Types (Niche)

More online daters are using their phones to connect with each other rather than their laptops. Considering how many of us have smartphones and how often we check them, it only makes sense that this would be the best way to reach busy singles. So online dating sites have had to strengthen their mobile offerings to compete with popular apps like Tinder. Some have fallen behind with clunky, outdated features, but some are taking big steps forward in optimizing their technology.

The importance of optimizing users’ mobile experience isn’t lost on JDate, one of the most popular online dating sites for Jewish singles. The company has just launched a new version of the site that takes its most popular features and makes them even easier to access and use on mobile devices.

The widely-used Secret Admirer feature, a staple on the main JDate website, is now available on mobile. It’s been a key component of JDate’s technology, and according to JDate, other online dating sites have licensed the model due to its popularity. The Secret Admirer's "Yes-No-Maybe" functionality connects mutually interested users anonymously. Users like this because it eliminates some anxiety-provoking guess-work that shy online daters want to avoid.

JDate's new, mobile-optimized design also places key activities, such as profile views and messages, front and center on the site. Users are able to access quick, on-the-go status checks along with their email messages, IMs, Favorites and Flirts. Additionally, JDate mobile's 2.0 experience allows members to easily make changes and improvements to their profiles from their mobile devices. They can update directly from the site if they want to change photos or make edits to their descriptions.

"The new JDate mobile site enables JDaters to connect with one another and the community like never before," said Greg Liberman, CEO of Spark Networks, the company that owns and operates JDate. "Our goal has always been to provide JDate members with the tools to meet others who share their culture, values and interests, and our new, easy-to-navigate mobile site puts best-in-class tools, quite literally, right at our members' fingertips."

The question is, for JDate users – is it too little too late? The answer is unclear, because for the many people who download mobile dating apps like Tinder, there are still more online dating. The majority of singles use a mix of both online dating sites and mobile dating apps, especially if they want to keep options open. This means constantly improving technology to stay competitive.

JDate currently hosts more than 750,000 users. To find out more about this dating site please read our review of JDate.

By the looks of things, Mark Zuckerberg is pretty much determined to take over the entire Internet.

Facebook has dabbled in just about everything, from email to a digital newspaper. There's been talk before of Facebook entering the online dating market, but a new update makes that possibility look closer than ever.

In some ways, Facebook has always inadvertently been a dating site. From the very beginning, it’s been a place to stalk exes, reconnect with old flames, bond with semi-strangers, and confess to crushes. Some thought that the introduction of Facebook's Graph Search heralded a new era of the social network as a barely disguised dating site, but the idea never really came to fruition. Now Facebook is taking things a step further, with a new button that allows users to ask people without a declared relationship status if they're single.

The “Ask” button appears next to the Relationship Status section of the Facebook profile. Clicking it brings up a dialogue box with text that reads “Let [your friend] know why you're asking for [his/her] relationship status.” If you receive such a request and choose to reply, you can opt to share your answer with all your friends or just the asker. Ask buttons had already been introduced for other aspects of the Facebook profile, like hometown and phone number.

"This feature provides an easy way for friends to ask you for information that's not already on your profile," Facebook spokeswoman MoMo Zhou told CNN. "For example, a friend could ask where you work or for your hometown. If you choose to answer, this information is then added to your profile. By default, only you and your friend can see it, and you also have the option of sharing it with others, too."

That explanation pointedly steers clear of mentioning dating, but there's no doubt Facebook has the potential to be a disruptive force in the online dating industry. Facebook made nearly $8 billion in 2013 revenue, a massive jump on the comparatively small $2 billion in revenue made by the online dating market. On top of that, Facebook already has a large global customer base and next to no need to spend money on customer acquisition. And then there's the fact that Facebook is free, which gives it an enormous advantage over the many online dating sites that charge for membership.

Facebook doesn't appear to be in a hurry to explicitly make the transition to online dating service, but that is likely working in its favor. Under-the-radar Facebook could subtly siphon business away from traditional dating sites, providing the exact same services without the stigma associated with online dating.

To find out more about the best way to use this social network as a dating tool you can read our Facebook review.

