
Can Women Build A Better Tinder? - steven
https://medium.com/backchannel/can-women-build-a-better-tinder-f125b5c5250a#.dovpduqyv
======
kazinator
> _When a 34-year-old biologist is asked what she is looking for in a man, she
> doesn’t respond with a height requirement or a hair color. She pauses for a
> moment, reflecting on a divorce and the French man who came after. He needs
> to be there for her; she has to be sure of him. But the most important
> thing, she says, as she points to her head: “It’s all up here.”_

Yeah, but that's merely what the woman _says_ she wants. That doesn't reflect
what she might be impulsively attracted to.

~~~
mtgx
Women tend to make all these "lists" for what they want in a man, and then
fall for the "bad boy" that may match nothing on that list.

~~~
Jtsummers
Men do the same thing. Though perhaps not the "bad girl", but we often fall
for a type (of the many types) that's a lot of fun but terrible for long term
relationships and leave the ones that have better long term potential out.

~~~
Excavator
Have you met men who says otherwise? Isn't that why you have the meme "Don't
stick your dick in crazy"?

~~~
Jtsummers
You mean men with a list of what they want but never end up dating women that
match it? Yes. Though less at my current age, most of my friends are married
at this point.

~~~
Excavator
No, I mean men who claim that they don't fall for the "wrong" women.

~~~
Jtsummers
Yes. But mostly they're married at this point.

------
vkjv
I remember reading that Netflix practically ignores what you rate shows when
generating recommendations, that using what you actually watch is much more
accurate. You may have gave A Clockwork Orange 5 stars, but you binge watches
Jersey Shore.

I imagine the same applies here. You might say height isn't a factor, but only
picked men over 6'.

~~~
theseatoms
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revealed_preference](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revealed_preference)

------
derefr
"A Better Tinder", to me, would be one that actually supports its original
function, of being "a hook-up app." There are plenty of dating apps; but
Tinder was supposed to be a unique value offering: "like Grindr, but for more
than just gay men." But it failed to be that, because there was nothing
stopping people from making profiles "just looking for friends" or "just
looking for long-term relationships", like in any other dating app. (Obviously
the "game mechanics" of Tinder are completely at odds with those uses—why pick
_friends_ based on mutual physical-appearance attraction? But people still
try.)

The best thing any social-networking app can do is to prune its userbase (i.e.
ban people from the service) so that everyone who remains is actually using
the service for its intended purpose. Then you don't need the initial extra
step of both parties dancing around the question of "what are you on here
looking for?"—if they're using the app, they're here for what the app is for.

~~~
beaner
Who says just hooking up was Tinder's "original function"? This is something
users attributed to it because some people who are successful in using it this
way brag about it and spread that reputation. This doesn't mean it was
designed specifically for that purpose, though it might do it well.

~~~
shpx
My impression from watching an interview with the founder [0] is that just a
hook up app is exactly what they don't want to be.

"Our vision from day one was to solve the problem that there is always someone
you want to know, but you're afraid of rejection."

My view is that they built a hook up app and then raised a ton of money and
now want to branch out and be taken seriously.

[0]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yn1zDaFGpYs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yn1zDaFGpYs)

------
minimaxir
Granted, female-run dating startups are not immune from the same controversies
as male-run dating startups.

The League, in particular, has received quite a few accusations of being
elitist/racist _because_ of its selectivity, and the culture that it implies:
[http://www.buzzfeed.com/jarrylee/tinder-for-
elites](http://www.buzzfeed.com/jarrylee/tinder-for-elites)

The Dating Ring, a Y Combinator-funded dating startup, was also involved in
some _interesting_ Hacker News drama regarding spamming OKCupid users.
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8454405](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8454405)

The dating industry in general is iffy; it's hard to isolate what works better
and what doesn't when everyone is reluctant to release data.

------
vox_mollis
_When a 34-year-old biologist is asked what she is looking for in a man, she
doesn’t respond with a height requirement_

The research on the topic is quite clear that across all ages, across all
cultures, and across all races, heterosexual womens' unspoken but critically
important criteria in mate selection is height.

~~~
stoffie
do you even have proof?

~~~
badsock
[http://blog.okcupid.com/index.php/the-biggest-lies-in-
online...](http://blog.okcupid.com/index.php/the-biggest-lies-in-online-
dating/)

Not especially good evidence that women care, but it certainly looks like men
do.

~~~
FilterSweep
That doesn't invalidate his comment. You have to ask yourself _why_ are men
exaggerating their height by two inches on average?

They wouldn't exaggerate their height if it wasn't an important factor in
potential mates. And the data confirms it: "We've found that taller people, up
to a point, have more sex". You see on the graph that the "frequency of sex"
(unlabeled y-axis) increases for men up to 6'8".

------
zobzu
"It is fucking exhausting. Especially for heterosexual women."

