Match

You've heard of wearing your heart on your sleeve, but how about wearing your heart on your wrist?

Purchase an Apple Watch and you could do exactly that.

Tim Cook called the gadget Apple's “most personal device yet,” so naturally developers jumped at the chance to make it even more personal. The smartwatch won't only shake up how we keep time, but perhaps also how we find love on-the-go.

Several of the biggest players in the online dating game were quick to introduce apps when the Apple Watch launched back in April. Match.com, OkCupid, and Tinder (coincidentally – or not – owned by the same parent company) all released apps designed for the device. Each one is an easy extension of your regular online or mobile dating activity.

But it's not just the biggies who are getting in on the ground floor. A few lesser-known dating services have also sprung up for the smartwatch.

1. Watchme88: This watch-first app helps users meet other users nearby in real-time. Set your preferences (gender, location, age) and when a match shows up within the specified radar, both Apple Watches start to glow. If you're shy, you can send your match a message or a wink before approaching in person.
2. Jack'd: Jack’d claims to be the first Apple Watch app for guys looking to meet guys. Users receive notifications in real-time whenever their profile is viewed by someone nearby. The app also offers key insights on who’s viewed your profile and other revealing stats.
3. The Inner Circle: Think you have what it takes to be part of the inner circle? If the answer is yes, try out this app, which prescreens members to “maintain the highest quality.” The Inner Circle has been featured in Cosmopolitan, Men's Health, ELLE and more.
4. PlanetRomeo: PlanetRomeo claims to be one of the world’s largest online dating and social platforms for the gay/bi male and transgender communities. Use your Apple Watch to browse profiles, read messages, and save users to your favorites so you'll be notified when they're online.
5. Close Encounter by 3nder: Feeling adventurous? Try a “real-time blind dating app for open-minded people.” The app does away with profile photos to focus on personality. Your watch will vibrate when a potential match is nearby, then you can decide whether to reveal your location. Close Encounter doesn't exist quite yet, but you can read more about its proposed features on Medium.

Or maybe you're not into the big names or the underdogs. In that case, you have a solid middle-of-the-road option in Coffee Meets Bagel. The company released an Apple Watch version of its popular app that simplifies the dating process by focusing on only one potential match each day.

Are you on Tinder? Chances are, you’re also a member of a traditional online dating site – and many of you are paying for the service. According to a recent survey by Global Web Index, 70% of Tinder users also use an online dating site – and the majority are accessing all dating sites through their phones (58%).

Tinder has changed the online dating market in a big way – more people are participating, simply because Tinder has helped online dating lose its stigma by providing a low-intensity, game-like experience. It’s much easier to swipe left and right according to potential matches' looks, and have Facebook and Instagram photos populate your profile without having to do much. It takes the pressure off of the whole experience, plus it’s free unless you upgrade to Tinder Plus.

However, many people who use Tinder want to add to their online dating experience, and therefore join paid sites like Match.com along with other online dating sites, paid or free (although most free online dating services are moving to a tiered premium service model to create more revenue).

Global Web Index found some interesting statistics in their study – including the fact that 31% of those surveyed used an online dating site in the last month, but only 1% used Tinder. Six percent used a location-based dating app, which means people are looking for other alternatives to Tinder, even in the dating app market.

Obtaining revenue from Tinder Plus could be an obstacle for the company. According to Global Web Index, only 14% of online dating site users as a whole pay for a service, while 24% of Tinder users pay for an online dating site (which makes it seem likely they wouldn't also pay for Tinder). And more than a third of dating app users say they use ad-blocking software, which means premium services like Tinder Plus have to come up with compelling features to attract paying clients, in addition to promising an ad-free experience. Perhaps this is why the company is placing limits on its free service, restricting the number of profiles a user can look at each day – to get people to invest in the paid service.

One last interesting statistic from the study: men outnumber women on Tinder 6 to 4, so ladies are definitely at an advantage using the app. However, although half of Tinder users are single, a substantial amount (30%) are married, and another 12% consider themselves in a relationship – even though they are on Tinder.

So if you decide to use Tinder, it’s a safe bet that your online dating experience will be enhanced if you decide to invest in another service as well.

This month, eHarmony and Match.com both announced the release of new dating apps available for smartwatch users.

