General News

Love Donald Trump or hate him, there’s no denying he ignites passionate responses from both sides. But could the Republican presidential candidate ignite a passion of a different kind? Two new dating sites think the answer is yes.

In the pro-Donald camp is TrumpSingles.com, founded by a 35-year-old Republican hailing from Santa Clarita, California. Goss was inspired to create the site when he realized how difficult it can be to date someone with opposing political views.

“I think there’s a special stigma when people say they’re supporting Trump, because of some of the brash things that he’s said,” Goss told the New York Post. “That immediately gets [projected] on his supporters, and it makes it hard for them when trying to date.”

More than 500 users have reportedly joined TrumpSingles since it went live in May, primarily located in New York City, Los Angeles, and Washington, DC. Goss expressed fears that people would think it’s a parody site, but so far enough seem to understand his original intentions.

“People have told me that they’re so happy they can finally go on dates without worrying about political differences,” he said.

On the other side of the political spectrum is MapleMatch.com, a site that hopes to make dating great again by helping Americans find a Canadian partner in the event of a Trump presidency.

A 25-year-old Texan named Joe Goldman is the brain behind Maple Match. Goldman told NBC News that he was inspired by repeated threats from friends to flee the country if Trump wins the election in November.

"I have always been fascinated by Canada," he added. "So I thought to myself, 'Given the current political situation, this could bring Canadians and Americans closer together'."

His hunch may have been a good one. In just a week, a reported 13,000 people have signed up for the site. "The response has been tremendous,” Goldman said. "I'm getting people from all over, but the strongest responses have been from Seattle and New York City.”

Trump isn’t the only presidential candidate inspiring love. For Democrats, there’s BernieSingles.com. The site promises to “connect progressives beyond social media to inspire chemistry among folks who share similar visions of the future.” It also comes with the most memorable tagline of the bunch: “The 1% are not the only ones getting screwed this election season.”

Trump? Check. Sanders? Check. Hillary - it’s your move now.

A team of Danish researchers caused an uproar last month by publishing data from the online profiles of nearly 70,000 OkCupid users. Information including usernames, political leanings, drug usage, and intimate sexual details were exposed, creating a massive privacy crisis.

The researchers, Emil Kirkegaard and Julius Daugbjerg Bjerrekær, used data scraping software developed by a third contributor, Oliver Nordbjerg, to collect the information. It was used for a study that analyzed members of OkCupid across a variety of factors. The database was posted along with a draft paper on Open Science Framework, a “scholarly commons” that supports open source research and collaboration.

Tinder has been at the forefront of online dating industry growth, making it more accessible to more users than any other online dating platform. So it’s only natural that its accessibility extends to daters in the transgender community.

Transgender online daters don’t have many options when they go online to try and date, because most apps, including Tinder, only allow them to identify as male or female. In the next couple of months, Tinder has said they will be adding more gender identification choices along with more dating preferences.

Tinder is owned by Match Group, but it’s late to the party: other online dating platforms within Match Group, such as OkCupid, have already added more gender preferences to their platforms. In addition to “woman” and “man,” OkCupid’s gender options include “agender, adrogynous, bigender, cis man, cis woman, genderfluid, genderqueer, hijra, intersex, non-binary, other, pangender, transfeminine, transgender, transmasculine, transsexual, trans man, trans woman,” and “two-spirit,” as of November 2014.

Members of the LGBTQ community have pushed for this change in online dating, as they have felt excluded and left out of the conversation as more features are added and improvements made to the online dating experience – except when it comes to their needs and preferences.

Huffington Post Live’s Alex Berg reported deleting her online dating account, writing: “In the grand scheme of problems for LGBTQ people, the options of a dating website might seem like minutia ... [but] that recognition has the power to change the hearts and minds of those who would deny our rights in the physical world.”

It seems Tinder Founder and CEO Sean Rad agrees. “For a long time we haven’t done enough to give [transgender members] a good experience,” he said at the Code Conference in Rancho Palos Verdes, Calif. “It’s harder for them to get what they are looking for. We have to modify our experience to address that.”

Tinder is working on the changes with transgender activist Andrea James and GLAAD, as part of its promise to be more inclusive to its community of daters.

“One challenge we face at Tinder is making sure our tens of millions of users around the world have the same user experience. No matter who you are, no matter what you’re looking for, you should get quality matches through the Tinder experience,” the company said to Fortune Magazine. “There’s an important transgender (and gender nonconforming) community on Tinder who haven’t had that experience … yet.”

