r/technology • u/thinkB4WeSpeak • Sep 11 '26

Society Dating Apps Are Dying

https://time.com/article/2026/09/09/dating-apps-are-dying/
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u/Culverin Sep 11 '26 edited Sep 11 '26

https://youtu.be/x3lypVnJ0HM 

This seems relevant 

Was OKC not profitable? 

If it was a good model, surely it can be revived?  I met cool friends there

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u/WhiskeyWithTheE Sep 11 '26

I would disagree with OKC not being profitable.

It was profitable and if they left it alone they would have people come and go and a stable income coming in and making their money quietly.

But no that was not enough for Match! They wanted more profits and tinkered under the hood and made it harder and more difficult to use and get dates unless you went premium. Even then that's a loot boxing con.

If someone did a dating app in the way of OKcupid of old for all people and their kinks, and accepted that people come and go and return in between all that.

Well they would have a very profitable app on their hands and MAtch would either panic or try and buy them out.

I would love Match to lose it all over their greed.

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u/ndilday Sep 11 '26

To be fair, it also wasn't enough for the guys who developed OkC... they decided, rather than living off that profitable, stable income, they'd get their bag by selling out to the company they had just been railing against the business model of. I hate Match, but the fact that the OkC founders made something great and then decided to let it burn makes me sad.

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u/WhiskeyWithTheE Sep 11 '26

I agree with everything you said in your reply.

The guys who developed OkC do need to take some of the blame for the way the app has become/became a poor version of itself.

All they needed to do was not to tinker with the app as a whole, but just to update it when needed or smooth the rough edges under the hood. That alone would all the was needed for the developers stable income to continue and perhaps increase with more and more people flocking to it.

To an app that was fair and wasn't greedy and didn't need to make an algorithm to make it harder for people to date unless they pay for premium and even then premium in dating apps is a loot box experience for most of the customers that pay for a subscription.

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u/swaskowi Sep 11 '26

Kind of makes me retroactively respect craigslist more, they had a lot of opportunities to grab an even bigger paycheck and quit and they never did.