i work at a dating app and number of fun dates (worded slightly differently) is our north star metric! it's one of the major ones, and it has helped it stay relatively non predatory :)
But doesn't that inherently imply you try to keep users from making long-term connections? Users having lots of fun dates are not doing them with the same person and continuing to use your app. It's a bunch of dates that ultimately went nowhere.
That's the thing with dating apps/sites. If you succeed too well, you've lost 2 users.
i won't speak on behalf of my company, but as someone who was on dating apps for a while until i found my current fiancee, I will say that a lot of it is a numbers game.
also, the company i work for is focused on more serious relationships. we are focusing heavily on reducing ghosting, lowering treating people like they're disposable, etc.
this is usually where i get frustrated with capitalism. Not everything has to be about retaining customers. If i hire someone to build a brick outbuilding, i probably won't need another brick outbuilding.
I'd rather a "pay for 3-6 months of full access upfront, a 3 day trial option" than a subscription model for anything where there's a chance i won't be using it in 3-6 months. when i see a dating site ask for a year upfront i know they're not going to actually help me.
I met my wife (and two close friends) on OKCupid over 15 years ago, so i remember what it was, and what a site could be again, just not OKC
> when i see a dating site ask for a year upfront i know they're not going to actually help me.
the longest i've seen is 6mo (at least thats OUR longest) and while fewer people use this, it captures the demographic that is either self aware and think they'll need it for a long time, or folks that are happier with dating around. the point of these longer subs isn't because we're willingly creating dark patterns to avoid helping our users, i promise