From June 30th till July 5th eHarmony is having free communication in the United States and Canada. This 6 day event falls on Independence Day (July 4th) and Canada Day (July 1st) and celebrates this holiday long weekend.

eHarmony is accessible via their website and through their dating apps. This dating service is designed for singles looking to find a long-term relationship, a partner for life. A basic membership is free and allows you to take the profile questionnaire (most are multiple choice questions) which takes about 30 minutes to finish. Once complete, eHarmony's matching algorithm with take your answers and match you against other profiles to create your first set of matches.

With eHarmony's free events, you do not need a credit card since no obligation is required. If you are interested in trying out this dating service, you should create a free membership soon so you can take advantage of as much of this 6 day event as you can. Remember eHarmony sends you quality matches everyday using their matching algorithms backed by years of research. You cannot search for members on eHarmony directly, the only profiles you have access too are the 5 or so matches you receive everyday. With the quality of the matches and the ability for everyone to communicate this is more than enough members to interact with. Free communication events at eHarmony do not include skipping the guided communication process, photos, or secure call (a phone feature). For access to these features you will need to purchase an eHarmony subscription

For more about this popular dating website and app please check out our review of eHarmony.

OkCupid has always been bold when it comes to analyzing data in interesting ways and making it easier for people to interact online. They were one of the first online dating sites to offer transgender identity options, and now they are aiming to provide a little more depth to the swiping madness we all crave from our online dating apps.

The company is launching “Quickmatch Flavors,” a cute name for an interesting new feature. While most people swipe quickly (in the span of less than a second), making decisions based on a single profile picture, OkCupid aims to provide users with a little more information so they won’t potentially miss out on someone great. After all, the faster we swipe, the more we miss.

The new feature is designed to counter this photo-based one-dimensionality, allowing users to also see a snapshot of someone's personality, too.

Look at it this way: you could like someone’s profile who looks hot, but maybe you’re a couch potato and she is unreasonably obsessed with the gym. Or maybe you’ve passed on a bookish nerd who’s actually great in bed. The OkCupid team wanted to bring more depth to swiping, so they examined user profiles to come up with different types – or “flavors” – of personalities. 

For a taste of the flavors, OkCupid listed some options they tested on their website, and provided a background of their methodology. Flavors are curated groups of people within Quickmatch that fall into a specific category, like liberals, indie music fans or outdoorsy types. But OkCupid found that the feature wasn’t so fun to use when the categories were so boring and simple. 

So instead, OkCupid (being the irreverent website that it is) has come up with some interesting twists for the categories to make it more fun. For instance, in the first round of flavors they included “tattooed cuddlers” and “mannerly metalheads.” Also for more lifestyle-based choices, “holy rollers” (with a smoking joint icon), “Hipster vegans” (again with an avocado smoking a joint), or even “Best in Show” which I can only assume means dog lovers.

OkCupid measured the results, noting which descriptions its users were most likely to choose. People seemed to respond best to descriptions that were more sexual and playful, so they came up with another round of categories, including “Night Owls,” “Bookworms,” “Thrill Seekers,” “Easy Goers,” “Early Birds,” and “Star Gazers.”

OkCupid said in a statement: "We executed this idea because we wanted to explore how to reinforce what makes people unique. Personality and opinions matter when it comes to connecting with people. If it didn’t, we’d all be plain old vanilla. And Flavors speaks to that.”

For more on this online dating service please read our review of OkCupid.

Despite criticism every time it surfaces, there’s at least one app idea that refuses to die. Stroovy is the latest in a long line of apps for rating and reviewing people - especially your exes. What makes this one different, however, is that it’s limited to people who use dating services.

“Finding the perfect mate can seem impossible,” reads the app’s website. “Stroovy provides serious online daters a community-led platform for peer-to-peer dater review.” The app encourages singles to “authenticate before you date” and “Stroove before you groove” - ostensibly for the purpose of making online dating safer, but it’s hard to believe users won’t be more attracted by the possibility of pettiness and scandal.

The idea is similar to Lulu, an app for women to review men, which stirred up plenty of controversy when it launched. Lulu has since transitioned beyond its original intent and Stroovy vows to be different by accepting reviews from users of all genders. Stroovy also promises to help users: