Meeting people with similar interests.
Traditional dating apps connect you on the basis of
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Age range
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Gender - Binary and Non-Binary
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Location - Within 75 miles
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Bumble - Travel feature. Travel to any city and get matches from there
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Tinder- Passport feature like Bumble travel.
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There are more advanced filters on bumble to filter people by sun sign, verified only profiles, exercise, education, drink, smoke, what you are looking for (casual, relationship, I dont know), if you want children, have children, religion and politics.
Problem set
Giving data to app
Only age, gender, location is mandatory to add, rest is optional to add. This way you find more people on the app and keep swiping. The application wants you to see more people keep you engage. Mostly dating app has become a photo catalogues app.
When people add the data mentioned above, this data is displayed on their profile. Many people dont want this data to be displayed.
Because people who may not be permanent in our life know too much about us. So not sure if this data needs to be displayed on the profile. Also, people are misusing this data and blackmailing women.*
This data can be hidden and only displayed after you match with people. The app knows your preference so why display it publicly? Also, not everyone adds so much data in the first place.
For instance, if I give data to the app. That I smoke, drink, I am spiritual. The app can ask whether they wish to connect with people with similar preference. Note these are preferences and not interest.
Now the app knows my preference and shows me a profile that may match my preference. If I change my preference I will see people with changed preference. Preference filter out the people. People are sorted by location.
A lot of people dont swipe people who dont add a bio. The app can show only those profiles which contain bio or which are verified. Basically give data to access data. Add bio in profile now you see all profiles with a bio. Currently, on bumble, I can ignore adding all my data but still filter out people by adding preference.
So I am Capricorn. But I won't add this data on the app. But filter people who are Scorpio. So you see I am not giving my data but asking others data.
Similar way if you add political preference you will see people who added political preference. Once the potential profile list is exhausted we can show them more profiles that are unfiltered.
Preference vs Interest
Age, gender and location are required on all apps. These are core preferences. Others are listed above.
Are you a preference person or interest person? People who meet in the clubhouse are like-minded people and they do not bother about their preferences because they are not going to date them.
Many people date and get married to people who do not match preference. A non-smoker may end up dating a smoker. This happens all the time. So is preference important? How about we keep the basic preference and filter people by interest?
Interest is a vast pool. At present, while onboarding the Saturn app asks to list five fav Movies and Shows. Why I have to list movies and Show? why not some other interests?
We all watch movies and tv shows. They are great conversation starter too. With the rising OTT platform many young people are consuming content all the time on the internet.
They are watching Youtube videos, Instagram reels, Tiktok and Genz are content creators they appreciate great content. One can know so much about persons thinking by the books they read and content they consume.
The app needs to first find like-minded people. In real-world how people meet? In a bar. Or via some social events they go to at friends place, college, school, workplace, bumped too many times with each other because they stay in the neighbourhood.
Do they at first ask each other about smoking preference? Do you drink? No, they dont. There is one common factor between them it's the mutual friend, college, event. So somewhere you connected with someone who shares similar interest as you. Then why are we matching people by preference?
Let them date more and make mistakes. How will you know what you want till you fail? Failure teaches you what you do not want. Sometimes people date and get married then they think I dont want this. You know, you dont want this, because you gave yourself a chance to try it out. It may not be a mistake, It's a learning experience, that you never knew, you didn't want this in the first place.
As you grow old and age. It becomes more and more difficult to make friends and have a social circle. Because everyone around you is married and have kids. They hang out as families and as couples. So where are single people suppose to hang out? They hang out on Twitter, clubhouse and on dating apps and clubs, pubs, bar.
There are many people addicted to video games and love talking to other people who play similar games via discord. They have this amazing bonding with each other. Why is that? Because they share a common love for that game.
There can be two schools of thoughts here. Finding people by 100 preferences or 100 interest. What would you choose?
Saturn Features and RoadMap
At present we completed the onboarding. Where you signup using your phone number. Why phone number? Because we wish to at first keep the app invite-only.
Then you add Name, gender, date of birth. the app asks for location permission, email.
