I now work for a much smaller company and I miss the chat channels.

This was to get people to sign up so they could chat.

People would get the most "success" with those closest to their own level but that did not result in subscriptions at the same rate as putting the hottest up front.

Just one of the many ways the apps don't work the way you expect.

The number one reason dating apps suck is money, or the ability to make money is antithetical to the purpose of getting people together. A dating app is successful when people don't use it anymore, so that user churn is a serious impediment to earning a profit. Thus, the apps are designed to keep you paying that monthly subscription.

In that same vein, apps have to work way harder than websites to turn a profit because of app store fees. Our app would have been profitable if we didn't have to give Apple 30% of our fees, so we had to do way sketchier shit to increase profits to compensate.

Second problem is the wildly unbalanced male/female ratios in users. We had one of the better ratios in the market but it was still 70/30 male to female. Straight men and women simply do not have the same motivations around dating and trying to balance those is a hard problem. There are many videos out there about this problem, no need for me to go into detail.

Third is reach. We spent a lot of time trying to find ways to advertise or optimize for store placement and the restrictions placed on us were almost puritanical. For instance, Facebook wouldn't let us advertise because our relationship settings had "married" in the list, so we were forced to remove that option in order to place ads on Facebook. There were other compromises we had to introduce in order to qualify for other stores or advertisers.

Lastly, the Match Group is the 800lb gorilla of the industry and they buy all the good ones (OKCupid, Plenty of Fish) and grind them into maximum profitability like a hedge fund, thus removing any distinctiveness they had in favour of the Match methods.

What it comes down to is the ecosystem is gamed to make good datings apps impossible.

I know you think you're a special snowflake that's different from every other company out there, but looking for a job is a grind. A tough one. Why make people dance and sing even more?

But that said you do need a certain level of handiness unless you plan to call the distributor to come out and fix it if it does break, because even new games will break occasionally.

Fun games make money. That's all you need.

Also the wrapper has measurements on it.

Tech has always been a uphill battle in Canada.

Still worth it though.