The Metropolis blog

Believe it or not, there have been two Nobel Prizes awarded for matchmaking. Technically they were Sveriges Riksbank Prizes in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel , but everyone calls them Nobel Prizes in Economics. The Nash Equilibrium The first went to John Forbes Nash, the guy played by Russell Crowe in A Beautiful Mind . He was awarded the prize in 1994 for his work on the Nash equilibrium . A Nash equilibrium describes a state in a game that is stable because nobody can benefit by changing their strategy. It has applications in fields such as arms treaties, technical standards, and environmental and banking regulations. It also predicts when a romantic relationship is likely to be stable: when neither party can do better. This could be because a party's current partner is the best one in existence, or (more likely) because better options are already spoken for or not interested. It also assumes that staying with the current partner is better than being single. But what...

Croesus was a king in ancient Greece who — legend has it — possessed unlimited wealth. He's the inspiration for a design technique known as  What would Croesus do? The idea is to brainstorm the best possible product — given an unlimited budget and possibly fictional technology — to provide the ultimate experience for the user. Then, starting from this imaginary product, figure out what you can actually implement — at a reasonable cost — with existing technology. It's often surprising how close you can get. Science fiction dating So, what would the ideal dating product look like? The concept we came up with was a machine that scans you — your mind, your body, your deepest desires — and learns everything about you. Then it thinks for a while and recommends a person for you. It assures you that you will be attracted to this person, and they will be attracted to you. And, realistically, neither of you are going to do any better. So you should get in touch. How it arrives at that r...

In a previous post I mentioned that misaligned incentives could be a reason why dating apps deliver such poor results. But if that's the case, why don't users just switch to a better app? That's easier said than done, because — in the English-speaking world at least — most of the dating apps are owned by the same company: the Match Group. The dating juggernaut The Match Group, Inc, headquartered in Dallas, Texas, owns over 45 dating apps, including Tinder, Hinge, OkCupid, Plenty of Fish, and, of course, Match.com. The only major dating app they don't own is Bumble, and they tried very hard to buy it too, offering $450 million in 2017. What this means is that if a user gets fed up with Tinder, deletes it, and switches to, say, Hinge, the Match Group keeps making money. Match only loses if the user switches to Bumble, but since that's essentially a clone of Tinder, chances are the user will get fed up there as well, and switch to another Match product eventually. So...

In a previous post I claimed that online dating should be a winner-takes-all market, and that because there was no winner, something must be broken. If true, why might this be the case? One possibility is that matchmaking is just a really difficult problem, and no-one has cracked it yet. Maybe. But a cynical explanation is that the dating apps don't want people to match. “Show me the incentive and I will show you the outcome.” — Charlie Munger Consider a typical user of dating apps. What they want is to install an app, use it find someone special, then delete it. And to do that as quickly as possible. But from the perspective of an app maker — given their revenue models — the ideal user is one who installs the app, then uses it  forever , ideally paying for optional extras. Their incentive is to make an addictive app that acts like a slot machine, with lots of colour and animations, and the occasional almost -win. But little or no actual success. That may be a profitable approach...