I was trying to explain federated websites to a friend and she asked if there is a federated dating app. She recently went through a break up and the apps are dreadful as I’m sure many of you know.
It’d be hard to launch a dating system on the fediverse because it the type of service that relies heavily on network effects. People want to be on the dating app with the most people. However, I think there is an opportunity because the mainstream apps are so notoriously awful, monetized, and enshitified.
It could be a community within an existing network or it could be its own website. I don’t know, I’m just putting the idea out there.
As others pointed out, there’s little infrastructure cost recuperating possible with an on-off service model.
Lemmy is among the worst places for this, but there could be something like a standard tag (looking for dates/sex/friends etc) that is hashed against geodata on more personalised accounts (like Pixelfed or Mastodon or Friendica(?)).
Maybe it could be a sub-part of the Friendica idea? That way, you don’t have the problem that once the user is done with the service, they leave. Some profile info might already be there, maybe get a list check-boxes as to which info you want facing the date-service side and off you go?