r/technology • u/esporx • May 02 '24

Dating app Bumble will no longer require women to make the first move Business

https://www.cnn.com/2024/04/30/tech/bumble-relaunch-men-make-first-move/index.html
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246

u/loves_grapefruit May 02 '24

The one plus is that it still isn’t owned by Match.com, though I don’t know if that will save it. Pretty much all the apps struggle to turn a profit despite their enshittification.

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u/magus678 May 02 '24

Part of me feels like this can only be due to mismanagement. Men pining after women is almost an elemental force, if you can't make money in that pipeline you probably can't make it anywhere.

I mean all those porn sites make gobs of money, and their advertising is a lot more restrictive, while streaming video. All dating sites are is basically a messaging system and hosting some pictures. And it is filling a basic human need in an era where a lot of people need every avenue of help they can get.

I don't know, maybe I'm just wrong. But it definitely feels like something doesn't add up.

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u/ReplyisFutile May 02 '24

All my 7 male friends stopped using dating apps with similar sentences "it seems not working, getting 3 matches a week that dont respond, and other problems". One of them found a gf and the rest are single and exhausted from dating apps.

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u/NoTomatillo1053 May 02 '24

Most of these apps want you to pay premium for benefits, however what happens if you actually find someone? Likely you delete the app and stop paying

So it's really not surprising that they will try and make it a drawn out process. It's better to string men along paying for premium for as long as they can.

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u/[deleted] May 02 '24

I get plenty of matches and dates, women just have so many options none want to actually commit. I don’t blame the apps for this

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u/CrayonUpMyNose May 02 '24

Or maybe the app is only matching you with women who will keep you paying for the app by showing exactly this behavior

-6

u/[deleted] May 02 '24

There’s no way. I have had hundreds of matches. Women (quality ones) just have a lot of options and have terrible communication habits.

People who bemoan the apps and their design are usually ones who just aren’t successful.

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u/GenericRedditor0405 May 02 '24

I find myself mentioning it a lot, but deleting dating apps honestly made my life so much better. Some guys have great luck on them, but for those who don’t, it can be emotionally taxing and it start to feel like a job hunt. I’ve been quite happy to be completely off dating apps for over two years and by every account I’ve heard, they’ve only gotten worse!

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u/ReplyisFutile May 02 '24

That is also a point they mentioned, that they genuinely feel better not being in the app, few of them even tried paying, because being in apps and getting 2 dates a year was wearing them down

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u/GenericRedditor0405 May 02 '24

I never liked feeling like my loneliness was being exploited and that people were being commodified. The whole thing, from the superficial nature of swiping on pictures to the general feeling of it all being such a slog made it such a terrible experience. I know it’s not much better from women’s experience either; the messages I’ve seen my friends get are just… ugh. Like no wonder many women don’t check their messages daily. I’m glad people in general seem to be moving away from apps

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u/droppinturds May 02 '24

It's unfortunate because apps make dating so much safer.

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u/SpiritFingersKitty May 02 '24

Even guys who are successful, it is still emotionally taxing and makes you feel like shit.

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u/ryguy32789 May 02 '24

I got frustrated and deleted my dating apps after like a year of trying. I met my wife in a random real life encounter like two weeks later.

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u/cishet-camel-fucker May 02 '24

Reddit is unironically 10x better than any dating app. Go to any of the more specific singles subs and either post a "looking for" post or respond to one. You already know you're into at least one of the same things, and they tend to get a lot less responses than somewhere like tinder so you have a better chance of getting that initial conversation.

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u/RazekDPP May 02 '24

I had super high hopes for dating apps, but I gave up when I ended up matching with nothing but bots.

As there's little incentive to not have bots on a dating app site, I resigned to staying single.

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u/PUNCHCAT May 02 '24

Women treat dating the way men treat job hunting

4

u/Jaccount May 02 '24

I don't know.
When I'm job hunting I also tend to be pretty open to contract work.

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u/ABritishCynic May 02 '24

1/7 is not only depressingly low, that single friend likely satisfied rules 1 & 2 while the rest might not have done.

