The Quiet Months - Why join early?
How social platforms grow
Ever wondered why almost everyone uses Facebook? They weren’t first-to-market. They didn’t have the best technical solution. What they did manage to do is leverage a phenomenon called network effects. Basically people use a platform because other people use it. Nobody wants to use an empty platform, I mean, who are you going to talk to?
And that is arguably JOAD’s biggest challenge in the early days: how to attract users while the platform is still small. Let’s face it, as an early joiner, some mornings you will open the app and there will be nobody for you.
Reasons to join a young platform
And now you’re probably wondering, “Why should I join then?”. That’s the question I hope to answer today.
This may sound grandiose, but in a very real sense, being first allows you to shape the platform for decades to come.
There is a famous internet legend that asks a simple question: Why is the Space Shuttle the size it is? While the story is more of an urban myth than strict historical fact—so take it with a pinch of salt—the gist of it is a brilliant illustration of path dependence, or how early choices lock in the future.
The legend goes like this: When NASA was designing the Space Shuttle, the solid rocket boosters had to be built in Utah and shipped to Florida by train, meaning their diameter was strictly limited by the width of the railway tunnels along the route. Those tunnels were built to accommodate standard railway tracks, which early steam locomotive pioneers modelled after the jigs and tools used for horse-drawn carts. Those carts had been built to match the deep, rutted tracks carved into ancient European roads by Roman war chariots, which were themselves sized just wide enough to fit the rears of two draft horses walking side-by-side. So, according to the legend, the design of the world’s most advanced spacecraft was ultimately constrained by the backside of a horse.
What does that have to do with JOAD? As an early adopter, you get to set the culture of the platform. How you choose to show up will influence who else decides to join (or leave) the platform. When you tell your fiends about it, they tell their friends, so more people like you join the platform. When people read your comments on the blog, they subconsciously ask themselves: “Does that sound like me?”. If it does, odds are they will join. Once that culture is set, it is very difficult to change.
But shaping the culture and future of the platform is not the only reason to join early.
Most people agree that dating in general and online dating in particular is a mess right now. What we’ve been doing for the past 20 years clearly hasn’t been working. And nothing is going to change, unless we — the people who are dating — change it. So this is your chance to stop doing the same old thing and expecting a different result. Stop swiping. Take action. Take a stand. Show up in a different way. Ditch the traditional apps and switch to something calmer, slower, more considered and more balanced. Help us restore healthy dialogue between men and women by being the change you seek (see what I did there? :-)). Big companies are making millions, promising love and fun, but delivering nothing but frustration and anxiety.
If those two reasons don’t move you, JOAD probably isn’t for you. But if you think we’ve got a point, you may be asking yourself if yet another dating app is really what we need. Humour me for a second as I try to explain my take on it.
A dating app itself isn’t worth much. It’s lines of code that anyone with access to AI can write. The value comes from the community behind it. Every app attracts a different type of community. That comes down to several choices made by the owners of the app, such as how the app itself works, how its community behaves and how it is moderated, as well as the information and messaging the company puts out. It’s a slow, complicated process, but in a real sense, each app is a proxy for a different community.
JOAD is different
What sets JOAD apart, is precisely the type of people it aims to attract: committed, communicative, willing to make an effort. Respectful, tolerant, mature (for their age). We are unconcerned about superficial measures like looks. And we welcome all types of people and relationship types. Ultimately what unites us as a community is our fundamental values.
How will we do it?
- Platform design: Slower, more deliberate. You receive only one match recommendation per day, and each person is shown to no more than 5 people per day. So the maximum number of opening messages you can get in your inbox in a day is 5. People who have waited longest for a match are put first in the queue, so everyone gets a chance. The first month is free, subscription is month-by-month and you can cancel any time. No lock in periods. One fixed price subscription buys you everything. There are no boosts, or likes or anything else to buy.
- Transparency: We show you the numbers, so you can know, not guess, how things are tracking.
- Active community building: As we scale we will start hosting real life events. It’s a well known fact that trust is built much faster through face to face communication than any other way.
- Advocacy for de-escalation of the gender war: Whenever we can, we will call on men and women to come to the negotiating table, to help reshape how we understand and communicate with one another.
- Facilitating help and personal growth: We will partner with select service providers to deliver services that help people show up better in their relationships. We will recommend books, websites, social media channels and other resources that are aligned to our mission.
- And best of all, the price: it’s less than half the price of the mainstream apps, and after all the extras they make you buy, it’s probably much less than that.
In a nutshell, this is what we are doing:
Fixing online dating, one date at a time.
Join us!
So if you believe in what we are doing, consider signing up or getting in touch. It matters more than you think, and it may just help you find the love of your life.
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