Part 27. Dating Apps and Fortune-Telling — Analyzing the Habit-Spaces of Specialized Business Models

Core question: Why do some fields induce payment far more easily than other kinds of content?

Desperation Pays

The business models examined so far in this book share a foundation in pleasurable wants. People want games to be more fun, music to be easier to hear, or merchandise from an idol they love. These wants can be intense, but life continues without them.

Some payment-spaces, however, are built on desperate need. Without a solution, people feel anxious and everyday life begins to wobble. That urgency lowers the payment barrier.

Fortune-telling and divination, dating apps, audio content, and independent media appear unrelated. Yet examining why each creates a strong motivation to pay reveals the same structure.

Their common denominator is uncertainty.

Fortune-telling addresses uncertainty about the future; dating apps, uncertainty about meeting someone; audio content, uncertainty about information; and independent media, the information gap created by distrust in mainstream outlets. People willingly pay to reduce uncertainty.

Fortune-Telling and Divination: A Modern Version of a Millennia-Old Payment Habit

South Korea's fortune-telling market is estimated at more than ₩4 trillion annually as of 2022. It is larger than the idol-album market and more than twice the domestic webtoon market, which the Korea Creative Content Agency measured at approximately ₩1.8 trillion in 2022.

The history of divination is as old as recorded civilization. Babylonian astrology, China's I Ching, and Korea's shamanism and Four Pillars practice differ in form, but the desire to know what lies ahead is universal. This is one of humanity's oldest payment-habit spaces.

The space became digital. Fortune-telling apps proliferated after the 2010s.

Jeomsin (2019) is a Korean AI Four Pillars app. Entering a birth date produces readings for one's destiny, compatibility, and fortune. Basic results are free; in-depth analysis is paid. It has millions of monthly active users and consistently ranks near the top of app-store lifestyle categories. By 2023, apps related to saju continued to rank alongside productivity and weather apps. Naver DataLab showed that users in their twenties and thirties accounted for more than half of searches for the term during the same period. Divination, once considered the province of older generations, became everyday content for Millennials and Gen Z.

Numerous tarot apps, including Mind U and Tarot Master, use a similar structure. The first few cards are free, while detailed interpretations and follow-up questions cost money, usually in microtransactions of ₩500–5,000 each.

AI tarot and astrology (since 2023): ChatGPT-based AI accepts a birth date and question, then interprets a reading. Multiple AI-divination services appeared in Korea after 2023. Rather than saying “AI tells your fortune,” they advertise that “AI analyzes traditional Four Pillars theory,” positioning technology as reinforcement for divination's authority. Asking ChatGPT directly to interpret one's Four Pillars also spread explosively after 2023. Divination content had migrated into general-purpose AI rather than remaining inside specialized apps.

Why do fortune-telling apps sell so well? The reasons are structural. First, there is no basis for comparison. Fortune's accuracy cannot be verified in the first place, so even a wrong prediction can end quietly in acceptance: “I suppose that is my fate.” Second, the service encourages repeat consumption. Today's, this month's, and this year's fortunes all require new content when time changes. Third, use activates at urgent moments: the night before a job interview, before an important decision, or when a relationship is unstable. These moments lower the threshold for payment.

The traditional shamanic market also remains large. A consultation with a renowned shaman in Insadong or Gangnam can cost hundreds of thousands to millions of won. Stories of celebrities, businesspeople, and politicians consulting diviners before major decisions are grounded in fact. Organizations connected with Korean folk belief estimate that the country has approximately 300,000–500,000 shamans and professional diviners. That scale makes it an industrial ecosystem, not merely a “world of superstition.” Digital apps are the market's low-cost entry funnel. Users begin with a basic app reading, then move to an offline consultation when an important decision arises.

Dating Apps: Digitizing the Habits of Blind Dates, Gifts, and Deposits

Tinder (2012) established the dating-app paradigm. Before smartphones, people met through introductions by acquaintances, group dates, matchmaking agencies, and dating websites in the PC era.

Tinder's basic structure is simple. A user sees a profile and swipes right to like or left to pass. If both people like each other, they match and can begin a conversation. This is free.

Its paid features, however, are powerful.

Tinder Gold: $39.99 per month in the United States. It reveals who has already liked the user. Knowing before a date that the other person is interested creates an extremely strong motivation to pay. Tinder uses country-specific pricing, with Korean subscriptions set below the US price to reflect purchasing power. Before a 2022 policy change, the lower Tinder Plus tier in the United States also used age-based pricing: $9.99 per month for people under thirty and $19.99 for those thirty or older. The design converted the ruthless logic that “youth is a scarce resource in the dating market” directly into a price structure and led to an age-discrimination lawsuit in California.

