[paulwithap]

As a few other people have said, the only possible way you're going to have a popular dating app is by having a lot of fake users in the beginning.

When Tinder first launched, at least 90% of the profiles I came across were, after a little investigation, very obviously fake. I became suspicious after being "matched" with every single attractive girl I "liked" after having just created a profile. These "girls" had the mysterious ability to travel vast distances in extraordinarily small amounts of time. One second, a girl's location would be 7 miles away, the next, she was 1407 miles away - incredible. If they responded at all to a message, they were vague, short answers that had nothing to do with what I was saying. I also received 10s of the exact same messages from different girls. They weren't trying to get me to click links or buy things. Their sole purpose seemed to be to create the illusion that Tinder was full of gorgeous women who wanted me. After a while of using the app, the fake profiles dropped off, and I seemed to encounter more real people. I thought initially, that this was because they had gotten enough users to show me real people, but I've now noticed that any time I use the app in a new area, I'm flooded with fake profiles and fake messages all over again.

In short, create fake users.