Reviews

Dating services have had a historically difficult time cracking the Southeast Asian market. While the stigma of online dating has disappeared in the West, it remains alive and well in much of the East. Cultural norms have largely kept the region’s dating rituals in the past.

Things may finally be ready to change. According Forbes, an increase in developer tools has brought more discreet dating options to Southeast Asia, and that may be the key to cracking the market.

Paktor is one of the apps leading the charge into the sector. Since launching in 2013, the company has built a network of around 15 million users and more than 5 billion swipes, making it the largest dating app in the region by both downloads and usage.

Features of AirDates

If you’ve been dreaming of joining the Mile High Club, this could be your shot. A new Tinder-esque dating app called AirDates promises to be the greatest in-flight entertainment since SkyMall.

AirDates, as the name suggests, is designed specifically for travelers looking to make love connections while they fly. The app is only in beta, but it’s caused quite a stir since appearing at the Disrupt London conference in Decemeber.

Users upload their travel itineraries prior to boarding to find other travelers on the same route. The app then scans your surroundings for fellow passengers who match your preferences. You can choose to be visible or remain hidden to other users (either way, you’ll be able to chat).

There’s only so much you can learn from carefully curated photos and sparsely filled out profiles. Plenty stretch the truth, resulting in more disappointing first dates than we’d care to try to count. Spin the Bottle, a new video dating app, hopes to solve the problem by skipping straight to actual eye contact.

"With so many 'swipe left, swipe right' dating apps out there right now, we wanted a way to take people beyond the often misleading, perfectly manicured profile pictures and get them right to face time," said Matthew Cohen, CEO and co-founder of Spin Labs, the company behind Spin the Bottle. "Looking into someone's eyes and having a conversation... can be much more revealing than reading a list of interests and seeing a gallery of heavily edited, perfectly filtered selfies."

A new take on the classic party game, Spin the Bottle reimagines the online dating experience with 30 second live video speed dates. The premise is simple: a player gives the bottle their best spin with a swipe, and when it stops, they begin a 30 second video chat date with their match. If they're feeling a spark, they can tap an icon to give their date a kiss and wait for one in return. Two kisses and it's a match.

A Social Game With Dating?

Think Tinder is grueling? A new app promises an even more vicious take on mobile dating.

Already a source of controversy, FMK turns the classic boredom-busting game ‘F*ck, Marry, Kill’ into the newest way to find a mate (or, at the very least, kill some time). FMK presents users with three photos and three blunt choices:

• F*ck: Perfect for a one night stand, but you’d only introduce them to your parents if you were trying to piss them off.
• Marry: The complete package of looks and personality. Someone with serious long-term potential.
• Kill: Not even if you were the only two survivors of a zombie apocalypse. In fact, you’d rather hookup with a zombie.

HitWe App Profile View

Another day, another new dating site that’s trying to hit it big.

Hitwe calls itself the “fastest-growing online discovery network” and promises to offer “the best opportunities for communication and new acquaintances.” They’d be big claims coming from anyone, but they’re downright gargantuan coming from a service most of us haven’t heard of. Naturally, it makes you curious… does Hitwe live up to its own hype?

A quick investigation reveals a colorful but simple site. Hitwe is clearly a product of its time. New users can sync their account with Facebook to automatically populate their profiles and save time. Pictures can be imported directly from Facebook or Instagram. The profile layout has both a featured image and a cover photo, a design that will be intimately familiar to any social media user. The profile also has tallies of visitors and likes, another resemblance to many social media profiles.

Do you have what it takes to join The Inner Circle? The super-selective, Amsterdam-based dating platform has officially entered the US market with a launch in New York City.

The Inner Circle’s premise is not unlike The League, another elite dating service that vets potential members before allowing them to join. Both apps aim to create exclusive communities of “high-quality” users - singles who are smart, attractive, ambitious, and career-focused. To do so, new users must apply to join and all applicants are carefully screened before being granted access.