Super Like: A special like purchased separately, telling someone that the sender is particularly interested.

Boost: A paid feature that exposes a profile to more nearby people for a set period and works best at peak times.

Tinder generated approximately $1.9 billion in annual revenue in 2023. Its operator, Match Group, earned approximately $3.3 billion in total. Match Group owns numerous dating apps, including OkCupid and Hinge, and acquired Korea's Hyperconnect—the operator of video-matching app Azar—in 2021.

Bumble (2014) requires women to initiate conversations. Founder Whitney Wolfe Herd had been a Tinder cofounder. After suing over sexual harassment inside Tinder and leaving the company, she created Bumble. Its “women first” rule grew out of that context and produced a virtuous cycle of female enrollment. More women attracted more men, raising matching quality across the platform; a value intended to prevent harassment simultaneously drove network growth. At Bumble's 2021 Nasdaq listing, Wolfe Herd was thirty-one, the youngest woman to take a company public as its sole female CEO. Initial market capitalization reached $8 billion. The service also offers paid BFF mode for finding friends and Bizz mode for business networking.

A distinct Korean example is Amanda. Existing opposite-sex members rated applicants' profiles on a five-point scale, and only those averaging above 3.0 were admitted. Amanda was estimated to have approximately six million cumulative members by 2023. This gatekeeper system created a belief that admission promised higher-quality partners. Rejected applicants sought better ratings on a new attempt, motivating purchases of features that increased profile exposure or improved appearance. It converted gatekeeping into a business model.

By contrast, later apps that copied Tinder without meaningful differentiation generally failed. Apps such as Clover launched swipe matching with only partial additions and could not gather users against Tinder's network of tens of millions. A latecomer to a network-effects platform needs either a wholly different rule, as Bumble designed, or a specialized segment, as Amanda targeted.

Where did dating apps' payment-habit space originate? The prototype was the matchmaking agency. Korean offline services such as Duo and Gayeon charge membership fees ranging from millions to tens of millions of won. Their customers desperately want a serious relationship. Dating apps are a low-cost digital version of that urgency: thirty dollars a month feels nearly free beside an offline agency's multimillion-won fee.

Dating apps consequently achieve higher paid-conversion rates than other app categories. Match Group's paying users are estimated at approximately 6–8 percent of its total user base, two to three times the 1–3 percent common in ordinary app categories. Urgency about meeting someone creates the difference.

Audio Content: Monetizing the Habit of Listening to Radio

Radio was free throughout the twentieth century. Listeners received it over the air, and advertisers paid the cost. The arrival of the podcast began changing that structure.

Podcasts appeared in 2004 as a form of internet radio. The name combines iPod and broadcast. At first they were completely free: a platform where individuals posted their own audio without advertising.

In the 2020s, Spotify began using podcasts as a tool for paid conversion. It pursued an exclusive-podcast strategy by acquiring The Ringer in 2020 for about $200 million, Gimlet in 2019 for more than roughly $200 million, and Parcast. In 2020 it invested at least $200 million in an exclusive agreement with podcaster Joe Rogan. The structure said, “You need Spotify to hear this podcast.”

The US podcast advertising market reached approximately $1.9 billion in 2023. Podcasts grew while traditional radio advertising declined.

In Korea, Spoon Radio (2016) created a distinctive space. Creators broadcast live using only their voices, and listeners give them Spoons, a virtual currency. One Spoon costs roughly ₩100, and about 60 percent goes to the creator. Top star DJs reportedly earn millions or tens of millions of won per month. The model transplanted AfreecaTV's successful Star Balloon system from video streaming into audio. By 2023, Spoon Radio had approximately eight million global monthly active users. It also applies YouTube Super Chat's logic to audio. The form differs, but the structure—viewers sending creators gifts convertible into cash in real time—is a formula Korean livestreaming has validated since the mid-2000s.

Audiobooks are an audio version of the reading habit. Korea's Millie's Library (2016) offers unlimited ebooks and audiobooks for ₩9,900 per month and had hundreds of thousands of subscribers in 2023. The US service Audible, acquired by Amazon in 2008, provides one book credit a month for $14.95 and generated an estimated $1.8 billion in revenue in 2023.

