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First Open Source dating app
(alovoa.com)
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Hi everyone.
Then I guess isn't worthy trying to use it. It's sad cause sounded like an alternative for Tinder and the rest of meeting apps from the Play Store that have the Google infestation on them.
Unfortunately I think projects like this have extra challenges over even regular social media platforms. There's also retromeet which seems even more dead (it may have not even made it to a stable release).
The idea is great but for a dating app to work, it needs to quickly get past two network effects: the global network effect (there must be enough people globally, or in a larger region, to get other people interested in trying out the platform) and the local network effect (there must be enough people to match with in most users' local areas to keep enough people interested). With corporate backing that's easy enough to do with a dedicated team to market and develop, but FOSS rarely has that sort of manpower. Slow growth is hard too, since users tend to leave dating apps quite often.
There's also the funny problem if the dev gets a partner usually the partner doesn't appreciate them staying on dating apps. Developing a dating app could be even worse for the relationship... actually now that I think of it, maybe I should make start a similar project since I don't like dating...
Sounds like a job for Fedi-date! If you could somehow hook a dating app into the fediverse, then maybe it could survive long enough to get sufficient users. If it also offers more general IRL meet-ups (like meetup.com but without the corpo rent-seeking), then it could perhaps begin to get popular that way too.
That's exactly what Retromeet was trying to do :)
Though I do agree that having a broader scope than just the hot-or-not swipe thing would really help to attract enough people to join. Retromeet doesn't seem to do that, though I haven't used it so I could be wrong.