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What do you think about it? I guess that woman to men ratio will be something like 1:20
I can only guess but I think it’s a combination of a lack of effective anti-bot protections and it being a sort of dead platform (so the only users that remain are largely bots which never leave)
Then I guess isn’t worthy trying to use it. It’s sad cause sounded like an alternative for Tinder and the rest of meeting apps from the Play Store that have the Google infestation on them.
Unfortunately I think projects like this have extra challenges over even regular social media platforms. There’s also retromeet which seems even more dead (it may have not even made it to a stable release).
The idea is great but for a dating app to work, it needs to quickly get past two network effects: the global network effect (there must be enough people globally, or in a larger region, to get other people interested in trying out the platform) and the local network effect (there must be enough people to match with in most users’ local areas to keep enough people interested). With corporate backing that’s easy enough to do with a dedicated team to market and develop, but FOSS rarely has that sort of manpower. Slow growth is hard too, since users tend to leave dating apps quite often.
There’s also the funny problem if the dev gets a partner usually the partner doesn’t appreciate them staying on dating apps. Developing a dating app could be even worse for the relationship… actually now that I think of it, maybe I should make start a similar project since I don’t like dating…
needs to quickly get past two network effects: the global network effect […] and the local network effect
Sounds like a job for Fedi-date! If you could somehow hook a dating app into the fediverse, then maybe it could survive long enough to get sufficient users. If it also offers more general IRL meet-ups (like meetup.com but without the corpo rent-seeking), then it could perhaps begin to get popular that way too.
Though I do agree that having a broader scope than just the hot-or-not swipe thing would really help to attract enough people to join. Retromeet doesn’t seem to do that, though I haven’t used it so I could be wrong.
Local network effect is enough, even when it’s restricted to a specific demographic or subculture. Once a dating platform grabs a hold in a location and demographic, it can extend from there.
Of course to keep a project like this running, you need a way to pay for hosting and development.
Maybe we can agree to disagree because I don’t think a specific demographic is enough to overcome the negative network effect at the start. The problem, imo, is that the attrition rate of dating apps is really high and dating apps are only good if a lot of people are located geographically nearby. You either need broad appeal to avoid running out of people early on or a demographic that is unusually geographically concentrated and usurps the attrition rate (ENM comes to mind for the latter).
Of course, you could always make something for dating without the geo proximity, but I think most people won’t want to use something like that at all.
The beauty of new FOSS projects is that they’re quite often hosted and developed for free, so I don’t think that’s much of a limiting factor as long as the community is there. That’s also why I think it’s important to make it big quickly, because that’s the way to get a big enough community before the creator loses interest.
I was specifically thinking about men who have sex with men. Grindr and similar platforms are very successful. Most of it is about casual sex between promiscuous men. They are also a great target group otherwise. Travel between gay metropolises is common as. Pride tourism is big.
That’s interesting why so many bots
I can only guess but I think it’s a combination of a lack of effective anti-bot protections and it being a sort of dead platform (so the only users that remain are largely bots which never leave)
Hi everyone.
Then I guess isn’t worthy trying to use it. It’s sad cause sounded like an alternative for Tinder and the rest of meeting apps from the Play Store that have the Google infestation on them.
Unfortunately I think projects like this have extra challenges over even regular social media platforms. There’s also retromeet which seems even more dead (it may have not even made it to a stable release).
The idea is great but for a dating app to work, it needs to quickly get past two network effects: the global network effect (there must be enough people globally, or in a larger region, to get other people interested in trying out the platform) and the local network effect (there must be enough people to match with in most users’ local areas to keep enough people interested). With corporate backing that’s easy enough to do with a dedicated team to market and develop, but FOSS rarely has that sort of manpower. Slow growth is hard too, since users tend to leave dating apps quite often.
There’s also the funny problem if the dev gets a partner usually the partner doesn’t appreciate them staying on dating apps. Developing a dating app could be even worse for the relationship… actually now that I think of it, maybe I should make start a similar project since I don’t like dating…
Sounds like a job for Fedi-date! If you could somehow hook a dating app into the fediverse, then maybe it could survive long enough to get sufficient users. If it also offers more general IRL meet-ups (like meetup.com but without the corpo rent-seeking), then it could perhaps begin to get popular that way too.
That’s exactly what Retromeet was trying to do :)
Though I do agree that having a broader scope than just the hot-or-not swipe thing would really help to attract enough people to join. Retromeet doesn’t seem to do that, though I haven’t used it so I could be wrong.
Local network effect is enough, even when it’s restricted to a specific demographic or subculture. Once a dating platform grabs a hold in a location and demographic, it can extend from there.
Of course to keep a project like this running, you need a way to pay for hosting and development.
Maybe we can agree to disagree because I don’t think a specific demographic is enough to overcome the negative network effect at the start. The problem, imo, is that the attrition rate of dating apps is really high and dating apps are only good if a lot of people are located geographically nearby. You either need broad appeal to avoid running out of people early on or a demographic that is unusually geographically concentrated and usurps the attrition rate (ENM comes to mind for the latter).
Of course, you could always make something for dating without the geo proximity, but I think most people won’t want to use something like that at all.
The beauty of new FOSS projects is that they’re quite often hosted and developed for free, so I don’t think that’s much of a limiting factor as long as the community is there. That’s also why I think it’s important to make it big quickly, because that’s the way to get a big enough community before the creator loses interest.
Churn is an issue you mentioned.
I was specifically thinking about men who have sex with men. Grindr and similar platforms are very successful. Most of it is about casual sex between promiscuous men. They are also a great target group otherwise. Travel between gay metropolises is common as. Pride tourism is big.