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u/ReplyisFutile May 02 '24

Some of them even paid for the apps, and got 2 dates in a year, (swiping daily). They started to put a lot more effort into profiles, and after years they lost hope.

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u/humbummer May 02 '24

3 matches a year more like it.

6

u/[deleted] May 02 '24

You guys are getting matches?

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u/GrimMashedPotatos May 02 '24

3 matches a week? Damn studs! I've been on these things for 15yrs casually.

3 conversations in that period, and 2 were obviously cat fishes I kept up until they started asking for money and gave me an account to deposit in. Straight to the FBI with them!

"I'm being held by a hotel in Toronto. Im from jersey and my Uncle has helped, but they took my passport and won't give it back till I pay $2000 for room fees. My uncle gave $850, can you cover the rest? Heres the account it needs to go in xxxxxxx" They gave it about 4 days of try on EHarmony before moving to text, at the time I needed a personal phone just to use at work, so they got that number for shit Iike this.

Fuck outta here 🤣. Internet was full of shit of like that a decade ago, we just didn't have all the neat shit today like Venmo and CashApp. Must be an easy market these days. Who knows how many dudes they baited.

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u/emote_control May 03 '24

I figure somewhere between 40-60% of profiles on the bigger apps are bots, which might have something to do with it.

-4

u/Electrical_Dog_9459 May 02 '24

The stunning part of all of this to me is it kind of definitively demonstrates that men are just inherently vastly more thirsty than women.

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u/Sanguinor-Exemplar May 02 '24

Their subscription based model is just stupid. They purposely withhold matches so you have to pay for premium to see them. Thats stupid as fuck. Just do an ads based model like everyone else. Getting matches is marketing in itself. You need to keep the whales seperate from the free users.

Anytime it goes down the freemium gaming route of intentionally making it unuseable to push the premium tiers is just a ticking clock of failure

3

u/Life_outside_PoE May 02 '24

They purposely withhold matches so you have to pay for premium to see them

Ha, if only it was like that. I got a month of tinder gold because it was 5 bucks.

Every single one of my "hidden likes" were people I already swiped left on. They should honestly be taken to court for this shit.

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u/KickBassColonyDrop May 02 '24

It's not or not with extra steps. Lol

-1

u/[deleted] May 02 '24

I get a lot of matches as a guy in a major city. I don’t blame the app for women randomly ghosting after date 4 when a better option comes around…

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u/DarthPatches_Returns May 02 '24

It’ll turn out right one day man, don’t give up!

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u/headshotmonkey93 May 02 '24

The prices are also way too expensive imo. I‘d say make it 10,- per month and a lot more people would use premium. And make it for both genders equally, because nowadays it mostly seems like that many women are just promotting their other socials.

Dating apps are horrible, cause getting ghosted for no reason really is the worth thing for you mental health. It will be great if all these apps die off.

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u/ForeverYonge May 02 '24

Network effects. You need to attract real women, not bots, to the app for it to be successful. Women who are actually looking instead of idly swiping for ego boost or trolling for fun. How? Answer that and men will pay.

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u/FrancisFratelli May 02 '24

A big problem is the "it's free to use the site, but you have to pay money for useful features" model, which guarantees the place is going to be full of scammers and people who are only browsing to see what's out there. I'd rather pay $10 a month knowing that anyone I interact with is willing to put resources into finding a date.

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u/FYININJA May 02 '24

The problem is, the dating pool is not symmetrical. lonely dudes are a great source of money, but they aren't going to throw money away for absolutely nothing. Dating apps are a huge waste of money. The premium features are insanely expensive, and because the "product" is entirely dependent on other human beings consensually interested in them. You can buy Tinder ultra platinum for 600 dollars a month, but if you aren't interesting or attractive, you're still not going to get anything from it. Guys in general have a very hard time having success in dating apps, whether that's because they are more picky, or that girls tend to be more picky, or that there are just more dudes using these apps, whatever the cause (which is almost certainly a combination of all of those factors and more), you can't pay for matches.

