Casual Conversation

All of the dating apps have been bought out by Match Group and all enshittified in the exact same ways.

I do wonder if that'd open the door to competition, if they become sufficiently undesirable. Unless they've got some way of getting an edge over any competitors.

considers

So, dating match systems are going to be subject to network effect. Their value is something like the square of the size of their userbase. That'll create a barrier to entry for any challengers. But...I don't know if the effect is as strong as with many other systems.

• I'd assume that many users are going to be looking principally for matches in their geographical area. That's going to be a smaller pool than with, say, a global system like Facebook. The value isn't O(n²) for the entire userbase of the system, but the value to any given user is something like the squares of their particular dating market.

• It sounds like the userbase is not massive, not compared to most forms of social media.

  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Match_Group

  In August 2020, amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, Match Group reported growing profit and revenue and surpassed 10 million subscribers across its portfolio.[48]

• Unlike, something like say, eBay, the "product" can be offered for sale on multiple systems. If I want to auction something, I can't offer it to two different pools of bidders, since two people could both win the single item. With a dating system, a user isn't forced to exclusively use a single system to bill themselves; they could use multiple concurrently, which means that they could use both an incumbent system and a challenger system. Again, makes it easier for a challenger system to get someone to use it.

• If you assume that most people are only looking for matches in their age cohort, that'd also divide up the userbase. In the past, social media systems have occasionally seen younger generations shift to newer systems.