Is ghost-shaming the new ghost-hunting? One dating app thinks so.
Disappearing dates are everywhere these days, and dating apps have gone into full ghost-hunting mode.
Coffee Meets Bagel is the latest app to join the fray. It previously distinguished itself by giving women the upper hand, allowing them to select each date from a pool of matches who’ve already expressed interest. Now they’re launching a new premium membership program that offers several features designed to put an end to chats that go nowhere.
They're doing this after a survey of their users revealed that 52 percent of them said that “lack of response” was the most frustrating part of their experience. So how are they planning to stop ghosts in their tracks? Unfortunately, there is no sage burning involved.
AdultFriendFinder — readers’ pick for casual connections
Hinge — popular choice for regular meetups
Part one of their strategy is to offer read receipts. That way you don’t have to sit there wondering whether someone isn’t writing back simply because they haven’t yet seen your message. Part two is to give access to detailed data on how active your matches (or as they call them, “bagels”) are, so you can know what kind of engagement you can expect from them.
If you check out your bagel’s activity report, you’ll be able to see the percentage of times they chat with their matches, how often they’re the one to send the first message, the average time it takes them to respond and whether they’ve been active on the app within 72 hours.
Dawoon Kang, who cofounded CMB with her two sisters, told us that increasing transparency and accountability is the key to cutting down on ghosting. She explained, "If the level of your engagement becomes part of your profile for other members to see before they make a decision on whether to like or pass you. If you ghost, it will impact your future dating prospects."
Access to this data will cost you $35 a month, which will also buy you 6,000 beans currency you spend to unlock other features and additional matches. Premium memberships is available now on Android and will be rolling out to everyone in the coming weeks.
Coffee Meets Bagel is not the first to do this -- the elite dating app The League launched a few of the same features last week -- but they are offering a new level of transparency that is rare among the big dating apps.
Now we just have to wait and see if ghost-shaming works.
Cassie Murdoch is Mashable's Culture Editor.. Before coming here, Cassie was Senior Culture Writer at Vocativ. She previously wrote for Jezebel and The Hairpin. Cassie spends most of her time thinking about and consuming cheese in all its glorious forms.