Where did audio content's payment habit originate? The free habit-space of radio listening already existed, but radio constrained time and place. Podcasts and audiobooks remove those constraints, make listening more convenient, and let users choose only the subjects they want. Better convenience became the motive to pay.

Newsletters and Independent Media: Newspaper Subscriptions Return in Reverse

Newspaper subscriptions were once among the most universal media-payment habits. A paper arrived at the front door every morning. In Korea, middle-class households routinely subscribed to the Chosun Ilbo, JoongAng Ilbo, or Dong-A Ilbo.

The internet made newspapers free. Once publishers posted articles online without charge, readers formed a habit of getting news without a subscription, and cancellations accelerated. Print circulation at Korea's major dailies fell sharply after the 2000s.

Then the direction reversed: paid newsletters and independent-media subscriptions reemerged.

Substack (2017) lets journalists, writers, and experts publish paid newsletters, taking a 10 percent platform fee. Total paid subscriptions surpassed one million in 2021. Journalists such as Matt Taibbi and Glenn Greenwald left mainstream outlets for independent Substack newsletters. Some earn millions of dollars a year from monthly subscriptions of $5–10.

In Korea, NEWNEEK (2018) is a news-summary newsletter for millennial readers. It had more than 500,000 subscribers in 2023. Beginning as a free newsletter published three times a week, it added premium content and events for revenue.

UPPITY (2019) is a financial newsletter. It attracted more than 350,000 subscribers by explaining stock-market and economic news in accessible language and operates on advertising and paid memberships.

Why have newsletters returned? Paradoxically, because there is too much news. In an age when social media and portals pour out an infinite feed, people value reliable curators who select what matters. They pay not for algorithmic recommendations but for news chosen through the judgment of a particular writer or editor. The structure resembles MUBI gathering independent-film fans through curation rather than algorithms.

The New York Times adapted especially well. Industry observers worried when it introduced a digital paywall in 2011, but official figures show that it passed ten million digital subscriptions in 2022. Digital successfully replaced much of the decline in print. NYT Cooking operates independently as a recipe-subscription service with millions of subscribers by 2023. In games, the company acquired Wordle in 2022 for a price in the low seven figures—roughly one to several million dollars. A single word puzzle became an acquisition tool bringing millions into the NYT app each day. The NYT All Access bundle packages news, Cooking, Games, and sports through its acquisition of The Athletic for less than separate subscriptions. Even if a user might cancel one product, entry into the bundle encourages retention of the whole: a bundle lock-in strategy that reduces churn.

The Common Principle: Why Payment Is Easier in These Fields

Why do fortune-telling, dating apps, audio content, and independent media all induce payment relatively easily?

First, they reduce uncertainty. Greater anxiety about the future drives divination. A stronger wish for a good relationship drives investment in dating apps. The desire for trustworthy guidance amid information overload drives newsletter subscriptions. The greater the uncertainty, the more willingly people pay to reduce it.

Second, results are personalized. Divination reads my Four Pillars. A dating app seeks a partner for me. A newsletter delivers the viewpoint of a curator I selected. Personalized services feel as though they are “for me,” lowering the payment barrier.

Third, results are difficult to verify. Fortune cannot be objectively proved right or wrong. There is no way to compare the person one met through a dating app with the person one might otherwise have met. Because proving “it had no effect” is difficult in these fields, dissatisfaction after payment is relatively low.

Fourth, repeat consumption is structurally designed in. Seeing today's fortune creates curiosity about tomorrow's. A lack of matches creates a desire to buy a Boost for more exposure. A newsletter returns every week. Repetition creates continuing revenue.

Hint Points

Does my content address a desperate need or a pleasurable want?

This question requires a fundamental judgment in business-model design. The psychology of payment differs between the two.

Content based on pleasurable wants: The payment barrier is high. Since users can live without it, the appeal must be strong enough to justify payment. Free trials are important, and competition is intense.

Content based on desperate needs: The payment barrier is low. People need a solution and will pay even without perfect proof. Stronger personalization increases perceived value. Fragmented markets allow focused attacks on specific segments.

When planning content, first determine which side contains the habit-space being targeted. Positioning can also move from entertainment toward urgency. When a personal-training app presents itself not as “enjoyable exercise” but as an answer to “urgent concern about health,” its payment threshold changes.

The fortune-telling app market is worth ₩4 trillion a year, and Tinder earns $1.9 billion, not because of content quality. They landed on two of humanity's most urgent desires across millennia: wanting to know the future and wanting to meet a good partner.

Kim Dongeun · WhtDrgon@MEJE.kr · 2026