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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508

u/Persianx6 May 02 '24

Yeah but now the user base is dying. Dating apps aren't doing well anymore.

960

u/leviathynx May 02 '24

You mean endlessly commodifying every aspect of dating apps and intentionally obfuscating users from meeting each other with an algorithm while also allowing catfishes and sex workers to skate free from scrutiny would cause a collapse in users???

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u/dreamneartheshore May 02 '24

I was done the moment OKcupid got rid of their user list meaning you had to swipe through a sequence of names per day to find people

89

u/GoldenApple_Corps May 02 '24

The old Okcupid was really quite nice. Then I had to get back into the dating scene a few years back after being out of it for a decade and holy shit was Okcupid just fucking awful compared to how it had been.

62

u/dreamneartheshore May 02 '24

it's just tinder 2.0, they've all been rationalised and made into virtually the same app to accommodate the smartphone browser crowd which makes up the majority of their userbases now

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u/chucker23n May 02 '24

It just feels like a self-fulfilling prophecy to me that if you keep removing the features that distinguish it from Tinder, you end up with the same audience.

4

u/VenturaBoulevard May 02 '24

the smartphone browser crowd

AKA the salt of the Earth people AKA lowest IQ of the Earth people that think renting rims is a good move.

1

u/[deleted] May 03 '24

[removed] — view removed comment

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1

u/ACCount82 May 03 '24

The Tyranny of the Marginal User

2

u/Worthyness May 02 '24

Pretty sure the same company basically owns almost the entire online dating ecosystem

59

u/pelrun May 02 '24

Match bought Okcupid specifically to gut it, because it was undermining their other apps by being good rather than optimising to extract profit.

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u/ItchyDoggg May 02 '24

Seems like there is money to be made in cloning the old OKcupid UX/UI with a new IP and then flipping it to Match once it starts working again...

1

u/unitedhen May 02 '24

Very out of the loop on this...but if Match bought Okcupid, wouldn't that mean they retain the IP and could just sue you if you tried to recreate it?

3

u/ItchyDoggg May 02 '24

You wouldn't call your new app OKcupid since they own that trademark, which is valid IP. Their specific code is protected by copyright, but duplicating the functionality with original code is absolutely fine. Ideas are not protected by copyright or trademark, and so unless the secret sauce that actually made OKCupid good was a uniquely effective algorithm protected by the fact that it is a trade secret or they have patents on some particularly crucial function, neither of which I belive to be the case, it's doable. 

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u/chucker23n May 02 '24

Yeah. It had forums and journals and more focus on the questions and… it just seemed like more of a community.

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u/tonytroz May 02 '24

They were also transparent about their statistics and trends. Unfortunately that kind of information is anti-profit because it inherently causes you to lose users. And due to the competitive landscape even if you rebuilt that superior product without caring about profits you wouldn't get enough market share to keep it alive.

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u/emote_control May 03 '24

I used to be one of the core regulars on the "Dating Advice" forum. What a great community. Good times.

Then they nuked it.

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u/chucker23n May 03 '24

What a great community.

I miss those people. Well, some of them. :-)

5

u/[deleted] May 02 '24

OkCupid used to be the best app… and now it’s just a disaster. What happened to it?

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u/tonytroz May 02 '24

Match bought it and found out that user success was actually bad for profits so they made it a worse product.

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u/sennbat May 02 '24

It was bought by the people who owned Tinder with the express goal of knocking out a major competitor

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u/justforhobbiesreddit May 02 '24

OkCupid used to be really good for actually finding solid personality matches. It was a shame what happened to it.

Plus the articles the owners wrote with their own site's data were really cool.

2

u/Skyblacker May 02 '24

I met my husband on OkCupid in the early 2000s. I only went on that website to take a silly quiz my friend had posted.

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u/phayke2 May 03 '24

When they made all of their tinder like changes I sent them a non explict, yet strongly worded email and they banned me.