The Corporatisation of Love-Finding

Dating App Companies have been trying to balance making money whilst keeping customers satisfied, and it isn’t working despite their best efforts

In Spring 2022, Match Group (owners of Tinder and Hinge) appointed a new CEO, Bernard Kim. Kim, however, had no prior experience in dating app management, he gained his experience as president of Zynga, a mobile gaming company. His appointment indicates a trend seen by Dating App Companies, referred to as a ‘gamifying’ of online dating.

This is in an attempt to keep users glued to these apps by emulating the addictive nature of mobile games. Under this trend, modern dating apps may resemble mobile games more so than the dating websites they evolved from. This choice to gamify online dating arose due to an underlying paradox these companies face.

The service these apps provide is love-finding, helping struggling singles couple up using a sophisticated match-making algorithm. However, once successful in providing this service, these apps face an inherent problem. For every successful couple, that’s two customers leaving their service, potentially not to return. This contradicts the other ambition of these companies, being profit-making.

Whilst the online dating scene originated humbly on 2000s webpages with the good-willed intentions of helping others find love through the power of the internet, today these services take a different shape. Global and monopolised corporations, with really only two separate companies occupying the market share and the public’s attention: the Match Group (as mentioned) and Bumble. Safe to say, the these corporations are probably more interested in making profits than helping strangers find love.

But here in lies the conundrum, how do you make love-finding profitable? The short answer is you can’t. But that isn’t to say The Match Group and Bumble haven’t tried.

The obvious goal is to keep people on the apps. This is were tactics like gamifying dating apps comes into play. Present users with repetitive and addictive features that release high doses of short-term dopamine.

Simplifying the presentation of these apps helps with this process. As anyone who has used these apps can tell, the information you can find out about someone from a dating profile is highly limited. This means setting up a profile is highly efficient. But most importantly, it’s quick and easy to make a judgement as to whether the profile you’re viewing deserves a swipe left or right.

Easy accessibility accompanied by successful marketing campaigns and a lack of real alternatives mean these apps have built up large userbases. Using the apps it feels like an infinite number of options become available. Soon the process of using these apps looks eerily like doomscrolling through TikTok or Instagram Reels. Swiping left and right effortlessly without a second thought. The unintended consequence of this is a casualisation of dating-culture, also referred to as ‘hookup culture’.

This should be perfect for dating-app companies. They’ve created a service that is highly addictive that can keep users engaged and coming back to the app repeatedly. And yet, year on year, these companies are haemorrhaging money.

The reason these companies still lose money is a failure to adhere to the service they’re meant to be providing, love-finding.

Being a struggling single looking for love on these apps can be nothing short of frustrating and disheartening. Despite all the gamifying gimmicks to appeal to young minds, a recent Forbes Health survey, 78% of Gen Z users reported feeling burnt out by dating apps.

This evidently poses a serious challenge for these companies as year on year they report annual net losses. Putting it all into perspective, it seems the only reason these apps are as popular as they are, is a lack of alternative. They still hold a monopolised chokehold on the market.

Dating apps historically made their money through in-app advertisements and selling user data. As this hasn’t succeeded in drawing profits, in recent years these apps have drawn on another mobile gaming tactic, the in-app purchases.

But like any mobile gaming fan will tell you, these practices are extremely transparent and frowned upon by public audiences, even those who feed into them. Offering a few extra incentives on the apps isn’t going to satisfy the customer base, especially those who refuse to pay or simply can’t afford to.

The truth is these companies aren’t greedy; they’re desperate. They're trying every avenue possible to make their services profitable. But it seems to be a vein effort, trying to make profit out of something that can or, at the very least, shouldn’t be commodifiable.

This isn’t to say that online dating is inherently wrongful. Dating apps are now the single most popular way of couples to meet each other. Even through the detriment of these apps, seemingly love still finds a way. And the algorithms these corporations have developed it undoubtedly very impressive. However, they are often deliberately capped by these companies to its true love-finding potential.

Perhaps in the near future, more well-intentioned services will become available. With an ever-increasing dissatisfaction, it seems highly plausible we’ll see more alternatives to the current duopoly down the line. If and when this happens, these companies will likely have to adapt.