Then we ask them to add one or more pic. When user select picture from the photo gallery we check if they are safe. NSFW check to remove pornographic pictures. This is in place. Moving ahead we would add face detection so people dont add random pictures.
After adding pictures. You can search for movie name and a list will appear from which you can select five fav movies. This feature is like autocomplete. We are using OMDB API.
Once you add a movie, you need to add Shows. Your onboarding is now done.
Now you need to set the preference of distance, gender and age. You will see potential profiles sorted by distance.
You will see a percentage if there are any movies that match your movies.
While showing profiles. We display only one picture and the user can click on the profile to see other pictures. This way we can track the impression of the profiles. While loading these pictures we have considered the low internet quality and loading progressive image.
On the profile details page you see pictures, distance (how far), percentage (number currently calculated on basis of movies & Shows interest)
You can like or dislike this profile. So basically in one go, we show 10 profiles that can scroll forward and back. Now you can decide whether you want to like them or dislike them. Once you take action on these 10 profiles next 10 are loaded.
Now the user can pay the app to show 100% match directly if they wish to save time.
Once you like the profile and another person too like you. You are a match. Now whoever is second to match need to initiate conversation. Not like bumble, only women will lead.
Before initiating the conversation we show a screen where we display their mutual liked movies and show and what they like individually. Like a preview or trailer about them. Then they can initiate the conversation.
In future, we are creating a conversational bot using Dialogflow. There are a lot of such apps on market like intercom, drift they are a conversational bot. What will this bot do?
This bot will allow you to add more interests. You can add gaming, hobbies, sports, books, food, travel. So the bot will record all your interest.
Now since you added more interest the app will now show potential profiles and the percentage with respect to more interest you added.
For instance, Madhavi added hobbies, music genre, books. movies and shows. Mitesh added games, music genre, books, movies and shows. Now the percentage will be calculated on music genre, books, movies and shows.
So we discard hobbies and games from the percentage. Now Madhavi & Mitesh will see each other profiles. Maybe they dont have any movies and show to show in mutual interest. Because the app shows only movies and shows interest on profile before matching. But they will see a 60% match they both will wonder on what basis?
That's when they will match to know. This way Men will get more matches. And maybe men women will give chance to each other with similar interest and not by physical attributes. Once they match they see the mutual interest which is music and books for Madhavi and Mitesh.
Now they have so much to talk about. The app can also ask for intimate data like habits, opinion, sexual orientation, height if they want to add.
Also, most apps are asking what you are looking for? A lot of people ask me as well what I'm looking for on this app. How can the nature of my relationship with a stranger be declarative? Aaron, I will know only when I know you more. So give me time here, will you? So not to focus on what you are looking for, but focusing more on what you like.
People use dating apps for hookups all the time. Let's be honest we did this at some point in time. If people are strictly for hookup they can keep hookup mode ON. This way they will see only those profile who are looking for a hookup. People who are on the non-hookup mode will not know such profiles. But what will happen if we do that? People will only use this app on hookup mode. That's why we won't do this. :p They can find hookups on tinder.
Then there are other sets of people who dated high school sweethearts for years and now they are single. They dont know anything about the new dating world. They have anxiety about this. They come on the app and leave. Because of fear and lack of knowledge.
The app can keep posting content to educate people about dating etiquettes. This can again be a space for the OTT platform to add content.
There are many people who are very different. Like an Italian guy shifted to India. Came on a dating app. Does he know the cultural difference in India? He can educate himself by location and what kind of culture and communication tone will be in that particular city.
Many people just keep misunderstanding each other over dating app chats because they both are from different worlds. But when they have similar interest it will ease the situation here. People feel judged, misunderstood, misinterpreted while chatting.
Some dont know how to reinitiate the conversation. That's when we can add chat recommendation. Suggesting ice breaker by interest. Or even a recommendation for small talk. Recommended chat like on LinkedIN. I met a French guy in Pune who was hardly able to communicate well in English. His English was weaker than mine and we both kept misunderstanding each other.
Education - Culture, what to expect, people Help - To communicate effectively, setting the right tone of communication.