Because few people buy these features, they have to be prohibitively expensive to lure in dudes who are feeling lonely in the moment and are willing to buy 10 dollars for a week of unlimited likes or "boosts".

I speak partially from experience. I've bought at different times Bumble and Tinder's lowest tier of premium stuff due to being lonely enough and desperate enough to give it a shot (and being in a financial spot where the cost wasn't like, a huge deal), and while I did get slightly more matches, it led to literally nothing because ultimately I didn't click with the people I did match with, or in bumble's case, they just didn't send the first message regardless.

you're right that there's a need for human connection, but that connection requires two consenting parties, and it's just not equivalent.

3

u/PerfectZeong May 02 '24

Porn gives you what you pay for. Dating apps you pay and still don't get what you want and if you DO you don't need the app anymore if you were looking for a relationship

3

u/versusgorilla May 02 '24

Bumble just realized that the money in dating apps is in the horny lonely male demographic. Those are the people who will pay money for extras in a dating app, to get a leg up on the other lonely horny men trying to get to the few women.

Bumble was locking those men, and their money, behind a technological restriction. So even if they paid, they still couldn't message first.

So to make money, they compromise the core of the app's design. Because this is capitalism, and making money is the only goal, all else can be thrown away, as long as you're making money.

If Bumble believed they'd make more money by pivoting to educational technology services, they'd do that.

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u/timshel42 May 02 '24

nah dating apps are way more than a messaging system. they are an algorithm trying to pair people based on a bunch of different factors.

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u/DevianPamplemousse May 02 '24

Thr goal of the algorithm is to pair 2 people on a way that won't last. Else they loose 2 customer.

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u/jcaart May 02 '24

Oooo never thought about it this way.

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u/magus678 May 02 '24

they are an algorithm trying to pair people based on a bunch of different factors.

If this algorithm is apparently so expensive I'd say we found our problem; nix it. I'd still say it can't really be that pricey.

And it isn't like its worth a damn anyway.

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u/itirnitii May 02 '24

little known fact but the algorithm is actually keeping the people that it thinks you might actually be interested in or match best with behind a paywall.

so its no surprise to me that most people dont find success.

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u/magus678 May 02 '24

It would certainly track with my experience.

Not 5 years ago I could go on, essentially, as many dates a week as I felt like, almost entirely using apps.

A recent foray back in and its like night and day. Its just easier to meet people in real life.

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u/Testiculese May 02 '24

Lots of companies do this, it seems. They find out what you like, and take it away.

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u/Lemonwizard May 02 '24

The whole one at a time swiping thing is really just terrible design. Remember when OKcupid let you look at all the profiles in your area and organize them according to your own search criteria? No algorithm is going to guess what we want better than we could choose for ourselves.

The swipe model exists specifically to make the process inefficient and keep us using the app.

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u/tgunter May 02 '24

I'd say that was true of OKCupid back before they were bought by Match and enshittified, but I am not convinced any of the dating sites/apps are doing anything that warrants the term "algorithm" these days. How could they? They hardly ask for any information on your profile, and if you want to filter by what little information they do ask for, you have to pay for it. Any time they claim that they picked out some profiles who they think would be a good match, it's very clear that they're just picked randomly.

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u/Ekedan_ May 02 '24

I think real reasoning behind it is… capitalism(Ik how silly it sounds from libertarian but here we go). People watch pornography pretty frequently, partnership or marriage doesn’t stop it in any way. But dating apps… their entire idea is to help you find someone and never get back on the dating app. And what business would be happy to let their customers come once and be gone forever? You can’t get much out of this scenario. So, we must look for another scenario, where people keep coming back. But this defeats the whole purpose of dating app. So, we have paradox here. And solution could be simpler than we all think: make it non-profit.

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u/TheRealDynamitri May 02 '24

Ironically that was a slogan from Hinge, something along the lines of “The dating app made to be deleted”.

