Towards Better Online Dating

It’s clear that the existing online dating sites are all broken.

I thought about working in this startup space for a few months last year, so I wanted to document my thoughts on the subject.

I ended up deciding against working in this space, but I still find it highly interesting and know that for the right kind of entrepreneur it could be a great place to dig in.

As you’ll see, the right kind of entrepreneur for this space is one who is willing to iterate and try lots of things, who understands human interactions and economics on a deep level, and who has the patience of a saint.

A few introductory thoughts to get us started:

1. Meeting friends-of-friends is the best way to find cool people, because liking is transitive AND because the low social distances force people to be on their best behavior.
2. Online dating is on the OTHER end of the spectrum.  Social distances are incredibly high.  99% of the time your dating profile doesn’t reveal your real identity, or real friends, so there is no disincentive to behaving antisocially.
3. This ‘behaving antisocially’ manifests itself in multiple ways, namely spamming, hypergamy, and false advertising.  Let’s talk about each of those.
4. Spamming is the act of sending messages to tons of people.  The more messages you send the higher your chances of getting dates, but that also lowers the efficiency of the site.  It’s a greedy individual behavior that hurts systematic efficiency.
5. Hypergamy is the act of pursuing people who are higher social value than oneself.  Dorky Dillon wouldn’t have any shot at getting with Model Mary, but he won’t hesitate to lob a message over in high social distance situations where there’s no personal downside, risk of public rejection, etc.  Again, this is an individual behavior that hurts the broader system.
6. Finally, false advertising is embodied in the “MySpace Pose,” the overly-witty profile, pictures of me on my BMX bike (ha!), etc.
7. It’s important to understand that you can’t blame the users for any of these things.  The users are just responding to the incentives created by the modern online dating site.

My favorite approach to the online dating problem is to lower the social distances.  But before we get into that, let’s talk about the other major challenge: network effects.  Also known as the chicken and egg problem.

I’ll leave the network effect problem as an exercise to the reader, and refer you to this Chris Dixon blog post, specifically the part about irregular network topologies, and this slide deck RE getting lots of users.

Aside from the network effects encouraging incumbent laziness (a la eBay), there are three other reasons why the status quo in this space is quite poor:

1. The big players are making lots of money off of their self-destructive business model.  We’ll talk more later about why their business model kills long term value, but suffice it to say that they’re not looking for ways to grow the market that involve cannibalizing their revenues.
2. Second, there are an astronomical number of new approaches a new entrepreneur could try.  The search space is quite large so most people throw their hands up in the air and copy large chunks of broken DNA from existing approaches.
3. Finally, when new entrants do try new approaches, most of the time they aren’t well contemplated.

But there is still a ton of opportunity.  In the words of my respected friend Zao Yang (FarmVille creator), “Online dating is like the mobile world before the iPhone.”

That quote hits the nail on the head, both in terms of the magnitude of the opportunity and in terms of how hard it is to do really great work in this space.

And to redefine the problem a little bit, I suspect there’s more value and fun in helping people meet new friends generically, and only incidentally maybe a significant other.  I only talk about this problem in terms of ‘online dating’ because that’s the existing anchor in peoples’ minds.

So let’s say you’re crazy enough to take a shot at this unicorn.  How should you think about winning this market?

I think of dating sites as the sum of three components: the business model, the back end, and the front end.

The status quo sites like Match and eHarmony have all three components wrong, I believe.

Let’s talk about the business model first.

 

Business models

The most profitable sites charge users for the ability to send messages to other people.  While this scheme generates $350M in annual revenue for Match, it kills long term retention, word of mouth, and the overall user experience.

The average user lifetime on Match is abysmally low.  I can’t remember the exact number I heard from industry insiders, but it was about six months, and maybe shorter.

Imagine if Facebook had a user lifetime of six months!!!!!!!!

(I realize that once there’s a successful match the couple leaves the site, which is another reason such a site would be better positioned as a way to meet new people in general.  But I’d wager that most people leave because they didn't find a significant other via Match.)

Anyway, here’s how it unfolds.  I sign up on the site, and buy a subscription.  I find six or seven girls I like, and send them highly personalized messages.  About 15% of people on Match are premium members, and therefore only one of those girls can even reply to my message.  I get one reply, at most.