According to eHarmony, 50% of new users come to its service via their mobile devices, so the company has made a push towards more mobile-friendly technology; part of that initial push includes their dating app being accessible through wearable technology – specifically Android Wear and Samsung Gear S devices.

Not to be outdone, Match.com is launching its own dating app – but for the Apple Watch instead. Match’s new dating app for wearable technology joins Coffee Meets Bagel’s app, the first dating app to announce its availability on the Apple Watch.

Match’s app for Apple Watch is clean and visually based. It works through three basic steps: “Glances,” which provides a quick look at your app and how many matches you have in the queue; “Discover” which allows you to accept or reject a match alongside his/her photo, much like Tinder; and “To send a message,” where once you touch the profile, you can choose from one of the message options or tap the microphone to use voice-to-text dictation to compose your own email.

eHarmony’s new app is a little more complex, as the service is known for matchmaking and their longer communication process rather than for quick swipes to accept or reject a photo. Both the Samsung Gear S and Android Wear smartwatches will display notifications that are synced with the eHarmony users’ phone. When a match sends a communication, the member receives a push notification to their phone and an “enhanced” notification to their smartwatch. The enhanced notification includes the match’s name, age, and location, as well as their primary photo and personal message sent through eH Mail. Users are also informed when they receive a “smile” or questions sent using the company’s Guided Communication options. The member can then select Open Profile, which will open the eHarmony app on the connected Android device, and load their match’s profile.

“Mobile represents a huge opportunity for us to capture new market share and broaden our impact and we are seeing this happen at an accelerating rate in recent months,” said Armen Avedissian, Chief Operating Officer, eHarmony. “New entrants in the online dating category are helping drive interest in eHarmony, while taking market share away from competitors. Combine this circumstance with eHarmony’s powerful brand and industry-leading outcomes and we have the perfect recipe to grow substantially. We are pleased to announce these new releases.”

eHarmony and Match dating apps for smartwatches are available now in Android and iTunes stores respectively.

In 1995, Match.com forever changed the way we meet and connect.

Electic Classifieds launched Match on April 21, 1995. By October 1996, membership reached 100,000 singles. A year later, 150 couples who met on Match had walked down the aisle together.

That was just the beginning. Things exploded at the turn of the century, when Match partnered with AOL and MSN to bring online dating to the general public. Match launched internationally in 2002 and introduced its mobile service in 2003. By 2010, Match had become responsible for more dates, relationships, and marriages than any other dating site.

Now, in 2015, Match is celebrating two decades as the world's largest dating service. The site is responsible for over 10 million relationships in the US alone, and has created more than a quarter of a billion matches overall.

In honor of Match.com's 20^th birthday, let's take a look back on some of the ways online dating and romance have changed over the years.

1. The stigma is mostly gone. When Pew Research Center studied online dating habits in 2005, most Americans were skeptical. By 2013, more than half agreed with the statement “Online dating is a good way to meet people.” Some still consider online dating a desperate tactic, but they are in a minority that shrinks more and more with each passing year.
2. 1 in 5 adults ages 25-34 have tried online dating. Online dating is most popular amongst singles in their mid-20s through mid-40s, but 45-54 year olds are just as likely to date online as 18-24 year olds. Some suggest that online dating is particularly useful for older singles, who tend to have a more limited number of available partners in their immediate social cirlces.
3. More singles are open to meeting someone from an online dating site. When Pew Research Center conducted a survey in 2005, they found that 43% of online daters met someone in person after initially being introduced on a dating site. In 2013, that number increased to 66%. But that still means 1/3 of online daters have never met up with someone in real life.
4. Online dating is a joint effort. Many singles enlist friends to help them put their best foot forward. Around 22% say they've asked someone to help create or review their profile. Women are especially likely to ask friends for assistance – 30% have sought profile help, compared to 16% of men.
5. 5% of coupled up Americans say they met their significant other online. As accepted as online dating now is, the majority of Americans are still meeting offline. But given the steady popularity of online dating sites and the rapid explosion of mobile dating apps, that number is bound to change.

Here's to another 20 years of modernizing romance, Match! For more information please read our Match.com review.

