Match Group

Online dating is big business after the holidays. In fact, user activity remains consistently high until Valentine’s Day, according to reports from online dating veteran websites like Match.

But it’s also a huge time for dating apps, especially Tinder – who had its biggest growth day in its history. On Sunday January 3rd, Tinder execs revealed that the app experienced the most downloads and the most growth of active users in a single day - ever. (Coincidentally, most online dating sites report that their biggest, busiest day of the year is the Sunday after New Year’s, when people are faced with the end of holiday revelry and the return to work.)

Needless to say, Tinder must have seen this spike coming and decided to take advantage with a new feature, which came in the form of a push notification. The notification alerted users when there was 2x to 3x higher rate of matches in their local area. It said:

Wow! Tinder is on fire in your area! Chances of a match are 3X higher right now (flame emoji)

The push notification was an interesting choice for Tinder execs to make, since the app prides itself specifically on not sending unwanted messages to its users, keeping the interaction as seamless as possible.

Tinder CEO Sean Rad looks at the feature as a win-win for users. “When there is a spike in engagement on the platform, we want to let users know so that they can take advantage of that moment,” Rad told news website TechCrunch.

The match rate is the number of swipes it takes to get to a match. When there is more engagement, the likelihood of matching with someone goes up. In a way, it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you tell someone that the match rate is 2-3 times higher, then likely they will keep swiping (engaging) until they get a match.

“The most fascinating thing about this type of notification is that, by notifying users when those peak moments are happening, it increases the overall success rate for our users,” Rad told news website Tech Crunch. “It has a compounding effect and produces even more activity.”

The match alert is the latest in a series of moves Tinder has made to overcome its hook-up reputation and concentrate on more long-term matches. The company has also been sharing stories and photos of happy couples who met on Tinder, including a tweet from a couple on their wedding day, hoping to show proof that the app is helpful for finding long-term love.

Tinder faces competition from new services like Bumble, which lets the women call the shots first, and Coffee Meets Bagel, which provides one match a day to make sure people aren’t just mindlessly swiping. For more on this dating app, please read our review of Tinder.

The 2015 Editor's Top Pick - Over All Award recipient is POF.com. This is the hardest category for us to determine and it was a real close call this year but in the end we at Dating Sites Reviews felt Plenty of Fish deserved the Editor's Top Award.

2015 was a big year for the largest free dating site Plenty of Fish. The biggest POF news (and not the reason for the award) is IAC purchased the company for $575 million. Why did the owners of Match.com spend so much? It has to do with the amount of users POF has, and how well they interact with each other. Since 2003, POF has had more than 100 million singles from around the world register for the dating service. Everyday more than 3.5 million singles log into the service to search for and communicate with other members. In total this generates about 9 million conversations a day and results in every 120 seconds a member confirming to POF that they have started a relationship.

For the last 12 years POF has remained popular due to the fact that it not only has free communication but because the service is easy to use. It does have a paid upgrade option for additional perks but the service's core features (profile, searching, and sending messages) have remained free. POF also continues to pour resources back into the service and is constantly tweaking their matching algorithm to produce better results. This is also noticeable in the POF dating apps as well, by the new features you see with every update and by how easy they are to use.

Read our review of Plenty of Fish for more information about this online dating service or visit Plenty of Fish directly.

This Year's Runner Up for this award is: Match.com

We’ve all heard (or seen via Instagram) the news about Gwen Stefani and Blake Shelton dating. They met as co-workers on the set of reality TV show The Voice, and now, since they both split from their respective spouses, they have become a very public item.

But what does it mean to work alongside the person you’re romantically involved with – do many people do it, or is it just something most people think about?

If you have been wondering (or considering your own workplace affair), Match.com has crunched the numbers for you to reveal a few facts on the subject. They surveyed thousands of singles in their latest “Singles in America” study, and revealed information on workplace dating.

Following are some interesting stats that Match found in regard to workplace dating:

• According to Match, one-third of singles have dated someone they work with, and more than half say a happy relationship is more important than their career.
• Of the 35% of people Match surveyed who have dated someone they work with (37% of males, 34% of females), 55% of them don’t even try to hide the romance – much like Gwen and Blake, who have been documenting it themselves via Instagram.
• An almost equal number of men and women (57% of males, 56% of females) say that a happy relationship is more important to them than their careers.
• The majority of people surveyed agree that flirting with a co-worker is totally fine (75% of men and 66% of women) - but do it after work. Forty-three percent of people surveyed said they prefer to flirt with colleagues after work rather than during the day at the office (39%). And a whopping majority of 92% said they would never flirt with their boss.
• Don’t put it in writing – only 14% of people said they have flirted with a colleague via email.
• Men are more likely to act on their feelings, regardless of the potential consequences. Forty-three percent of men vs. only 35% of women are inclined to flirt in the office. Fifity-seven percent of men vs. 29% of women fantasize about having sex with one of their co-workers, and 46% of men vs. 15% of women would consider having a one-night stand with someone they work closely with.
• Of the people surveyed who admitted to dating someone at work, 65% of them have had a one-night stand, 56% have had a friends with benefits relationship and 80% think about sex at least once a week.

