General News

Is this the most unconventional dating advice ever?

While most experts encourage you to put more effort into your online dating messages, OkCupid co-founder Christian Rudder suggests doing exactly the opposite. And he has the research to back it up.

“OkCupid has records from the pre-smartphone, pre-Twitter, pre-Instagram days — hell, it was online when Myspace was still a file storage service,” he wrote in an article for New York magazine. “Judging by messaging over all those years, the broad writing culture is indeed changing, and the change is driven by phones.”

Popular dating app Tinder crashed on Thursday night, ahead of a long holiday weekend in the United States.

The International Business Times reported that Tinder had crashed around 10:00pm Eastern time, and users were having problems retrieving their messages, contacting their matches and even logging in. Some users reported losing their matches as well. Users on the Dating Sites Reviews Forum also had issues with Tinder

Angry Tinder users voiced their frustration over social media, making jokes about Tinder failing just when they got some matches, were trying to contact their dates to meet, or downloaded the latest version of the app.

One user joked:

“Tinder crashes before it opens which also describes my love life ‪#tinder”

Communicate for free at eHarmony.com for 6 days from Wednesday August 31st to Monday September 5th, 2016. This is in celebration of the Labor Day long weekend and is available in the United States only.

eHarmony has been matching singles and creating many long term relationships with over 2 million marriages (and counting!) since the year 2000. Online dating has changed a lot in 16 years and eHarmony has evolved to become one of the most popular dating services. You can access their service via eHarmony.com or by downloading one of their phone apps which are available on Android and iOS. Years of continued research has fine-tuned the eHarmony profile questions and matching system making it the best chance of finding a partner according to this study.

Signing up for an eHarmony membership is free. Once completed all you need to do is take about 30 minutes and fill in your profile questions. These questions are important as they are used by the eHarmony matchmaking algorithm to find you your best matches (most are multiple choice). When your profile is finished you will then receive your first set of matches. After reviewing your matches you can then communicate with those that interest you by starting the guided communication process. New matches will continue to arrive everyday. As always free communication weekends do not include viewing of photos, the secure call phone service, and skipping the guided communication process to go straight to emailing. For access to these features you will need to purchase an eHarmony subscription.

For more about this online matchmaking service with the goal of finding its members long-term relationships, you can read our review of eHarmony.

Tinder took the online dating world by storm a few years ago when it launched, changing the way people connected for dates. Instead of crafting elaborate profiles, Tinder’s appeal was its ease and visual component, its mobile interface – you like a photo, and you swipe.

But now, other apps who have tried to copy its example, creating swipe-like features of their own, have found that this is not the best way to stay competitive in the dating app space. So instead of making as many profiles available as quickly as possible, other apps are looking to curate their offerings and make it a more selective process, specifically for female users.

Badoo Selfie Feature

Popular online dating service Badoo has announced the release of its latest feature “Selfie Request,” which aims to provide more security for female daters using the service.

The new selfie feature allows women to request a photo from a male user after they have received an initial message, so that they can confirm their potential match is genuine and using a real photo. From there, a male user can either send the requested selfie or decline. (The selfie is taken on the spot to confirm the match is genuine.)

Selfie Request is positioned to help the ongoing problem of catfishing in online dating, where users hide their identity behind fake profiles and photos in order to exploit other users. According to Pew Research Center, 54 percent of online daters have felt that someone misrepresented themselves on their profile. This new feature update from Badoo is intended to help avoid this recurring problem by addressing the online safety of females, who are largely the targets of catfishing as well as the main recipients of unwanted and harassing messages.

Gay men and women are now allowed to search and meet through dating site Christian Mingle, one of the largest niche dating sites in the industry. The site opened its platform to gay users after settling a lawsuit that claimed that it violated California’s non-discrimination law on the basis of sexual orientation.

According to the conditions of the settlement, Spark Networks who own Christian Mingle among other dating sites, will change their homepages to allow users to specify if they are a man or a woman, and also if they are looking for men or women. While Spark also agreed to create a more comprehensive and tailored matching service for users seeking same sex relationships within the next two years, the dating site Christian Mingle as it exists for gay singles can be frustrating.