Dating Services

Valentine’s Day is approaching, which means more news stories about the prospects of finding love online. Dating apps have changed the romantic landscape in recent years and offered more opportunities to meet new people, but have they really helped daters meet their ultimate goals?

On February 6^th Intelligence Squared U.S., a non-profit organization which encourages thoughtful discussion and debate, will be hosting a live debate from New York City: "Swipe Left: Dating Apps Have Killed Romance."

In a nod to the complicated state of dating today, the keynote will be delivered by Daniel Jones, longtime editor of the hugely popular New York Times’ essay column ‘Modern Love.’

Recipient
PlentyOfFish.com

The 2018 Dating Sites Reviews Single's Choice Award poll open for voting on October 1, 2017 and was closed for voting on December 31, 2017. In the 3 months that voting took place the poll received a total of 393 votes from visitors to our site.

This award is the result of the votes on the second question from the poll which asks the reader what in their opinion is the best free dating service (includes websites and dating apps). The top 10 free dating services as choosen by our Editorial team are given as options for the visitor to select from. The dating services selected met a number of criteria. This includes having the core features of the service being free (like profiles, searching, and messages), and having enough members and visitors everyday which would give the average user a good chance of finding a partner within a couple of months.

The recipient of the 2018 Single's Choice Award for a Free Dating Site or App is Plenty Of Fish. This is the 9^th straight year in a row that Plenty of Fish has won this award. Plenty of Fish received 109 votes which is almost 28 percent of the total vote. This is down 3 percent compared to last year.

Here are the final results of the poll:

Match Group, the company who brought online dating into the mainstream first with iconic dating site Match.com and then with its acquisition of Tinder, is looking for new business opportunities outside the dating industry. This week at CES, the company announced the new app Ripple for those wanting to network for career opportunities.

The app is positioned to be a direct competitor of LinkedIn, a popular career building and networking site. According to Ripple executives, LinkedIn’s framework is too stagnant for users to effectively network, and ends up being primarily a database of resumes. LinkedIn also doesn’t do much to create stickiness for people to update their profiles and check in regularly, unless they are actively seeking clients or trying to find a job.

Ripple borrows the matching game from Tinder to help with its stickiness. When you launch the app, Ripple presents you with people who might be a good professional match, based on interests, people you are connected to, events you’re attending, and groups you are part of. Ripple also includes your social networks like Twitter and Medium, so potential employers or work colleagues can see what you’re posting and what is most current (encouraging you to be more active). Users are able to decide whether someone is a good fit, and then connect with them.

That dating services sometimes make dubious claims should surprise no one, but rarely do their fishy fabrications make headlines. Unfortunately for eHarmony, a recent misstep has proved to be the exception.

The company's claim that it uses a "scientifically-proven matching system" has been banned by the UK’s Advertising Standards Authority after appearing on a billboard in the London Underground.

"Step aside, fate,” the advertisement boldly proclaimed. “It's time science had a go at love."

In the smaller print below, it continued: "Imagine being able to stack the odds of finding lasting love entirely in your favour. EHarmony's scientifically-proven matching system decodes the mystery of compatibility and chemistry so you don't have to. Why leave the most important search of your life to chance?"

Think you can meet someone special without downloading a dating app? New research from UK’s luxury lingerie and swimwear retailer Figleaves shows that online dating is important if you want to find love.

January has been cited as “peak season” for those willing to try online dating. Match Group who own popular dating app Tinder expects a 63% increase in messages exchanged among its users. And many more singles will be joining dating apps and swiping left and right throughout the month, including those who have never downloaded a dating app before.

There are many myths out there about online dating, so we’ve decided to look to some statistics to separate fact from fiction. Here’s what recent studies have proven:

Recipient
Plenty of Fish

POF (Plenty of Fish) is the Editor's Top Pick - Over All Award recipient for 2018. There was a bunch of stand out dating services this year but we felt POF landed on top thanks to a list of improvements we saw in 2017 and the large number of our visitors who spoke up saying that POF was the service which helped them to find their current partner.

POF launched in 2003 and since then they have had over 150 million people register on their service who have had over 1 billion conversations using either the website or dating apps (available for iOS and Android). Being a free dating service helps them succeed since users do not have to worry if the person they are sending a message to can reply or not (on paid services usually only paid members can reply). With the tools POF provides and their ease of use, members find dates so quickly that in less than a month 30% of members have already found their match.