So then I start spamming, because I have to, and I'm incentivized to.

…It gets worse.

It’s also in Match’s best interest for me to send spam to a bunch of non-paying members, because Match builds revenue when new users convert because they’ve received a message they can't reply to!  It’s for that reason that Match doesn’t tell you who’s a premium member and who’s not.

This broken business model works for big sites that have the network effect lock in, and niche sites that serve particularly affluent markets, like Jdate.

Yet I predict those sites will all die when someone really figures out the online dating puzzle in the next decade.  And it won’t just be an innovation in business model; it will come from changes in all three components of how dating sites work.

OkCupid wrote about this business model problem extensively on their blog, and I learned most of this from talking to those guys.  (Update: since I originally wrote this OkCupid got bought by Match and took down the blog post I wanted to link to.  It’s called Why You Should Never Pay For Online Dating, and Google Cache has a copy here.)

 

The Backend

The backend to me is everything that calculates matches, who can see who, etc.

The backend is the only of the three components that I could nail if I were working on online dating.  It’s right up a data engineer’s alley.

It’s no surprise that 18 year-old Match takes a simplistic approach to everything.  As far as I can tell, every user can see every other user, there’s no opaque throttling down of a spammers’ message delivery, and so on.

These sites also don’t build real signal into people’s dating profiles.  A girl can learn more in five seconds of "real life" interaction than from reading a guy's OkCupid profile.

A bad backend?

…No…a horrible backend.

Here’s the principled way to approach this problem: close the loop and get real data about what kind of matches work and which don’t.  eHarmony claims to do this but they seem to employ PhD’s in “love science” rather than statisticians.  Call me cynical but I’ll take the statisticians, thanks.

So you run a speed dating event with random people.  Get them to submit a copy of their Facebook profiles.  Run computer vision algorithms on their Facebook photos to see how much skin they show in photos, how often they’re smiling, how many people they’re in pictures with, and so on.  Extract a lot of signal from some source of ground truth.

Then watch which people are interested in each other after the speed dating event, and use off the shelf algorithms to build a classifier that will, given two Facebook profiles, predict the probability that any two people would enjoy four minutes of real life interaction.

Then only allow people to access others they are likely to match against.

You should also watch this talk by Joel Spolsky about the sociology that goes into Stack Overflow, if only as an example of the flavor of thinking you need to do.

OkCupid seems to be at the forefront in this space.  They get people in India to rate the attractiveness of new members and use that to limit your access to people significantly more attractive than you are.  That’s not a principled approach but a step in the right direction compared to other incumbents.

You could really spend years optimizing the crap out of this.  And it would be worthwhile.

 

The Frontend

This one is the most nuanced.  Most of it has to do with behavioral psychology and how people interact with technology.

The front end is everything that makes up the product that isn’t the backend or the business model.  It’s the positioning, the user flows, and so on.

First, I’m not convinced that positioning oneself as a dating site is optimal.  I like to think of the problem as Helping People Meet Cool People.  Not only does this make a difference in positioning/stigma, it feels more wholesome, more valuable, and more practical.

Secondly, everyone knows that dating profiles suck to create and suck to consume, as mentioned above.  Not only do they lack real signal, they also make for a horrible onboarding experience.  You want me to fill eight huge text areas with witty banter, and check or uncheck 250 radio buttons?

Geesh.

Overall I’m not bullish on the trinity of people profiles, messaging, and people searches.  I know that’s how all sites are built today, but if I were in this space I’d keep an open mind on redefining the primitives.

For example, what about a site that just schedules weekly group dinners with new people?  Every Wednesday night you’re set up for dinner with five other people we think you’ll enjoy.  Not only would this get you past the high social distance problem, it moves the online posturing-and-judging step into the real world where it probably belongs.

That particular idea might not work, but I stand by its disruptive nature.

(Since originally writing this I’ve learned about Grubwith.us.  Fantastic!)

I would also be excited about anything that approaches the problem circuitously.  Imagine if you had a mobile product which helped friends hang out with their existing friends.  And then you added the ability to meet new people you might like.  And so on.

At the end of the day, whoever figures this out is more likely to stumble into the solution rather than foreseeing the right ecosystem in a monolithic, Genesis 1:1 fashion.

