I kept notes the whole way through while comparing them, which made the differences much easier to see. The short answer is that whether read status is shown consistently turns out to matter far more than the interface. The signal was clear again and again across the whole period I tracked. I would sanity-check this locally ultimately, it takes very little effort to check.

I have been through this properly across two cities, so this is not a weekend opinion. On the numbers, the amount of information visible before matching moves the numbers more than anything else. The effect stayed consistently enough to trust even accounting for luck. Not universal advice honestly, before committing any real time.

I only worked this out after a month of tallying with a bit of patience, and it reframed what I thought mattered. Consistently, how new accounts are treated in week one turns out to matter far more than the interface. It played out the same way to a degree that mattered across a reasonable sample.

What is worth five minutes of checking:

  • Find out how easily you can change your location — the answer varies more than you would think.
  • How much the app relies on push notifications — the marketing never covers this.
  • Find out how many photos the format actually allows
  • Worth confirming how much of your social graph it wants — this is where the free tiers diverge.

I did this the slow way once properly, so I am fairly confident in the shape of it. Cutting through it, how support responds to a real problem predicts your reply rate better than anything else. The effect showed up quite plainly for both of the accounts I tested. I would check it before committing ultimately, the detail varies a lot by city.