The Usage of Bipartite Graphs and Market Clearing Prices in Dating Apps
If your college experience is anything like mine as someone in a long-distance relationship, it is likely that you will always run into a group of friends, acquaintances, frat brothers or even TA’s offering their two cents into why the benefits of a long distance relationship does not outweigh its costs.
Usually, it is these very same people you can see using Tinder, Bumble ,eHarmony or any other dating apps strictly setting their “match-boundary” to “Maximum: 5 miles”.
For many, that is the “cost” or price that they would pay for a fun night or (more unlikely in a college setting) the first to many dates with their soulmate. Considering the charge of a $1.50 TCAT ride, or $50 for dinner and a movie, the price for many on this app varies for the same goal to meet someone.
Straight men make up about 68% of Tinder, a dating app, and straight women make up 23%. With these numbers showing a clear scarcity, it is not surprising that this app ignites competition for many men to stand out as much as possible to the women they swipe right on.
The way Tinder works, you swipe right (thumbs up) or left (thumbs down) depending on your interest level of the profile in front of you. From what I’ve seen, my girl-friends do not have any problem finding a match (when both profiles swipe right on each other), whereas with my guy friends, I can hear the crickets in their inboxes.
If a Bipartite graph were to be made to represent this scenario, you can likely analyze that there is a clear constricted set (Straight-men) as there is not enough women to match with the number of men on the app.
Tinder came up with a solution for this. Tinder has three package plans, Tinder Plus, Tinder Gold and Tinder Platinum. For these men to make an attempt to be on the top of the stack of matches many of these women receive, Tinder made a feature called “Super Like” in which the user can send a notification directly to the intended profile (even before they swipe) that the user really likes you. This feature is a part of Tinder Plus that costs $6.75 a month.
For many, this is not worth it. In fact, they have a better chance to sit outside of Olin Library and help someone carry their books to class. For others, this is not enough.
As the addition of Tinder Plus did not initiate the ideal market-clearing price, Tinder had also come out with Tinder Gold and Tinder Platinum to combat this issue in which each membership costs more than the last (monthly fees of $22.49 and $26.99 respectively). Each of these packages come with more features such as rewinds, ad removal, prioritized likes, boosts and many many more.
Naturally, this problem is far from being fixed. There will likely stay a constricted set however, we can see from what we learned from class, that Tinder implements a set of market-clearing prices in an attempt to normalize the net value for the users and create more successful matches.
Only time and chivalry will tell if this is solved, but until then the number of matches that make it outside of the inbox tab in Tinder, is something that will always be worked on.
Perhaps a Tinder Diamond could take care of this! 🙂
https://www.businessinsider.com/guides/tech/is-tinder-free