Online dating services like eHarmony and Match have long touted the science behind their matching process, claiming that specially designed algorithms hold the secret to lasting love. But how accurate is this claim? That is, are people who join online dating sites finding long-term relationships easier to come by?

Not according to a recent study by a group of researchers from five different universities in the Midwest, South, East Cost, and West Coast. The authors found that online dating sites offer a different experience and more opportunities compared to conventional dating, but the success of these sites is not clear – namely, the matching algorithms haven’t proven their anticipated success.

“There is one fundamental problem with all of these algorithms,” Eli Finkel, a psychologist at Northwestern University who was one of the researchers for the study, told the San Francisco Chronicle. “They have set themselves up with an impossible task: They assume that they can take information from two people who are totally unaware of each other’s existence and determine whether they are compatible. That is completely false.”

According to the study, the algorithms are misleading, because research has found both similarity and “complementarity” – the basic tenants of online match-making – have little impact on relationship quality overall. Not to mention, people are confused about what they actually want. For instance, in some studies of speed dating, the participants’ ideas of the perfect match often don’t align with who they end up being attracted to in person.

This conflicts with a 2013 study from researchers at the University of Chicago, who found that online couples have happier, longer marriages - assumingly because of the matching process.

Online dating has been around for over two decades, but until recently (thanks to the soaring popularity of apps like Tinder) – was not something the majority of singles pursued. Now, the tables have turned. According to Match, 40 million Americans have used an online dating service. On top of that, a study in 2013 (funded by eHarmony) showed that almost a third of marriages were made through online dating. So why are researchers poking holes in the science now?

“He is debunking a problem no one believes exists,” OkCupid coFounder Christian Rudder told The San Francisco Chronicle. “We’re there to get you that first date. We do use math and we do get people dates.”

Real connection however, according to Finkel, happens with face-to-face interactions, or virtual ones, through Skype of Facetime – which aren’t part of the online matching process. Tinder for instance, doesn’t claim to make good matches, but it does the job of getting people more dates.

The study was conducted by Eli J. Finkel (Northwestern University), Paul W. Eastwick (Texas A & M University), Benjamin R. Karney (UCLA), Harry T. Reis (University of Rochester), and Susan Sprecher (Illinois State University).

Singles in the US are feeling totally emojional.

The days of the regular ol' smiley face are long gone. America has upped its emoticon game and we're officially living in the Age of Emoji.

Match.com is back with another installment of its annual Singles in America study. This year, they surveyed a nationally representative sample of over 5,600 US. singles aged 18 to 70+ years and one of 2015's hot topics was emoji use.

“If you had asked me a year ago what I thought of emoticons and emojis, I would have said they are fun and entertaining, but I probably wouldn’t have thought they could help our understanding of human behavior,” writes Dr. Justin R. Garcia. “But as more and more people of varying ages in my own social networks – family, friends, colleagues, dates – use emoticons and emojis...I’ve come to appreciate them as something more than funny little characters.”

To the uninitiated, emojis are practically another language. Even to the initiated, there's bound to be a character or two that's just puzzling. And to a growing number of behavioral scientists, emojis actually are a new form of nonverbal communication to be studied. “In an age of rapid mobile interaction,” Dr. Garcia writes, emojis are a 21^st century system of emotional expression and interpersonal engagement “that can help us understand human affect.”

When asked why they use emojis, US singles offered three top reasons:

• PERSONALITY: They give my text messages more personality (49% men, 53% women)
• EMOTION: It’s easier for me to express my feelings (37% men, 36% women)
• CONVENIENCE: It’s faster and easier than writing a full message (21% men, 18% women)

When asked which emojis singles favor for flirting, the following were the top three responses:

• Winky face (53% of singles)
• Smiley face (38% of singles)
• Kissy face (27% of singles)

Emoji users shared several traits. 62% want to be married (compared to only 30% of non-emoji users) and are more likely to place a high value on finding a partner who is a good communicator. Emoji users are also much more likely to be actively dating and to have sex.

But don't take things too far. While 40% of singles use emoticons and emojis regularly, nearly 75% agree that you should limit your use to 1-3 per conversation. Any more than that, and you may text yourself straight out of a date.

For more on the service which conducted this study you can read our Match.com review.