So online dating sucks and only seems to be getting worse so I’m starting to think about getting serious about my threats to go make a non-evil dating app myself.
I have two different possible models and I need feedback on which people prefer and why.
**Model One: Weekly Subscription**
A $5 payment buys a user one week of their profile being live. Anyone who logs on during that week will be able to find the user's profile, and they will obviously be able to search for profiles themselves.
A user CAN NOT create a profile or look for other profiles or interact with the app in any way without paying the $5 fee.
After a week they will be prompted to pay $5 again to keep their profile active. Unlike normal dating apps where the subscription auto renews, in this model we very specifically require the user to login and confirm payment.
Without that confirmation, the account is deactivated and cannot be seen by anyone else, and after some amount of time, like a month or so, the account will be deleted.
Pros:
-Any user you see has been actively looking for a match within the last week at most
-$5 upkeep cost increases the barrier of entry for scammers since they can’t create hundreds of free accounts and any accounts they do make will require weekly logins.
-$5 upkeep cost increases chance that users will be active since they will want to get their money's worth
Cons:
-Ultimately still a subscription model, meaning there’s still an incentive to keep users on the app indefinitely, (even if that obviously isn’t my goal)
**Model Two: Ephemeral Profiles**
The user pays a single one time payment of something like $50-$100 to own the app. After which there are no future charges.
The app does not store any data long term offsite. Instead the users profile, matches, and chats are stored locally on their device, and only temporarily uploaded to a server when the user is logged in.
The user is ONLY displayed to other users when they are online. Making the app behave more like a singles bar, where you only meet people who are actually THERE.
Once you match with someone, their profile and your chats would be stored locally on your device as well so you could continue to chat more like a traditional dating app.
Pros:
-No subscription. Company is incentivized to get you good matches as quickly as possible because from the second you start using the product you’re costing them money. Similarly any time you return costs them money, so the company's goals and yours (assuming you’re attempting to find a real relationship) are aligned.
-Any user you see is actively looking for a match RIGHT NOW.
-Company doesn’t keep any of your data. Better for you for privacy and security. Better for the company because it makes server costs much cheaper which enables running the service without a subscription.
-Higher buy in cost increase barrier of entry to scammers
Cons:
-High buy in cost
-Scammers could still buy an account once then use that same account indefinitely, at which point it could pay for itself quickly.
-Data is all stored locally on your device meaning if you lose the device you lose all your matches. (could be mitigated by integrating with built in cloud backup systems like iCloud though)
-Standard guys vs girls dating app problem means women who are logged in may get spammed with tons of chat requests while guys get nothing but crickets. This is normal for dating apps but the fact that you could only match while both users are online might make this model impractical)