Just keep Swiping?
Online dating app algorithms are designed to keep you swiping.
In the world of online dating, algorithms are supposed to connect users with compatible partners. However, many dating apps prioritise keeping you engaged in the app, over helping you find your ideal match. Why? They want to prolong your membership.
The Popularity and Engagement Game
A study by researchers from Carnegie Mellon’s Tepper School of Business highlights how many dating apps prioritize what they call, user engagement, by promoting popular (read hot) profiles to keep the users interest. The longer they keep you on the app swiping, the higher the rate of membership or the longer you pay for a membership.
Placebo Effect:
Interestingly, a placebo effect can make users believe in the efficacy of these algorithms, as seen in OkCupid’s experiments. By manipulating perceived compatibility scores, they found that simply suggesting compatibility increased the likelihood of engagement, regardless of the actual algorithm's effectiveness.
That’s fine…
If the desire is to meet multiple people and see what’s out there, then that’s fine. Dating apps does what it says. Get’s you dating. You meet mulitple people, and through the chatting process weed out anyone who does not align with you. But that is not always how it plays out.
Flip Side…
But the flip side of that coin is the time and effort it takes weeding through the marsh lands that dating apps could be. You get chatting to people, but if they are working, or living full lives, chatting becomes more like writing one sentence letters delivered by pigeons. And if you do manage to engage is great conversation, the possibility that the person will ghost you both in the app and in real life, is more often then not a real possibility. As more and more people find their partners online, the question is, is dating apps as it currently is, the best way to go?
Read More:
Swiping Right but No Matches? Why Online Dating Algorithms Are About Popularity
Cupid’s Code: Tweaking an Algorithm Can Alter the Course of Finding Love Online
Finding Love on a First Data: Matching Algorithms in Online Dating