Keep adding more and more interest in bot. At present bot supports music genre selection and sports. So eventually we can keep adding more interest. We can ask only for interest and match people on five and they can add more interest by paying to the app.
We can also add a feature where you do not reveal all the interest to the person at once. You do that gradually once you start building a relationship. This can keep encouraging them to chat. And new interest data can be displayed as stories? Still thinking about this. Honestly, I hate to list down what my interest is to everyone on the app. Why not just go and check on my profile when you free time and more interested in me.
What if someone is faking the data. If they fake the data they can only fake or match the data you added about movies and show to match with you, they dont know the rest. Even they added fake data and you got a higher percentage. We are introducing a quiz. Where the person will get notified you have been invited for the quiz. Once the person opens the quiz they have only 60 sec to answer.
Now you can say they person can google search in 60 seconds and find the answer. But they cant google search on mobile. If they put the app in the background they lose. What if people google search from a laptop or another phone. If someone is taking so much effort to talk to you. Maybe they are worth exploring then, dont you think?
At present we are working on a chat feature. A chat system like sendbird is very expensive. So we have built our own chat using firebase right now. We are not keeping the chat history in local storage because on the android app it can be risky.
Like other apps, we do not have calling feature and video feature. In my experience with the dating app, I hardly saw anyone using them. It's intimidating. Why apps added calling and video feature? Because in pandemic people are dating virtually or are bored and wish to connect with people via dating apps. So you see these users are here to stay they are here not because they truly wish to connect with people and stick to two-three people.
They want to keep connecting as many as they can, to pass the time. Chat messages are supposed to be asynchronous in nature. But people dont know how long will be wait time on the app. Waiting kills the vibes and now you lost the interest.
So dating apps came with a turn feature. The app will say you are supposed to reply now. Waiting can signal not interested or I am busy. The app can decide a certain waiting period. Or people can decide the waiting period and unmatch once wait time is over. Archive people who are not active or mark them inactive.
What to do once you vibe, match and everything else. Most people share their Instagram handle or share a phone number. Sometimes I feel the dating app is less of a dating app and more of a chatting app.
If we use a dating app like WhatsApp or Instagram chat we will have so many people in our contact list and keep them there. Why will they stay there what's in it for them? If we add posts and feed then it becomes Instagram or Facebook. If we add stories it will be like getting attention. The vision is to keep communicating with people in the dating space. Like how gamers are on discord something similar to that. We don't have a dating game, but there can be dating related content to discuss?
Do we need to add a restriction on a number of matches? I am not sure yet.
Should we give people a space to match around the entire city, state and country? or even travel to other cities?
What's the point if these people dont stay nearby, I will never get to hang out with them in real life. But in a pandemic, we are anyway unable to meet them. So I am not sure if we should have this feature. Bumble and Tinder are already doing this. So maybe we can focus on people who want to really meet each other.
We can surely keep this as paid feature with no city and country restriction but finding out people by interest can take a lof of time to query such huge datasets. That's why the app added travel mode to minimise the data set.
There are many people who swipe in Pune from different cities because someone told them there are a lot of women in Pune, Mumbai, Delhi and Bangalore. But do these women wish to connect with travellers?
If you select the city Amsterdam and another traveller also selected the same city. Should traveller meet other travellers?
and the locals? Do you think people are interested in travellers? I personally dont swipe travellers because they are actually not travelling they just looking for people to pass time with.
If there are travellers then there can be a culture and language barrier again. I think the app will start adding features to translate the language in future. But a lot of contexts will be lost in translation.
Also, you have no clue if the person you talking to whats their intentions and motive. They stay in different country and city. I don't feel safe with the travel feature. It's best you travel to the city then find people there. This is being too ambitious.
The question is are we using dating apps to pass time or to really meet this person IRL?
I will update this document with more information on other dating apps. Like OkCupid (90% fake & anonymous profiles in India ) Happn, Hinge (expensive app). Also the psychological aspect, like validation, attention, need, and much more. Why people dating app and what are they looking for. Peace out. Happy dating.