The recipient of the Editor's Top Pick - Innovative Award for 2015 is Plenty of Fish (POF). This online dating service has kept itself on the top by being an innovator. In 2015 POF reached more than 100 million users and has on average 3.5 active users everyday.

In the past year POF.com received a number of updates. One of the most important is the website went responsive. This means it can now be viewed on a smartphone's browser without all the pinching and zooming. Depending on the screen size of the device viewing pof.com, the website will automatically rearrange the layout along with adding and removing interface items to give the user the best possible viewing experience.

The POF service itself saw a number of new features added. One of the more popular ones was the ability to add photo's to your profile from Instagram. The POF App (iOS and Android) had the most work done on them since they had the most new features. Upgraded members (ie paid users) now have access to VoIP Calling. This means you can contact other members using the dating app for voice calling but still keep your phone number hidden for the extra bit of safety. The POF app also now can send you push notifications on your phone. This means if you are using another app while you get a new message from a potential POF match, you will be notified right away via a popup window with the message along with the ability to reply to the message.

Read our review of Plenty of Fish for more information about this online dating service or visit Plenty of Fish directly.

This Year's Runner Up for this award is: Tinder

The Editor's 2015 Top Pick - Dating App Award recipient is Tinder. 2015 was a huge year for Tinder. With over 1.6 billion swipes a day and with over 9 billion matches since it launched in 2012, Tinder has become one of the most popular dating apps (it was the most mentioned dating service on Twitter in 2015). It currently has over 40 million active members and it has recently launched a paid upgrade feature called Tinder Plus. Tinder Plus is a set of new features (Rewind and Passport) designed to make the Tinder power user become a subscriber (so the service can actually make money). From all of the swipe rights every week, more than 1.5 million in-person dates are thanks to Tinder with more than half of those making it to a second date.

The funny thing with Tinder is that it has a reputation on being a hookup app but a number of surveys online have found that 80% of singles who use Tinder are looking for a long-term relationship. Tinder also has a fairly even ratio of men and women. For every 4 women on Tinder there are 6 men. Tinder also has become a bit of a celebrity hot spot (Hillary Duff, Katy Perry, Lindsay Lohan). Celebrity accounts are now verified and have brought a lot of media attention for not only the celebrity but Tinder as well.

Read our review of Tinder for more information about this online dating service or visit Tinder directly.

This Year's Runner Up for this award is: Match.com

The 2015 Editor's Top Pick - Free Award recipient is OkCupid. OkCupid has always been a favorite of ours and it continues to be a favorite of our visitors as well. Google recently ranked OkCupid as the fourth most searched online dating service in 2015. OkCupid sees more than 1 million app installs (combine count of iTunes and Android) every week and over 7.3 million messages are sent between OkCupid members every day. You will also find between 125 thousand and 180 thousand users online at any one time. Most of these users are from the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom.

OkCupid also has one of the highest app ratings of any dating app on Google Play. Over 200 thousand people have rated the app and have given it a 4.2 out of 5 stars. On iTunes they have a rating of 4.5 out of 5 stars. OkCupid has a staff of 45 employees (most of them software engineers) who are dedicated in bring it's members a high quality online dating experience. Being a free service means their first priority is not about generating paid subscriptions but about generating matches between members and having those members communicate as easy as possible. Being free also means that you can send messages with any member you find on OkCupid that sparks your interest for zero cost. With most paid dating sites both members have to have a paid subscription to be able to communicate with each other. OkCupid does offer a paid upgrade called the A-List. This upgrade gives you enhancements like advanced search options, message read receipts and no online ads.

Matchmaking on OkCupid is more than your basic filter for age ranges and matching people together with who have the same interests. OkCupid uses real math and algorithms that help provides matches based on the Match Questions you answer. Match Questions are not only provided by OkCupid but by other users as well.

Read our review of OkCupid for more information about this online dating service or visit OkCupid directly.

This Year's Runner Up for this award is: POF