The complex unknown

The topic of Tinder's surprise success came up today and I think most people see it as a sign of changing attitudes towards online dating and, indeed, dating in general. While that's true, I think there's something a bit deeper at play there. If it was just online dating becoming more acceptable in general, we would expect parallel increases in the popularity of other dating sites. However, Tinder has been a stand-out success compared to its competition.

My theory for this is that Tinder's simplicity makes it fundamentally better. It doesn't have quizzes, complex profile searching, statistical matching algorithms, human matchmakers, or any of the other bells and whistles that other sites use. In reality, it seems like a picture, a brief bio, mutual attraction and a message box is sufficient. Tinder gets rid of all the extra trappings and just lets you engage with the core value of the service: see people you like, talk to them, meet up.

So could Tinder have just shown up 10 years ago and eaten the other big dating sites with a decade head start? Well, probably not. I think that the extra complexity acts as a kind of buffer against ideas that are too new and confronting to engage with directly. If you're nervous about rejection, or meeting the wrong kind of person, or whatever, having complicated systems to put your faith in is very comforting. At the time those were very necessary, but my predicion is that now that online dating is more normal and less scary, we'll see more simplified dating sites take over for good.

I've noticed that many of the hot new disintermediation startups – Uber, AirBnB etc – seem to be following that same path of taking an existing complex thing that has become familiar and shaving that complexity down. I wonder what other still-complex fields might be simplifiable in that same way.