Match Group

Recipient
Plenty of Fish

Plenty of Fish (POF) is the recipient of the Editor's Top Pick - Free Award for 2018. Just like last year, Plenty of Fish continues to give members a great platform to meet and communicate on. This year the statistics are even more impressive. POF now has more than 150 million registered users of which they add 65,000 new ones every day. On average 4 million users log into and use POF every day (website and app). With all of this activity, POF says, every year 1 million relationships are the result of members meeting on their service.

Bumble changed the game when it launched in 2014 and required female users to make the first move. Now Hinge is offering its own take on conversation, and it hopes the new feature will help combat one of online dating’s biggest scourges.

After focus grouping, surveying, and beta testing, Hinge found that conversations frequently fizzled out simply because users had forgotten to respond. To offer a gentle reminder, the company has introduced ‘Your Turn’, a feature that lets users decide – regardless of gender – who makes the first move, and politely prompts you when it’s your turn to respond.

This addresses one of digital dating’s most stubborn problems. Conversations often start strong but are later abandoned - or, as Hinge’s research discovered, are unintentionally forgotten. Your Turn is a tiny-but-effective nudge to remind you that someone is waiting to hear back. In early tests, the feature was found to reduce ghosting by 25 percent.

OkCupid is shaking things up again. After announcing on December 11, 2017 that it would be overhauling its messaging system to more closely resemble those of competitors like Tinder and Bumble, the company revealed plans for an even more controversial change: a real name policy that marks the end for traditional usernames.

A December 21 blog post explained the reasoning behind the elimination of usernames. The post describes the (often frivolous) pseudonyms as “a pain to come up with and a pain to remember”, and notes that though they can be “a great way to show off who you are”, users are instead encouraged to “use your profile to give people an insight into your interests.”

The change erases a key difference between OkCupid and many of its rivals, which require users to log in via Facebook in order to display their real names on their profiles. The 13-year-old dating service said “it’s time to keep up with the times.”

Recipient
Tinder

For 2018 the Editor's Top Pick - Dating App Award recipient is Tinder. This year saw many changes to the app that most users agree are for the better. Tinder is also very good at letting their community of over 46 million people know about the new changes. They consistantly update their blog with their latest insights about online dating and what they have brought too their app to improve on the user experience.

Some of these changes they introduced in 2017 include an updated user interface with more emphases on photos, tapping as well as swiping to access features, and Reactions (animated responses). Tinder also released a web version of the app for those of you who rather use a desktop or laptop to access the service.

Update 2020-03-30: Please note that POF has announced a new feature available by the end of April called POF Live. It allows live video streaming and private 1 on 1 video chatting (for those who play NextDate). More information can be found here: Plenty of Fish Adds Livestream Feature

Update 2019-08-03: POF has since removed the video calling functionality in their app from Conversation Powers.

Plenty Of Fish made 2017 the year of getting back to basics. While other dating services introduced features seemingly designed to require less communication (looking at you, Tinder Reactions), POF has been all about the chitchat.

First, the company sponsored Conversation Nation, which it claims is the largest study ever conducted on the importance of conversation in the search for love. Inspired by what it learned from the survey, POF went on to update its iOS and Android apps with a new feature called Spark designed to help singles break the ice easily.

"With more conversations than any other dating app, Plenty of Fish is focused on bringing conversation back to singles," Hesam Hosseini, POF’s CEO, said at the time. "In the short time we've been testing Spark, we've seen a 15 percent increase in conversations. Given our scale, this can result in an increase of hundreds of thousands of conversations happening every day on the app, leading to more dates and more relationships – and it is just our first step to bring the art of conversation back to dating."

Popular dating app Tinder is testing a new feature called Feed, aimed at providing users more insight to their matches, and to help spark conversations.

Feed consists of a real-time feed of social media posts from a user’s matches, specifically posts from Instagram and Spotify. The idea is that users can look at what their matches are virtually sharing moment by moment to get a better idea of what they are like – what they are listening to at any given time, where they are, and what they like doing.

The new feature will appear as a tab in the messages screen, according to website Tech Crunch. Users can respond directly to posts in their Feed without having to go back to the profile screen, making it easy to interact. Instead of having to be too descriptive in the profile, or thinking of something unique to say as an introduction, users can let their Instagram photos and playlists speak for themselves.