Why dating apps have been so popular
https://www.economist.com/briefing/2018/08/18/how-the-internet-has-changed-dating
This article on The Economist website discusses the rise of popularity of dating apps over the past few years, how dating has changed because of technology, and which directions these dating app companies are heading. According to the article, theses dating apps are popular because people can be anonymous thus not afraid of losing face, they can online date at any time and any place, and different groups of people who don’t usually mix together in real life are able to meet online. All of these are only made possible by the internet and especially smart phone, because smart phones add a level of intimacy that the traditional internet doesn’t have. People hold their phones in their hands and can text other people whenever they want, feeling a connection between each other.
In addition to discussing the general trends of online dating, the article also analyzes a few dating app companies in detail. Two of them stand out because they very much remind me of the principles of matching markets that we learned in lectures. The first one is Tinder. Everyone knows that on Tinder swiping right means “yes” and left “no”. If both users swipe right for each other, they are matched and can starting chatting. Imagine each user as a nod in this network, then the action of swiping right and left are precisely constructing and erasing edges. If both users swipe right, an edge is formed, and if at least one of them swipes left, the edge cannot exist. It’s truly amazing to think that all the success of Tinder is built upon this very basic ideas of network theory, and the simple actions of an individual swiping left and right decides the structure of this network.
A second interesting example is the company Tantan. In the article the CEO of Tantan Mr Wang mentions that according to his company’s data, women only “like” 6% of the users seen while men “like” 60% on average. This means that it’s far easier for women to find matches than men, and Mr Wang says the bottom 5% of men never find any matches. His company is working hard to solve this problem, and there are a few solutions they are trying. For example, currently the “like” function is solely based on appearance, so they want to also try to match people based on possible good conversations. Matching people with potential conversation is like adding edges between nodes in this network. Especially for males who aren’t overly attractive, this gives them a way to participate in the giant component of this network, and a larger percentage of this network will be in the giant component. Following his vision, I suggest a possible way of matching people based on good conversation is to match online friends of those who have had good conversations. For example, if A-B, A-C, and C-D have had good conversations, B-D should be matched. This is because people who have had good conversations are more likely to share things in common, so B-D is more likely to enjoy the conversations than random matches in the network.