Online Dating

Bumble has been making big moves this year. First, in an effort to even the playing field, the app announced that male users must respond to women’s messages within 24 hours or they lose the match. CEO Whitney Wolfe also announced plans to take Bumble beyond dating into the world of business networking.

The company’s latest update is designed to prevent its users from falling prey to catfishers. How they intend to do it is the fun part.

Bumble’s new plan to outsmart scammers is a photo feature that prompts users to verify their accounts by submitting selfies. Yes, it’s 2016 and selfies are here to save us all.

Tinder & Spotify Partner

Tinder has swiped right on a relationship with Spotify. The online dating app and music streaming service are partnering to launch a handful of new features for musically-inclined singles.

“Tinder already suggests matches based on your swiping preferences, mutual friends and common interests, but we know we can always add more to the equation,” says Tinder’s company blog. “That’s why we’ve matched with Spotify to integrate music into the swiping experience.”

Two big changes are on their way for Tinder users. First, users who connect their Spotify accounts to Tinder are now able to display their top songs on their profiles. All Tinder users can play previews of other people’s top songs via Spotify, without leaving their Tinder profiles. If you have your Spotify account connected, you’ll also be able to see which artists you have in common with potential dates.

The word “squad’ is ubiquitous in 2016, so it was only a matter of time before someone turned it into a dating app.

The thing is, Squad is not just the newest app on the mobile dating scene - it may be the year’s best new dating app.

For starters, the relationship experts on the judging panel of the inaugural US Dating Awards named it Best New Dating App 2016. It beat out The Catch, faith-based Crosspaths, video-centric Lively, and the matchmakers of Once. It’s also received write-ups from the likes of TechCrunch, Thrillist, CNN, Observer, and the Washington Post.

Summer is officially behind us (except for those of you in the southern hemisphere), which means the start of the holiday season. And while you might be missing those warm nights, there’s a good chance your love life will improve in the new season.

Autumn has been proven to be the season for finding lasting love, whether it’s because people are socializing more, or the rush and romance of the holidays, or the fact that cold nights by the fire inspire romantic notions. To help you get a jump start this season, dating site Match has put together a few statistics about the best ways to find love, based on its annual survey of thousands of people in the US, called Singles in America.

First of all, Match encourages you to give love a real chance, and not to expect instant chemistry to lead to a long-term romance. In fact, Match found that a majority of daters – 59% of men and women – do not expect to feel chemistry until the second date, and 35% reported they have fallen deeply in love with someone they didn’t initially find attractive.

Let’s let this settle a moment: 35% of survey respondents admitted they have fallen in love with someone they weren’t initially attracted to. This goes against many romantic stories we have been told of love at first sight, and it’s also heartening to know that chemistry builds over time.

Here’s some advice Match shared about what works and what doesn’t on a first date, to help you get to the second date where the real magic can happen:

How many times have you been on a date where the person you’re meeting seems angry, frustrated, or negative? And how many times have you been on dates where you felt that way yourself?

We all feel negative from time to time, but it definitely affects your love life if you allow those feelings to take hold and shape your attitude towards dating. This month, dating site Match released a study based on a survey it conducted among one thousand of its users to determine how positive and negative thinking affect the dating experience.

Not surprisingly, especially with this election year, nearly 80% of Match members feel the country has become MORE negative over the last 4 years and more than half of Match members have broken up with someone because they were too negative or pessimistic. The majority of Match members agree, the most attractive attribute of positivity is the fact that it signals a good outlook on life (68%).

Dating app Hinge started out with some stiff competition against Tinder. Since its debut in 2012, several other new dating apps have launched and attracted a growing user base as well as media attention, including female-centric dating app Bumble. Meanwhile, after steady growth since its launch, this year Hinge has seen its numbers declining.

Hinge’s marketing and product development have always focused on attracting more serious daters. The app is geared toward young professionals in their late twenties and thirties who are looking for long-term relationships, as opposed to the hook-up reputation that has followed Tinder since its inception. The app is billed as a “grown-up” alternative to the young users of Tinder, which at first seemed to serve the market well.