People are unhappy with online dating. Hinge's CEO wants to change that

Unanswered messages. Endless swiping. An opaque algorithm. The online dating backlash feels like it's reached a fever pitch. Hinge's CEO is trying to do something about it.

Transcript

STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:

More and more people are breaking up with dating apps, with one exception - Hinge. Its revenue is up 50% from a year ago. Here are Darian Woods and Wailin Wong with our Planet Money podcast The Indicator.

WAILIN WONG, BYLINE: Hinge is similar to Tinder, essentially swiping yes or no on short profiles. It asks for a little more information and uses an algorithm and machine learning to curate a range of people who might be good matches. It's almost like a Spotify playlist of potential lovers.

DARIAN WOODS, BYLINE: But like all dating apps, people have problems with it, like Marcus Hamilton (ph) in New York.

MARCUS HAMILTON: The conversation, it'll be good for a minute, and it goes nowhere.

WONG: Dead-end conversations. And getting users to talk is something Hinge's CEO, Justin McLeod, has thought a lot about.

JUSTIN MCLEOD: When we looked at that problem, what we found was that that was a result of a small number of users matching with a large number of people - can't field all of those matches and chat with all those matches. And so it's creating a frustrating experience for them. And frankly, it's not a very good experience for the people who match with too many people.

WOODS: Yeah, it's like there are a tiny number of romance billionaires out there...

WONG: (Laughter).

WOODS: And a lot of love paupers.

WONG: Inequality and dating is real.

WOODS: Yeah. And one of those people with a lot of matches is Sophie Bridges (ph), a woman in LA.

SOPHIE BRIDGES: I was very overwhelmed with the volume. And, like, there was literally no way to actually plan to meet up with the number of people in the messages.

WONG: Oh, Sophie, what a nice problem to have.

WOODS: Brag. Sophie is the dating 1%. But, you know, still, it's not a great user experience. And so Justin wanted to improve both Marcus and Sophie's time using the app.

WONG: It came up with a feature called Your turn limits. The app now blocks you searching for more people if you haven't reply to eight of your matches.

WOODS: Fair.

WONG: Justin said the feedback from users was surprisingly positive.

MCLEOD: The matches to dates increased by, like, more than 20% with that feature.

WOODS: OK.

MCLEOD: So it's, like, a pretty big swing.

WOODS: All right, so this is an important point, which is, at some point, you got to move past those conversations and actually start going on dates. Kylie Fischer (ph) is on dating apps in New York.

KYLIE FISCHER: Just want to chitchat versus actually meet up, which I don't need pen pals, you know?

WONG: Yes, this is complaint No. 2.

MCLEOD: A lot of our users, I think, can often struggle even to get to, you know, the first date. Being able to deliver tailored advice to you based on how we're seeing you operate in the app, I think, is going to be really transformative - to be able to give you those nudges and guidance along the way.

WONG: So it's like the app would interact with you personally and say, hey, you're chatting too much. Ask them out for a date.

WOODS: Yeah, it hasn't actually launched yet, but that's the rough idea.

WONG: OK. So you've had some matches, been on some dates, but you're still suspicious about whether or not the app is treating you fairly. The third major complaint from users is?

BRIDGES: The algorithm.

HAMILTON: The algorithm is weird.

FISCHER: I have no idea how the algorithm works.

WOODS: Distrust of the algorithm that shows profiles to you. Some people we spoke to wondered if they were getting ranked by some kind of attractiveness score. And the answer here is really interesting. One of the reasons we wanted to talk to the Hinge CEO is that part of the app uses an algorithm that was part of an economic Nobel. It's called the Gale-Shapley algorithm.

WONG: So, we called up one of the Nobel laureates who uses a lot of the Gale-Shapley algorithm in his own work, Alvin Roth, professor of economics at Stanford University. He says the Gale-Shapley algorithm just tries to learn who you like and don't like and who someone else prefers.

ALVIN ROTH: The algorithm doesn't give you a ranking, but what it does is it gives every person a preference.

WONG: OK, so no attractiveness score per se, but someone more appealing to more people will have more people to choose from.

WOODS: Yeah, and Alvin has some advice that transcends dating apps.

ROTH: When you talk to shadchanit, to matchmakers in the Jewish tradition, one of the first things they say is the hardest part at the beginning is to convince your clients you are not a 10.

WOODS: Right.

ROTH: You are not a movie star. They say, once we get over that, lots of great matches happen.

WOODS: Hard truths.

WONG: (Laughter) Speak for yourself. I'm the spitting image of Florence Pugh.

(LAUGHTER)

WOODS: Darian Woods.

WONG: Wailin Wong, NPR News.

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