When I met my fiancee on OKCupid, she had really grainy profile pics. She'd initially refused to give me her number (she had trouble with stalkers in the past) and was like "Oh, you know what I look like, you can find me on the Caltrain platform." I was like, "No, actually I don't. Here's mine." I wouldn't have been able to find her just going off the profile pics.
That said, there's probably no market for a text-only dating service. The problem is that people who end up in successful relationships drop out of the dating pool entirely, and are no longer in the customer base. We shut down our OKCupid accounts a few weeks after meeting, for example. The online dating industry is really fueled by hookups; if it weren't for casual encounters, dating sites would have no repeat customers. Tinder is the one company that really gets this - they're like "Yeah, we won't even make a pretense about this being about personality, realistically you just want to have sex with somebody hot and then come back to the app tomorrow. If you end up in a relationship, well, good for you! (And not for us. :-/)"
That said, there's probably no market for a text-only dating service. The problem is that people who end up in successful relationships drop out of the dating pool entirely, and are no longer in the customer base. We shut down our OKCupid accounts a few weeks after meeting, for example. The online dating industry is really fueled by hookups; if it weren't for casual encounters, dating sites would have no repeat customers. Tinder is the one company that really gets this - they're like "Yeah, we won't even make a pretense about this being about personality, realistically you just want to have sex with somebody hot and then come back to the app tomorrow. If you end up in a relationship, well, good for you! (And not for us. :-/)"