Dating apps as a money printing machine

Many know you, many use you and quite a few pay for it, dating apps. The desire for love and a relationship is one of the most natural needs in the world and thanks to the Internet you can also meet people on the other side of the world and fall in love, would there be only one small thing that would interfere: Dating apps that want or need to make money.

As a friend of healthy capitalism (not predatory capitalism with no rhyme or reason to exploit everything), it is logical that apps that are used a lot must also be maintained and financed accordingly, server infrastructure, energy, as well as employees and other cost items must be covered. I also use dating apps and no man or woman has to hide that, so many use it, but you notice that here more and more a disparity arises, which can no longer be explained economically, and is more like an exploit.

Thus, the subscription price on Tinder has increased by several euros, 25€ per month, around the 8€ if you book per month, if you book the annual subscription, with 6.7 million subscribers and 75 million monthly active usersThat makes an annual revenue of €167,500,000.00, or €167.5 million. And that's quite a lot, considering that you only swipe back and forth a bit and can't even see whether the person you're interested in has been online at all in the last few days or weeks or still has the app installed.

It's not uncommon for my female friends to simply delete the app on their smartphone, but not the profile. For me as a developer and as a man, this is a disaster. From a technical point of view, unnecessary data will remain on the server, which can grow into a large mountain of data with a large number of users, on the other hand, it is a security problem that, if the account is hacked, it could come out that you have registered there, etc., and as a man, of course, is then annoying. and as a man, of course, it is then annoying when you know that there are people (I assume that men also practice this behavior and do not delete the account) who do not delete their profiles and so the account vegetates as a ghost profile, with old information and old photos and for someone at least on Tinder inconspicuous whether this person is still active there or no longer.

The problem is, this profile may have already liked someone and is then but no longer active and deleted the app, later you match with exactly this profile and write hopeful, only to get no response, where then also times the suspicion arises that you are ghosted. Ultimately, this leads to frustration, and that because of misconduct or that you do not think about his account. Or is it a comprehension problem that you think your account will be deleted if you delete the app? I'm probably caught in a usability misunderstanding between developer and user.

But that's not the real problem, recently I came across it on Badoo, I wanted to write to a woman who is in the neighboring town, actually good, but then the hack, if you want to write the person directly, you have to pay 200 points, which is 1.99 €.

This "scam" I have already seen with unserious sites and supposedly real women, which in truth are of course paid moderators, no secret, a look at the terms and conditions is enough. But that now also serious dating sites jump on this tactic is sad, and yet you will now have to pay if you want to write a person. Why or due to which conditions that is apparently only the case with some (to anticipate it right away, the person is real, the picture was really from the neighboring town), is also not recognizable.

Actually, you should throw away all these dating apps, but that is unrealistic, too much can be exploited the desire for love and make money with it, of course, mainly with men who are looking for the big love.

Dating apps are money printing machines, besides various extras like seeing what the person who is interested in you looks like, you now have to pay money, depending on the app, that you can even write with a person. The user is milked and squeezed like a cow, no wonder dating apps don't have too good a reputation. There are also dating apps in Germany that use psychological tactics that could be considered unnecessary at best.

Because a tactic that the operators of dating apps use is that you get more supposed interested parties displayed when the premium subscription ends, in order to hook the user, according to the motto "Hey, look what we have, there are more who are interested in you, but continue your subscription...", so similar works this scam, because you motivate the user to continue to pay for a subscription, sure, from an economic point of view worthwhile, but critical to consider, if this is about fake profiles or bots with fake photos, then this is actually already fraud or pretend false facts to force a contract between user and provider, forcing is not the case here, no one forces the user to pay, but the curiosity drives, a psychological trick.

 

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Posted by Petr Kirpeit

All articles are my personal opinion and are written in German. In order to offer English-speaking readers access to the article, they are automatically translated via DeepL. Facts and sources will be added where possible. Unless there is clear evidence, the respective article is considered to be my personal opinion at the time of publication. This opinion may change over time. Friends, partners, companies and others do not have to share this position.

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