Algorithms of Love: Dating in the Digital World

Before we turn to the current state of the industry, I want to talk a little bit about the biggest transformation since the founding of Match, mobile and the rise of Tinder.

Within a little over a year since its founding, Tinder reached 50 million users.

And can we pull up the second chart, actually? There we go.

2013 is when a big study from Stanford assessed was the moment where online dating surpassed meeting through friends as the most popular way of meeting a potential partner in the United States.

Tinder was founded in 2012.

So Steve, you and I are in the cohort that made it thrive, millennials here, and I'm wondering whether you have thoughts as to why, like why did it hit such fertile ground with our cohort?

Yeah, I think to explain it and contextualize it, I'll start with why OkCupid did a good job.

Because right before Tinder came out, OkCupid, at least when I first got introduced in 2010, it was founded in 2004.

I invited 50 people on the spot upon using OkCupid to try it out for themselves because they had a test that you could take that was called the dating persona test.

And it was a way of learning really quickly a lot about yourself and who you might be compatible with.

And it suddenly provided you not just like an archetype, kind of like the Myers-Briggs, but it would give you a sense of who else on the platform might actually be a good fit for you.

And so every profile came appended if they had done the test with their own dating persona.

And so giving people additional layers of insight into who might be a good fit for them was one of those initial hurdles that happened between 2004 and 2010.

280,000 questions on OkCupid, user submitted.

I answered about 2,000 over the years.

And my first ever online date turned out to be with a 99% match.

And it was someone who I ended up in a five and a half year relationship with.

And our first date was about 18 hours long.

So I was sold very early on the promise of algorithmic dating.

When Tinder came out, once again, I did invite 50 people the very first day because what I noticed as soon as I used it was that the ROI on attentional spend became astronomical.

It went from an OkCupid-style platform or a match or an eHarmony where you do end up answering potentially hundreds of questions over the course of many, many minutes, potentially hours, and then you have to go find people and sort and search and message.

All of that, Tinder collapsed into four taps on a phone.

You log in with Facebook, the photo's already pulled from Facebook, you just give it permission for your location, permission for notifications, one swipe.

If that's already a match, you have done four taps and you now have a person who likes you back on this platform.

That was unheard of in the industry, where eHarmony was taking about 45 minutes to make a profile, Tinder made it about four to eight seconds.

Before we turn to the current state of the industry, I want to talk a little bit about the biggest transformation since the founding of Match, mobile and the rise of Tinder.

Within a little over a year since its founding, Tinder reached 50 million users.

And can we pull up the second chart, actually? There we go.

2013 is when a big study from Stanford assessed was the moment where online dating surpassed meeting through friends as the most popular way of meeting a potential partner in the United States.

Tinder was founded in 2012.

So Steve, you and I are in the cohort that made it thrive, millennials here, and I'm wondering whether you have thoughts as to why, like why did it hit such fertile ground with our cohort?

Yeah, I think to explain it and contextualize it, I'll start with why OkCupid did a good job.

Because right before Tinder came out, OkCupid, at least when I first got introduced in 2010, it was founded in 2004.

I invited 50 people on the spot upon using OkCupid to try it out for themselves because they had a test that you could take that was called the dating persona test.

And it was a way of learning really quickly a lot about yourself and who you might be compatible with.

And it suddenly provided you not just like an archetype, kind of like the Myers-Briggs, but it would give you a sense of who else on the platform might actually be a good fit for you.

And so every profile came appended if they had done the test with their own dating persona.

And so giving people additional layers of insight into who might be a good fit for them was one of those initial hurdles that happened between 2004 and 2010.

280,000 questions on OkCupid, user submitted.

I answered about 2,000 over the years.

And my first ever online date turned out to be with a 99% match.

And it was someone who I ended up in a five and a half year relationship with.

And our first date was about 18 hours long.

So I was sold very early on the promise of algorithmic dating.

When Tinder came out, once again, I did invite 50 people the very first day because what I noticed as soon as I used it was that the ROI on attentional spend became astronomical.

It went from an OkCupid-style platform or a match or an eHarmony where you do end up answering potentially hundreds of questions over the course of many, many minutes, potentially hours, and then you have to go find people and sort and search and message.

All of that, Tinder collapsed into four taps on a phone.

You log in with Facebook, the photo's already pulled from Facebook, you just give it permission for your location, permission for notifications, one swipe.

If that's already a match, you have done four taps and you now have a person who likes you back on this platform.

That was unheard of in the industry, where eHarmony was taking about 45 minutes to make a profile, Tinder made it about four to eight seconds.