 

Overall, the world will be a better place once this space is revamped.  Meeting people is a huge part of life.  Today it's just too O(n).  Motive, and opportunity.

Comments

[Marius]

Hey,

I agree with most everything you say, and I enjoyed reading your ideas on what could done to improve the space. :-) I think you've ignored one big player that's been doing excellent thing under our very noses, as it were: Likealittle. I'd love to know whether it actually generates relationships, though. But it certainly seems to be addictive (not being a college student, I don't know first-hand).

[Marius Kempe]

Hey,

I agree with most everything you say, and I enjoyed reading your ideas on what could done to improve the space. :-) I think you've ignored one big player that's been doing excellent thing under our very noses, as it were: Likealittle. I'd love to know whether it actually generates relationships, though. But it certainly seems to be addictive (not being a college student, I don't know first-hand).

[Josh Strike]

Your view of the topic is pretty well grounded, but I find your use of the word "space" (9 times) to be alarmingly gratuitous.

[Zachary Burt]

i like thinking about this problem...

I.

i think you need to match people up based on social status, and measuring that is going to be a bitch

maybe status within a specific niche, even...

so you get them to list their perceived identities (should be aligned with hobbies, interests, and activities --> all those things basically construct their identity) and somehow you rank them within there.

II.

another way to look at it is to concede that "commonalities" are simply a useful defense mechanism to help match people who share similar value on the sexual marketplace.

i'd welcome an email if you want to discuss any of this

[l wang]

it's a wrong question to ask how to build a dating site really works. dates are infact by-product of social interactions. can you engineer apples without taking care of apple trees? facebook is the ultimate dating site, im (MSN, qq) are. engineering approaches.are doomed.

[Julie]

I think people should just take this dating matter into their own hands. If you put a large group of single people in a room they will naturally match up by themselves eventually. That's why MojoMapp would work better for most people, rather than having online profiles.

[TeamLAFT]

Hi Adam,

Very well thought out blog post. I co-founded and just launched Luv@FirstTweet a few weeks ago, and you should definitely check us out at www.luvatfirsttweet.com. Business Insider just did a brief write-up here if you'd like to check that out too: http://read.bi/gjYKQ9.

I've thought about many of the issues which you describe in your post, although I've never written them as eloquently and clearly as you have. I'm going to address some of the issues you've described in your blog post, and I'd be curious to know your thoughts on my take...

1. spamming, hypergamy, and false advertising is a huge problem as you mention, and a big time sink. People want to use online dating because it is a huge pool of potential people and because it’s an efficient use of time. However when you have to waste time it detracts from the value (more on this below).

2. spamming - On Luv@FirstTweet you just respond to our Tweets which build your profile, so you’re not browsing profiles or messaging random people. The only time you do message someone is after you’ve been matched with them, and at that point we show several things in common as well as their photo, so hopefully when you email them it can initiate a real dialogue about things you care about, not just “nice pic ur h0t” haha.

3. hypergamy is covered pretty much in my comment above due to the nature of how you interact with the site.

4. In terms of false advertising, I guess it could be done if you lie in responses to all of our questions, but this isn’t a traditional dating site where people are browsing profiles and a deviant dude hopes his lies will ensnare an unsuspecting profile viewer…we’re building a profile about you and then matching, so it wouldn’t have the same impact and thus I doubt people would feel the urge to do it as much.

5. network effects are the biggest challenge I see us facing, and it’s something we’re got to deal with and adapt to. The big players are pouring tons of money into advertising their self-destructive business models as you explain, so this makes things tricky.

6. if there was a “like” button next to Zao Yang’s quote I’d click it – nicely put

7. “And to redefine the problem a little bit, I suspect there’s more value and fun in helping people meet new friends generically, and only incidentally maybe a significant other.” the nature of our platform could go this way, but currently we’re sticking with matching for dating. Something cool to think about though.

8. business models – looking into the future, there are many different avenues to monetize which aren’t ad based, but thanks to some good advice from @schildkrout from HowAboutWe we’re keeping it the site free. We want to grow this bad boy after all and when looking at pt #5 above, can’t add any friction to the model to prevent user growth

9. the business model issue you bring up is one of the main reasons I had the idea for Luv@FirstTweet: “I sign up on the site, and buy a subscription. I find six or seven girls I like, and send them highly personalized messages. About 15% of people on Match are premium members, and therefore only one of those girls can even reply to my message. I get one reply, at most” – that right there is super super annoying. It is a huge time sink and a waste of money.

