Mmmmhmmmm, so I've been thinking about how many popular dating apps are currently owned by Match Group. Sure there is Bumble, but what's the difference? People's mindset about the apps I guess like Tinder is stereotyped as the hookup app. Anyway making my own singles/connections/dating app has been a long time in the making. I still own the domain for what I had originally called it 8 years now. Done nothing with it, until NOW with PROJECT STARFLASH!
The project is all about returning to basics. Men pursue, women choose. Yeah yeah, heterosexual connections only. Oh noooo, curse me, blah blah yada yada cancel me for not including LGBTQIA.
It is important to set clear expectations with Project Starflash as a hetero only dating app. LGBT already have their own dating apps. This app fulfills my itch since I hate seeing profiles that are not heterosexual in nature. Like, if I say I want a women then I more than likely just want to see y'know HETERO women.
This is where today's dating apps fail by allowing this nasty lack of clarification to fester. There should've been a partition so there are expectations rather than some asshole not identifying themselves as LGBT in the first place. Who the f*ck goes to bars/clubs and wants to talk/dance with LGBT if they don't disclose. It's cat fishing to the extreme. I'm tired of the sh*t. Just HETERO people only please or else it is low quality as if dating apps weren't already seen as low quality.
Secondly, popular "dating" apps don't seriously go past profile matching. They experiment from time to time with things, but do not put much effort past the experiment part which is why some features die off even though they were very good alternatives. I intend to make some of the things I liked in the past. A core part of this dating app is that there are multiple ways to match with people. Most complaints I have seen are about profile matching being a vapid way to match and sure I believe it. I always thought activities were the best way to meet and match people from the start anyway. I think some services did it right too bad they don't do it anymore. I think the lack of clarification of laws and KYC was a big issue here so that's why these services stopped offering them.
Finally, these "dating" apps are stale for men and overwhelming for women. I've been thinking about ways to manage this load. This was really one of the big roadblocks to making a dating app for me. Men will swipe swipe swipe with current dating apps, but that gets real boring real quick. Women will get overwhelmed with likes because men get bored of swipe swipe swipe and play the numbers game. Well, swiper no swiping as that feature doesn't exist in this project. Obviously men will still have to signal their request to women, but will do it in a more transparent way with some reporting so men can adjust their behaviors. For women, it's pretty obvious how to manage the load but it's combined with a variation of how Coffee Meets Bagel does it.
Overall, I think this app will work out over a longer run. It will be tested out with particular cities/universities in the first beta. I don't intend to go global with it, so US only. Better to manage my own load since I don't want to just only work on this particular app. I don't think Tinder nor Bumble will be able to change their model successfully to compete. Look at how much trouble they have now with decreasing subscribers and people being disillusioned with their total trash. People have expectations with those apps now and changing drastically will destroy them.
The end goal is to be better than nightclubs for meeting people. Right now, nightclubs are astronomically better than current dating apps for the price. Sure people may be somewhat drunk, but at least you are guaranteed to meet people and most likely get to touch flesh which men tend to crave.
If Project Starflash works out well then go global and a separate app for the LGBT peeps. By that time some LGBT software engineers can work on that variation of the app. Software is always better with people who identify with it. Can experiment with ideas back and forth to stay agile.
If it don't work out in 5-10 years then shut it down. I can then say at least I tried like with Atlas Fury (Idea from around 2014, now released) and that's really all that matters.
Not sure when I will even get to a beta, but the target is 2025. Still have Project Phantasy on target before the 2024 election to ride the political coattails of it.
In future posts, I want to tackle some ideas of taking on bad behavior by people by encouraging better behavior and penalizing repeated bad behavior. Thing like mitigating ghosting, matching without doing anything, bot behavior, misuse of services, verification, etc.