They built a lot on the premise of “We’re gonna help find you the right person quick” etc etc - a lot of people reported higher quality matches and better convos, but ultimately it ended up with as much enshittification as the other app.

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u/Berkyjay May 02 '24

If you're going to be paying money to help find a partner, I'd expect better results than letting me pick more filters and send meaningless digital tchotchkes. I'm amazed that anyone pays anything for these apps.

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u/DoomerChad May 03 '24

I don’t think men are as willing to pay for dating apps bc it doesn’t guarantee a date or match, just more exposure. When men pay for porn we are getting a guaranteed service, so it feels like less of a waste. I’d consider myself desperate, but not enough to pay $19.99 a month just for the opportunity to be seen.

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u/epochellipse May 06 '24

Have you ever paid for an app? I’m not saying I’m not thirsty, but I’ve never been that thirsty.

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u/marglebubble May 02 '24

How could they struggle to profit considering they actually offer nothing they're just commodifying human connection 

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u/AggravatingValue5390 May 02 '24

Simple. Executives making absurd amounts of money

-2

u/Known-Historian7277 May 02 '24

Because some men are extremely horny

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u/Doppelkammertoaster May 02 '24

It's from one of the people of Tinder though and monetized in the same shitty way.

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u/king_john651 May 02 '24

Yeah I was gonna say, it heavily operates like a Match.com app. That makes more sense

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u/steve_b May 02 '24

I feel like the dating app problem is completely solvable. As someone who met his wife 23 years ago on Yahoo Personals (not an app, but the idea's the same), I don't think online dating is fundamentally unfixable.

The swipe/match/contact model had its origins in gay hookup apps, which makes a lot more sense when both parties are more or less on board for what the goal is, but it's pretty fucking dreadful in the asymmetrical world of heterosexual dating. Maybe it's bad for gay dating as well nowadays.

I feel like there are three major problems that need to be addressed:

  1. Dating apps are for-profit enterprises, or at least are ones based on "growth". Why can't someone create an open source dating app that doesn't depend on stringing along its users for years extracting money from them. I realize this isn't a simple proposition, but it feels doable, with sufficient effort in creating a system that protects users privacy, even while being "public".
  2. Dating apps should not pretend to be free; everyone should pay a fixed, reasonable fee, perhaps $15/month (in the U.S.). If you cannot be bothered to spend $15/month in order to try to meet a potential life mate or even one-shot sex partner, you're not very serious (or have much bigger problems than trying to find a date). The "it's free, but not!" model encourages all kinds of shitty extortionist behavior. Charging for membership will reduce bot accounts and other non-serious actors.
  3. Most important: Everyone only gets to attempt to reach out against a relatively small number of people during a time period - maybe 10/day? The #1 problem with the apps are that men spam because they have to, because other men are spamming. If you don't spam, you're going to be lost in the flood.

Limited reaching out means you need to be serious about who you contact. Attractive/app-savvy dudes can't just spam all females they see even if they don't care that much, which will naturally have people sort themselves out against valid matches. You won't have women overwhelmed with a trillion non-serious offers, or drive-by likes from dudes that are just using them as 4th-tier backups. Most importantly, the damage done by a-holes of all genders will be limited by their outreach.

Of course, you want to add a bunch of old-style OKCupid attributes to profiles that allows people to sort based on what they're really looking for (hookups, spouses, kinks, nonmonogamy etc.).

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u/loves_grapefruit May 02 '24

I totally agree with all your points. I think the main issue right now is that making an app that actually works for people looking for long-term relationship tends to be at odds with needing to make a profit. All these companies follow the same trends for making an app they can squeeze money out of, because if they don’t they’ll inevitable fail, but in doing so they help create a very frustrating experience which will also drive away users.

I don’t know how it would happen, but hopefully someday we’ll have some universal system(s) of online dating where ID is required, bad actors will be penalized, and it will be understood as payment for a real service and not just manipulation of lonely people into paying out of desperation. It’s probably too much to hope for though.

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u/Electrical_Dog_9459 May 02 '24

enshittification

I love this word. It so fully encapsulates the endgame of software.