Tinder - defeated the "scourge" of all dating services - people get to know each other and leave, which is not good for business! Tinder, on the other hand, has handled this problem brilliantly.
A nuclear mix of psychology, game industry mechanics, and proper design does its job, turning the service into a permanent assistant to your romantic life.
I'm not going to tell you about the Kinder Surprises. Everything is clear here: until you open it, you won't know what's behind the following card: a dead cert or a great option. It's a gambling element that everyone is familiar with.
Skinner's Box.
This is more interesting: Skinner put birds and rats in a box, separately, of course, and made them press buttons and gave them food in exchange, in random order. This is how the animals formed the link between action and reaction. The expectation of reward becomes more important than the reward itself through repetition.
And everyone forgot about Skinner himself, that is, the external factor responsible for randomness. But you can make it not random. Tweak it in favor of business.
You don't think that the algorithms for selecting the next contenders for the swipe are as random as Skinner's desire to feed the birds, do you?!
One of the most important and obvious examples is the beginning of communication because it is the bottleneck that can take the user away from the gameplay.
There are two factors that Tinder works with: the pretext for communication (information about you) and the communication itself. The goal is to minimize the likelihood of successful communication.
This is where the great and mighty come into play.
New monetization mechanics affecting the process itself
Payment changes the gameplay, and in Tinder, cost changes the selection quality. The algorithms that govern when you get a quality selection with more matches are hardwired into how often you pay. So the process and monetization become one.
By the way, these mechanics are patented, for example, by Activision Blizzard and Electronic Arts. The entire online gaming industry is built around them now. And this is no joke - it's money out of thin air.
On Tinder, they are responsible for matching new candidates based on your activity, profile, time and interests, and payment. They are manipulative and accountable for engaging you in a permanent process of swiping.
What's the point? At first, the matching algorithms are set up to show you maximum results. There will be more matches and beautiful new active profiles in the selection. Algorithms are finely tuned and analyze the behavior of users: how often they are in the service and how often they reply or write messages.
In general, the service does everything to ensure that at first, you have a trusting relationship and you can see the effectiveness of their actions. Everything so that you form a habit.
But over time, the algorithms start giving you less appropriate options, thereby encouraging you to pay. Having paid for a subscription, you temporarily get what you want, and the algorithms start working for you again, but then they roll over again and so on until the next subscription period, which encourages you to make another purchase - super-likes.
The point is that the subscription does not give you the desired result, and the service will still manipulate your behavior with its matching algorithms and gaming mechanics habits: grinds and loot boxes.
At this rate, Tinder will soon turn into a real casino, where you'll get a random user for a fee. And for a big paycheck, you might get someone you like. The only thing with online casinos is much easier: when you play at verified casinos with Canadian dollars, like this page at https://topcadcasinos.net/canadian-dollar-casinos/, you clearly know that the chances of winning are minimal. But if you win it all, you definitely get your money's worth. With Tinder, it's more complicated. You can spend a lot of money and still not find your love.