How We Developed a Dating App on Telegram
With the departure of Tinder from Russia and Belarus, a fairly wide niche for dating apps has opened up. Some of these apps have gone into brutal monetization, sucking money out of the poor souls who came, not counting on long-term success, some have occupied their niche and behave more modestly. However, in our subjective opinion, not all Tinder users have found a replacement for themselves and are still thirsty for new acquaintances. Therefore, we decided to break into this market and make an app accessible to everyone, where everyone could find someone interesting for themselves. Now we will tell you everything in more detail.
At first, we had the idea to make it as usual: a dating app, with dialogues, swipes, likes and “usual” monetization, but after thinking a little and analyzing other apps, it became obvious that we still want an app where people could interact more freely and rely not only on photos, but also on other more important aspects. In addition, Telegram suddenly developed mini-apps (hamsters, etc.), which gave us the idea to use this platform to implement the app. Considering that authorization would already be ready, and there would be no need to download apps for users, the choice became almost obvious. In addition, the platform provides a ready-made solution in the form of dialogues between people using stickers, voice, emoji, etc. – a lot of things that dating apps do not provide.
There is no getting away from the basics, so the application initially implemented:
User profile – creation of a person's card, which contains photos, age, hobbies, goals and other equally important information that will help other users recognize you. This also includes screens for viewing other people's profiles, including editing and viewing your own profile.
Swipes – here the user will choose a partner based on information about the potential partner, while the application recommends people based on his interests, habits, distance, etc.
Likes – a screen where you can see people who liked you and a list of already formed matches. Here we decided to follow the path of adequacy and not monetize this screen – users always see everyone who liked them and can like them back.
We didn’t have to make the usual screen with messages, because dialogues in Telegram are already available and provide huge functionality.
How did it all start?
First, we made a Telegram bot in which our web application is launched. There were no big difficulties here, because all that was needed was to register it through Fatherbot. Then bind the web, which will be displayed in the bot itself as a mini-application. Initially, the launch occurred on command, but with the addition of an internal store to Telegram, a button for launching the application appeared in the bot card itself, which made it more convenient to use. The choice of how to launch the application remains with the user.
When you first log into the application, a user account, based on data from Telegram. After successfully creating an account, a token is generated, which is necessary for communicating with the server and receiving data. In addition, the user is asked for permission to receive coordinates and the presence of a username in Telegram is checked. After this, a small onboarding follows, where the user can enter information about himself, upload photos and start searching.
Then a system of recommendations and notifications was implemented.
The list of profiles available for viewing is formed by a special algorithm that takes into account compatibility based on interests (including, for example, taking into account the coincidence of interests “football” and “sports activities”), goals and attitudes towards certain things and the user's status (the longer a person has not entered the application, the closer he is to the end of the list). For more accurate work of the algorithm, you need to fill out your profile in more detail.
I think everyone understands how the matches themselves work. However, as mentioned above, we made page likeswhich is available to everyone (and will remain available forever), unlike other apps. That is, you can always see who liked us, like us back and form a pair, or put a dislike
As for notificationshere we used the capabilities of Telegram itself, that is, we did not implement push notifications, since notifications are in Telegram itself. That is, the bot simply sends you messages about a new like or match. The notification will immediately allow you to go to the desired application screen.
After the match, everything is simple: you can go to the “soulmate” profile and study all the information about him in detail, and then click “Write a message”and you will be taken to private messages with the person. To tell the truth, we are thinking of separating the functions of internal messages and Telegram messages for those who do not want to immediately expose their Telegram account, but this is still at the obs level. If you have any suggestions on this matter, you can write in the comments, we will be only glad.
In principle, there are no more functions in the release yet, the main thing that is there is a working tool for dating in the (most) convenient messenger. Next, we plan to add many original functions that we cannot announce yet, but this has definitely not been in dating apps yet and in our opinion it will be very good (knock on wood).
In any case, if you are interested, we invite you to check out the app and find a person to your liking. To do this, just find us on Telegram – LinkUp (@LinkUpAppBot).