A recent article in Time Magazine focuses on the so-called “hook-up culture,” which has become a subject of much concern and debate. Particularly from older Americans who graduated from college a while ago. Now, the students and twenty-something are speaking out.

The writer of the Time article complained about the media coverage of a college professor in Boston named Kerry Cronin, who requires her students to go on a “real date” as part of their class credit. “No thanks,” the writer says in her article, “I’m here to inform that professor that we 20-somethings don’t need help, thank you very much.”

She goes on to reference statistics to disprove that hook-up culture is an epidemic, citing less than 15% of college students have more than two hook-ups per year. Also, “hooking up” means anything from sharing a kiss to having sex, so the lines are a little blurry as to how much people are engaging in risky behavior.

She also argues that it’s much more natural to socialize with people and get to know them in groups and at parties where it feels more organic, rather than over coffee and forced conversation. While she makes good points, she also admits that it is easier for her generation to hide behind a screen, especially when it comes to being rejected. Text is the preferred method of interacting, rather than asking someone out face-to-face as Professor Cronin argues they should.

Her points are valid, but there is definitely room for improvement. While college students (at least in the past couple of generations) have engaged in a higher level of casual sex and hook-ups than at other times in their lives, there does seem to be a shift in college students’ thinking today. Because they are attached to their smartphones, pulling them out at parties or in dorm rooms instead of engaging with the people sitting next to them, they aren’t really learning how to be alone together, to engage in conversation without distraction. This doesn’t help them learn to communicate better in relationships.

Also, there is the drinking that goes on at college. Much of the hooking up takes place after indulging at parties, which means people aren’t making the best decisions when it comes to their bodies.

But does all this mean they aren’t prepared for dating?

I think that college provides a good backdrop for learning how to interact and flirt. There are plenty of single, available people who you have something in common with – which likely you wouldn’t encounter again. So why not experiment with dating in a group setting, among your friends?

All of the formal asking out will happen once they graduate. And even then, hook-up culture exists in even more removed ways – through dating apps like Tinder. Dating is still part of growing up, no matter how you try to avoid the particulars.

The dating service Coffee Meets Bagel was built on three simple principles:

1. Your friends are the best conduits for your dates.
2. Meeting quality people doesn't have to be complicated or awkward.
3. Unless you choose to share it, your dating life should be private.

Instead of offering the overwhelming number of potential matches that most dating services do, Coffee Meets Bagel sets itself apart by highlighting only one person each day. You can either "like" or "ignore" the profile, and if both parties indicate interest in each other, they're directed to a private phone line (courtesy of Twilio) where they can text message for a seven-day period. If all goes well and they choose to meet up in person, CMB offers a discount at a local restaurant or café.

The idea is a solid one, but Coffee Meets Bagel has not yet managed to achieve the mass appeal of its biggest competitor in the mobile dating sphere: Tinder. Still, CMB has received $2.8 million in funding and recently launched its largest app update yet.

The big news in CMB-land is a new IM system within the Coffee Meets Bagel app. Like before, the IM feature has a seven-day expiration date, but now users can chat immediately without having to switch back and forth between apps.

Instant messaging is hardly a revelation in the world of online dating – in fact, it's downright standard – but CMB has found a somewhat unique approach to implementing it. With in-app messaging, Coffee Meets Bagel now has far more control over its users’ experiences, and many more opportunities to learn about their users by studying behavior data.

CMB is a “quality over quantity” dating experience. The focus is on making meaningful connections between users, not on connecting as many users as possible. On top of that, users are never introduced to random strangers, but rather to Facebook friends of friends. The company has found that members who exchange text messages within the first 24 hours are more likely to exchange their real phone numbers later on. They also, on average, chat at 2.6x the volume of those who didn't swap texts within the first day.

That unique approach to mobile dating, plus the new IM system, may be what Coffee Meets Bagel needs to take things to the next level. But founder Dawoon Kang says that stigma is still the greatest challenge faced by dating services:

“What we observe is that a lot of people hesitate because they don’t want to feel like they are ‘actively’ trying to meet someone. Making people understand that a dating app is just another channel of meeting someone has been a challenge.”

