Dating Apps Have Hit a Wall. Can They Turn Things Around?

getting you to see who has swiped right. on you. Bottomline, you find out soon enough that a free version of the app is bare minimum. There have been allegations that they send you opposite matches of your profile if you have the free model and enhance your feed when you pay. So once you pay, it’s difficult to go back. But just like social media companies, the best way to make money is to take benefit from our insecurities. No matter how many dating apps claim that they created a “personality driven match system”, we all swipe left or right primarily based on the pics. In a generation de-attached to itself and in constant need for visual validation on social media, this becomes yet another avenue of heightened insecurities. In a survey conducted :

70% responded that they have spent more time filtering through which photos they want to put on a dating app than the content about themselves.

I’d love to discuss in comments!

40% responded that they make their swipe choices primarily based on the pics. All this means, you don’t really find the right match. The attraction only based on physical features. But it still gives you hope with every profile you see next. You’re now hooked. Premium dating app users worldwide

$5 Bn It’s a fast growing industry. Conclusion? Tech companies know you better than yourselves. How they choose to use that information though may not be in your best interest. #india #business #mallarwrites

Dating Apps Have Hit a Wall. Can They Turn Things Around? The apps have changed our love lives, but they haven’t been able to convince enough young users to pay. Match Group and Bumble – which make up nearly the entire industry by market share – have lost more than $40 billion in . Even in an age when the apps are a staple on people’s smartphones, the two companies are laying off workers and reporting lackluster revenue growth. Match Group and Bumble generate the bulk of their revenue – about $4.2 billion for both companies last year – by selling subscriptions, with smaller income streams from advertising. But they’re struggling to grow those sales. Match Group was able to keep revenues steady last year only by raising its prices. In the United States, 30 percent of adults, and over half of adults under 30, use dating apps. About a third of dating app users reported paying for them, with men and higher-income adults more likely to pay than others, the survey found. Millennials, the nation’s largest generation, were prime dating age when Tinder first rolled out, but more and more of them have married in recent years, a decision that usually results in people quitting the apps. Now the primary users are from Gen Z, a younger – and smaller – demographic with less disposable income. Bumble, which went public in 2021, initially jumped in value but after a steady slide its stock is now about a quarter of its I.P.O. price. Match Group’s stock price reached a high of $169 in 2021. It now sits at $34, about a fifth of its peak value.

Atleast not a match that you develop a deep emotional relationship with

What’s one of the most common ideas I get pitched as a VC investor? Dating apps. The core insights are similar, and irrefutable: ?? Tinder / Bumble / Hinge are broken. Genuine connections are rare, few matches lead to a date, users spend years on the apps without success, and regular users report increased anxiety and depression. ?? There is an opportunity to focus on driving high quality matches – e.g. by creating ‘highly compatible’ matches. ?? We can limit the amount of time people spend ‘doomswiping’ by restricting them to one quality match per day / week. ?? Instead of monetising through ads, we could monetise through playing a larger role in the relationship lifecycle (e.g. venue collaborations, brand collaborations). But I’m always left with these questions / concerns: ?? Most dating apps monetise the way entertainment apps do. A significant proportion of Tinder’s revenue comes from ads interspersed through profiles. For them, ‘success’ looks like keeping users on the app for longer. Alternative apps focused on accelerating to high quality matches need to find alternative ways to monetise. ?? Dating apps have a ‘cold start problem’ – and one ‘side’ of the marketplace is significantly harder to acquire: women. A new dating app needs to bring a novel insight into how they’re going to acquire women. In its early days, Tinder targeted sororities on college campuses, while Bumble counter-positioned against Tinder by promising an app experience where women would feel safer and more in control. ?? To grow, an app needs viral engagement loops. Social apps reach ‘escape velocity’ where one user ‘session’ triggers 10 other users to open their app. Dating apps do this well with the ‘match’, and the ‘super like’. Alternative apps focused on fewer, high quality matches need to find an alternative engagement loop to drive organic growth. ?? In reality, many people on dating apps aren’t serious about finding love. For some, it’s an entertaining gallery of area singles who occasionally like their photos or witty Hinge captions. For others, it’s a way to procrastinate actually putting themselves out there because they’re not over their ex. This ‘non-serious’ segment is hard to monetise directly, but they’re required to make the app experience work for chica sexy CanadГЎ ‘power users’. Founders need to be clear eyed that many dating apps only ‘work’ because they serve customers with a diversity of (not always aligned) jobs to be done. Do you think there’s room for innovation in the ‘dating app’ idea maze? Will AI unlock a new ‘form factor’ for finding love? I’m also thinking of writing a series about common ideas I’m pitched and the questions I have about them. Let me know what you’d be interested to see discussed! #venturecapital #startups #dating #consumer

11 million paid users ?? It is the highest among any other dating app Have you used Tinder and felt the same? Do let me know in the comments Follow Akshit Goel for more such interesting and insightful content ?? #tinder #startup #product #startup #marketing