10. I’m definitely going to read that OkCupid post, it looks terrific.

11. backend – while we’re not running computer vision algorithms to analyze smiles, skin showing, etc (which is interesting, but just very different than how we approached things), we are going to continually tweak our matching algorithm based on the responses we get and seeing “what kind of matches work and which don’t” as you mention.

12. frontend – this is where we hope to be simple and fun. You say a few points which I totally agree with:
“Everyone knows that dating profiles suck to create and suck to consume (YES)
Not only do they lack real signal, they also make for a horrible onboarding experience. (YES)
You want me to fill eight huge text areas with witty banter, and check or uncheck 250 radio buttons? (YES…HAHA)
Overall I’m not bullish on the trinity of people profiles, messaging, and people searches. I know that’s how all sites are built today, but if I were in this space I’d keep an open mind on redefining the primitives.”

This is the key here to Luv@FirstTweet....

We take a fresh approach and say, hey you’re busy. We respect your lives. Go to work then go have fun with your friends. Oh and when you have 1 spare second when you’re grabbing lunch, or walking down the street, or waiting on a friend…tweet a response to @luvatfirsttweet’s latest question and we’ll store it and build your profile. We have a web interface of course if you’d like to edit your questions and answer some previously asked questions, but the core nature of the site enables effortless and fun profile building.

I think I’ve rambled on enough for now, but again I found your post very interesting and would love if you’d let me know your thoughts on my comments either here or via email (i put my address below).

Jon Lehr
co-founder, Luv@FirstTweet
jon[at]luvatfirsttweet[dot]com
@luvatfirsttweet

[Brajeshwar]

Thanks for the interesting and insightful take on the Online Dating industry.

[Aaron Banikiotes]

The problem is these companies exist to make money not so much to get people to meet. In fact the more difficult it is for people to meet, the more money they make. I noticed from a friend's account the only thing that distinguishes one eHarmony profile from another is pictures and the person's review or a recent book they read. The more time a company creates or wastes the more money they bring in. It is a difficult maze people have to navigate to find a mate.

[Steveodom]

One of the best posts I've seen on the problems and the opportunities. I've been hacking away at this space for the past couple of years and it's a hard one.

[timoni]

'OkCupid seems to be at the forefront in this space. They get people in India to rate the attractiveness of new members and use that to limit your access to people significantly more attractive than you are.'

Can you provide a link for this info? I've never heard about it before.

[pardeep]

built something that fits with almost everything you described:

http://www.likeOurselves.com

Does the following:
Shows you where like-minded people (cool people you want to meet) are heading tonight.

Before you walk into the bar, already chat to others going there online so when you get there, its just easy.

Flick through the demo
http://www.likeourselves.com/demo/

[Pamlot]

I totally agree with your blog and really enjoyed reading it. I believe that many online dating sites are doing great in the dating sector.

[Thinning Hair Women]

Dating site is the great business to catch, since everyone staying at home with their facebook chat and lost their social skill to attract their mate :)

[Nioxin Reviews]

Hi pardep

I already try your web app http://www.likeourselves.com.
is the application ready to use for worldwide user?

In demo link you given to use, it seems for UK user

[pardeep]

Hi, yes it works anywhere that google maps is allowed to work! :) The demo is set in London as that is where we are based...
Cheers
Pardeep

[Daniel Ovieda]

I definitely agree with most of what you said. Unless a dating site comes along that is extremely innovative, it's going to be rough to topple the giants. And even then, they'll probably just buy you out. Very interesting to know that OkCupid hires people in India to rate the attractiveness of their members. Facial recognition software could do the same thing automatically by taking user ratings on similar faces.

[Dating websites]

I am glad to have read your blog. Thanks for the ideas you shared. I got to write mine too regarding this interesting topic about online dating.

[Brett]

Hi, I think you are very close to the mark with this analysis of dating sites. The fact Match are buying up the industry, to me, means there is a lot of opportunity out there for innovation.