like there were lots of inactive non paying profiles and very few real ones. When you send a message to a non paying user, they can’t see it or respond to it. Match instead sends them a notification to subscribe because they have a new message waiting. It basically turns users into their sales reps.

Online dating dynamics are very broken, particularly for men who are reduced to blindly swiping on all profiles. The only well designed dating app I’ve seen is The League, where its founder took a systematic approach to incentivizing interactions between users. This has the effect of making the app less of a time sink and chore, and more of a productive way to meet new people. See this past talk from their CEO, where she explains some of their design choices: https://youtu.be/_MUOpgS6TTg