If you’ve swiped on dating, there’s a good chance you’ve seen gorgeous women ( if you’re a male) or these perfect, god-like men who look chiseled if you’re a girl. What we all hope and pray for are real people, but most of the time, they are just bots.
Dating apps have bots to push the user to pay for premium features. Bots also inflate the number of real users on the platform and make it seem like there are more users than there really are.
Dating app bots are shared among all mobile dating apps. However, with the use of technology, dating app bots are becoming more scarce on popular platforms.
In this article, we will show you what a dating app bot looks like, how you can spot it, and why dating apps use bots in the first place.
Bots On Dating Apps
The bot is short for robots. It’s a way to describe artificial intelligence or a fake profile that appears to be real.
A dating app bot is a fake profile made by either a person or the creator of the app. The profile, pictures, and sometimes the conversation once you’ve connected may seem real. The pictures often look professionally done, and they seem almost too good to be true.
It’s because they are too good to be true. Companies use these bots for several reasons, mostly to benefit their platform. Although it may not benefit you as the user, they do provide some good for the platform. Let’s check out why companies make bots on dating apps.
Why Do Dating Apps Have Bots?
Dating apps have bots for several reasons. The main reason is to keep you on the platform. Most of these companies created dating apps to get you addicted to the dating process and help you find your true love.
With every swipe and rejection, we all believe that love is right around the corner on the next match or the next swipe, which brings us to the first reason why dating apps have bots in the first place.
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Keep You Swiping & On The Platform
If you live in a suburban area, this will impact you directly. Due to the low population in suburban areas, the app cannot show you users simply because there might be none. These dating apps’ biggest obstacle is finding users to use and engage on their platforms constantly.
Busy cities like Boston, New York, and Philadelphia have the population to support their platforms. However, small rural towns may not. Therefore, apps will create bots and put them in your area to keep you swiped.
Even if you swipe on 5-10 bots in your area, it will make you feel as if those people actually exist, thus keeping you on the platform and upping your engagement.
There’s a good chance you’ll never actually match with a bot, but the hope that you might is what keeps you coming back for more.
Increase The Number Of Users
Every single app once started with 0 users. To get users on the platform, they need to open the app and be greeted by beautiful men or women.
The minute a user’s experience is ruined, they will delete the dating app and move to another. This is so important to dating apps, as they need to get every step right, from onboarding to displaying profiles.
One major hole to fill is getting and keeping users on the app. As mentioned above, if there are no users, there’s no matching, thus no revenue stream. These apps are cleverly designed to keep you thinking your next true love is a swipe away.
The more bots that are shown, the more people seem to be on the app. Apps also take the opportunity to show you the real person every 3rd or 4th swipe (if you live in a rural area), making it seem like there are many more people on the app than there are.
Give You Hope
The last reason is to give you hope if you struggle to find matches, whether with guys or girls; matching with a bot will give you hope.
Let’s face it, when we’re swiping, there’s no better feeling than getting a “you’ve got a match!” notification. These push notifications give us an instant high as we race to open and check the app.
Even if a bot has matched with us, the anticipation that the person on the other end is exciting, companies use these bots to keep that exciting feeling and hope they can replicate it with a real person over time. As the saying goes, there’s someone for everyone.
Premium Features
The last and most important reason is to steer you toward premium features. For instance, in the dating app Bumble & Tinder, users are shown a blurry image with a number indicating how many people have swiped on their profile.
To see that person, you must pay for their subscription. The more we use the mobile app, the more that number grows. However, when you finally purchase the subscription, you’re often met with real and fake profiles.
Dating apps do this to get you to buy the subscription and uncover these potential matches, hoping that you’ll keep renewing once you get addicted to the premium service.
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User-Created Bots
Sometimes, the company itself has no control over the bots. This is the case most of the time, as user-created bots can flood the platform.
User-created bots are bots created via code or some artificial intelligence. They learn the dating app habits over time and learn to swipe & communicate with real people.
They are obviously easily detected as they talk like robots, but these bots are placed on the platform by someone trying to scam out the other end-user.
Dating App Bot Recap
Bots on mobile dating apps are often to keep users on the platform and engaged. There’s a small feeling of euphoria when a user gets a match that makes them feel like the platform is working.
The main goal of dating mobile apps is to keep users swiping in hopes they will convert to paid customers. Bots help aid in believing there are more users and more potential for matches than there really are.
What are your thoughts on bots? Do you think they have a positive or negative impact on dating apps? Let us know in the comments below.