If you’ve tried out Tinder (or any dating service, for that matter) you’ve probably run across your fair share of bizarre conversations. It's a strange world out there. Sometimes the weirdness borders on amusing, but all too often it's annoying or downright creepy.

Thankfully, the Internet makes it easy to disengage from the creeps. It takes no effort whatsoever to ignore a message and hardly anything extra to block or report a user. But where's the fun in that? Why take the high road when you could take the low road, where all the fun is?

Anna Gensler, a 23-year-old artist, has a much more interesting way of dealing with the deadbeats of online dating. She began drawing nude portraits of the creeps who contacted her via Tinder, and posting the results to Instagram (NSFW, of course) alongside their offensive messages. And then, for the cherry on top, she sends the finished product back to the culprit for a final review.

Slate spoke with Gensler about her unique approach to turning harassment into art. “I feel like this gets me in trouble a lot,” she said of her inspiration for the project, “but when someone does something I think is rude, I always want to give them a taste of their own medicine. I’m an artist, and I try to use art as my weapon, even though that sounds so lame. So I thought, ‘What is something I can do to make me feel the way that they’re making me feel?’”

She settled on drawing them “sad-naked,” the most immature thing she could think of, because “their pickup lines are the most juvenile, basic things, but also still oddly offensive.” Each of her portraits is based on the guys' profile pictures, but modified to be as unflattering as possible. The subjects are all made chubbier, scrawnier, or just not particularly well-endowed.

Not satisfied with taking on the creeps of Tinder, Gensler joined OkCupid in hopes of finding new subjects worthy of her artistic intentions. She even put a blatant warning on her profile – “I’m going to draw you naked if you send me rude messages” – and a link back to the Instagram. Whether or not it deterred potential creeps is unknown, but it did intrigue a surprising number of nice guys who found the project funny and requested a portrait of their own.

And what about the guys who receive Gensler’s works of art? “There are a few approaches,” she explained. “Some of them get really angry and say a bunch of mean stuff. Some of them get a little bit offended ‘and say, “Why am I so fat? My facial hair doesn’t really look like that. My nipples are smaller than that!’ They think I didn’t do them justice. Some people just block me. But a couple of guys have actually said smart things after I sent it to them.”

MillionaireMatch.com has just surpassed the 2 million member mark and is celebrating with a new digital billboard in Times Square.

“Join the 1%: Don’t get left behind,” the ad reads. It's a slightly odd choice, given the bad rap of the 1% and the fact that the term was coined due to protests in New York City in the first place, but it also begs the question: how many MillionaireMatch.com users are actually millionaires?

Darren Shuster, North American CEO for the dating service, recently spoke with MarketWatch about the milestone and their membership. Here are a few highlights from their conversation:

On what it means to be a “certified millionaire”…

“You can become a “Diamond Member,” which shows you have $1 million in assets or a large income, a minimum of $200,000 a year. Then you can search for other Diamond Members who’ve had their income verified.”

On online dating’s notorious reputation for being full of fakes…

“MillionaireMatch has as many fakes as most dating sites. Some people are great, some people are phony, some people get a lot out of it and some people quit in a week. You have to know who is exaggerating and who’s not. Some people say they own the car and the house, but they’re leasing the car and they’re renting the house.”

On sexism…

“People say all sorts of things when it comes to love or money. Women are attracted to wealth whether the website exists or not. We’re not exactly reinventing the wheel here. I’m sure there are people who will call it sexist and call it weird, and will say things like, ‘How could you go after them for money?’ If you met someone and they both have a sense of humor and good physical condition, who would you go for? I’d go after the woman with the big bank account. Wouldn’t you?”

On the clientele who make up the MillionaireMatch userbase…

“Some of these people are making $100,000 a year. On paper, they’re a millionaires. But they’re not necessarily bringing in $40,000 a month. Women are smart and intuitive. It’s almost like crowdsourcing to weed out the phonies. They’re probably our best security.”

And finally, the big question: How many members are actually millionaires?

“That I would rather not disclose, if I can help it. Most of the men have a million dollars or more at least in assets, including their house, and have money in savings. We have a fair share of those.”

To find out more about this dating service you can read our review of Millionaire Match.