"I found myself having semi-intelligent exchanges with adult men. On a dating
site. This was new!"

Etc.

Also it's an ad for bumble. There's some interesting points, but as usual
tired of filtering the pages of pure and repetitive noise.

~~~
hugh4
An hour ago I'd never heard of bumble. Now I've heard of it through two
unrelated articles found on two different social news sites.

Bumble's PR people deserve a pat on the back (and the profession of modern
journalism deserves a kick in the head).

~~~
J_Darnley
Did you happen to read a Daily Mail link? That was an unabashed ad whereas
this could just be a blog post.

------
aaronbrethorst

        Bumble’s landmark feature is that women must
        take the initiative on all conversations
    

It's cool that they bake this into their platform. This was always how I
approached online dating through OKCupid, and it worked out far, far better
for me than messaging women. Perhaps not surprisingly, it seems that an
average woman on OKC receives an order of magnitude more 'likes' and messages
than I ever received (or more!). By only engaging with women who'd reached out
to me in some capacity, it was much, much easier to actually meet people
(like, e.g. my girlfriend of nine months).

------
jacquesm
[http://paulgraham.com/submarine.html](http://paulgraham.com/submarine.html)

------
rajacombinator
Bumble is pretty lolworthy, ostensibly built on a fundamental misunderstanding
of male/female dynamics. Good job raising money from naive investors though,
uh, I guess.

~~~
freyr
Whether or not the premise makes sense, I've landed way more actual dates with
much more attractive women (physically, and also in terms of personality,
education, career, etc.) on Bumble than Tinder.

It might have nothing to do with male/female dynamics, and may just have
something to do with a better UI/UX (which Tinder seems to have lifted heavily
from in their last update), or a lack of spam bots (seriously, a third of my
Tinder matches are spam bots linking to the same URLs over and over -- how is
this still an issue??).

Investors are likely considering the growth, rather than the theory. Whatever
the underlying reason, from one user's perspective, Bumble's growth seems very
impressive.

------
rjeli
The subtitle is "Why the best dating apps are founded by people who aren’t
dicks." Does the article explain why the founders of other dating apps are
dicks? Or is it just because they're men?

~~~
freyr
I can't speak to other sites, but there are lots of stories online about why
the Tinder founders are dicks.

------
Dr_tldr
This is all but a sponsored post for Bumble that's basically just a long form
advertisement masquerading as a think-piece.

Based just on what we know from OkCupid's excellent analytics blog back in the
day, there's nothing about their business model that suggests they'll be
successful. The founders are non-technical, the business model isn't data-
driven, and there are lots of questionable design decisions throughout.

They're getting a large amount of positive press from people who share their
apparent ideology, but there's no actual information being put out. They're
closed source, privately held, and don't publish any meaningful usage
statistics, so what do we know about them other than they have good PR people?

------
trenta45
Building a "better" Tinder seems like writing a convincing email for the
advanced fee scam.

It appeals to the wrong people. The Nigerian prince scam works because it
effectively filters anyone who wouldn't send money to a stranger emailing them
out of the blue. Making Tinder "better" would draw in people who are not
interested in what is essentially a hook-up app.

------
kyrre
this bumble app is getting so much pr, but it seems like only the journalists
are using it

~~~
whichfawkes
They don't even have an Android app! I don't know how they expect to be taken
seriously. They're doing a bunch of PR like this and appearing on The Daily
Show with Trevor Noah, but it doesn't seem like they're actually ready yet.

------
striking
There are a number of things I disagree with in this piece. (I will mention
that I think trying different approaches to online dating is a great idea in
and of itself. I don't disagree with the app's existence, but rather the way
it is being presented here.)

> The mainstream online dating technologies — OkCupid, Match.com, eHarmony —
> were all founded by men. So it’s no surprise that most popular dating
> products cater to male user problems.

The first part is true, but the second is non sequitur. I'd also like to ask:
what is a "male user problem"? Although the wants of men and and women are
somewhat different, I think it's probably a bad idea to paint genders with
stereotypes in this way.

> Bumble’s landmark feature is that women must take the initiative on all
> conversations.

> He is most likely tired of reaching out blindly to women all the time,” she
> tells me. “Maybe he feels rejected. He feels ignored.”

This sounds very interesting, and good on the founders of the app for trying
something new.

> Though she is extremely limited legally in talking about her experience at
> Tinder — they have since settled out of court — _I wonder_ if her negative
> experiences there inform her dating theories now. _Perhaps_ as a hint of
> Bumble’s influence, last week Tinder announced that users could now include
> details on education and work. [emphasis mine]

The author "wonders" if "perhaps" there is influence from Bumble on Tinder. In
other words, this paragraph has no factual standing.

> If you are a male entrepreneur, approaching the problem of online dating
> from your point of view, the goal would be to provide male users with more
> women.

This statement seems presumptuous. It's not about males vs. females! It's
about new ideas! Past platforms take a traditional view to dating, Bumble
likes to change things up, and this is a novel thing. This piece turns a novel
concept into gender politics and boils down entire companies to the gender of
the person at their helm. Bumble won't succeed just because its founder is a
woman: Bumble will succeed because it's a new concept from a different
perspective, executed by someone who is smart and has experience. You're
erasing Whitney Wolfe and writing "all women", which seems demeaning.

> This isn’t to say that all men approach online dating haphazardly, without
> goals or specific desires. But [...]

This comment isn't to say that this article is poorly written. But, look at
all of the evidence above and think for yourself. (I mentioned another
argument to look objective... but never gave it any evidence, so the reader
will take my subjective perspective as fact.)

> But with these online dating innovations, the tech industry just might
> realize what they’ve long been ignoring: women’s experiences matter, too.

No one's ignoring women's experiences. The founders of the mainstream dating
apps simply have their market and refuse to pivot because they have
shareholders and investors that would rather they not change the model so
immediately and drastically. What we have now is a result of a function of
market forces rather than a function of gender.

I think the idea behind Bumble is very interesting, and I'm glad there are
startups trying something new in the dating scene. I'd actually like to try
one of these in due time. But this article just looks... bad. It turns
independent, strong, intelligent people into the stereotype of "female
entrepreneur".

~~~
pbhjpbhj
>> If you are a male entrepreneur, approaching the problem of online dating
from your point of view, the goal would be to provide male users with more
women.

>This statement seems presumptuous. It's not about males vs. females! It's
about new ideas!

Yours is a very generous comment on a highly misandrist statement. The fact
that a dating app creator/founder/owner is male doesn't mean that they must
therefore have designed the app "to provide males with more women".

Even if they are using "online dating" euphemistically to refer to hook-up
apps then they're making the classic mistake of assuming females aren't
interested in sex and males are solely motivated by acquiring a quantity of
it. Sure, subsets of those populations exist that fit the bill but the reverse
associations also exist at some level.

Does this mean the founders of Bumble want "to provide females with more men"
above all else?

~~~
striking
I also alluded to this with the "male user problem" and with the market forces
concept. Women like sex too. I won't call it misandrist for the reasons I
don't like being called misogynist. But yes, there are many things wrong with
the piece rooted in unintelligible and illogical gender politics.

I wish this piece didn't exist, because it makes the world a worse place.

------
facepalm
Tinder actually had a female cofounder. And it wouldn't work if women wouldn't
use it. What a silly article.

~~~
richard_mcp
As you and the article mentioned, it did have a female co-founder. And she has
since left Tinder and founded Bumble, the app the article mostly focuses on.

~~~
facepalm
The premise in the first part of the article was that Dating apps suck because
they are not made by women. At the same time they bashed Tinder, which was
cofounded by a woman - so the article's premise is obviously absurd and I
didn't read on. That the cofounder went on to start Bumble doesn't change
that.

~~~
freyr
An app being "cofounded" by a woman and an app being "made" by a woman are two
different things. For example, perhaps her input was dismissed by her male
cofounders (who, incidentally, tried to strip her of her cofounder title
because they thought it would be embarrassing to have a female cofounder).

~~~
facepalm
Yeah - whatever. So why, in your opinion, did no women step up earlier to
create a dating app, if that is even true (there are a lot of dating apps in
existence)?

If you believe the spin of the article, that women make better dating apps and
men are not interested in making good apps for women - OK. More power to you.
Enjoy Bumble, I guess.

~~~
freyr
> _So why, in your opinion, did no women step up earlier to create a dating
> app_

Why haven't women stepped up earlier to create apps in all categories? It's a
complicated question and one I cannot answer. But among women-created apps,
dating apps currently seem to be well represented. This _may_ suggest that
prior dating apps and sites have been deficient in serving the needs of these
founders, and they think there is a still a problem to be solved in this
space.

Whether or not this is the case, I don't know, but their belief is not getting
under my skin.

> _If you believe the spin of the article, that women make better dating apps
> and men are not interested in making good apps for women_

I believe that it's _possible_ for people who are not white males to bring a
different perspective to the table, and I believe this can _potentially_ serve
as a competitive advantage in business.

Whether or not this holds true for Bumble, I again don't know. I didn't know
any of this backstory about Bumble before today, I just knew it had a better
selection of women, a better interface, and that I've gotten more dates on it
than on Tinder. By comparison, Tinder primary purpose seems to be connecting
me to spam bots.

~~~
facepalm
I've never used Tinder nor Bumble, nor do I hope to do so in the future
because it would imply that I had a divorce. I just know that nothing prevents
women from picking up a keyboard and coding any app they like. That's why I
call bullshit on the article.

For sure Dating Apps still can be improved, although I doubt that you need a
specific gender or race to qualify for making a better Dating App.

