Online Dating

Dating apps are popular in part due to the low commitment factor. Most apps are free to download and begin using, so there isn’t much incentive for people to pay for enhanced services, or pay to use an app at all. You can swipe left and right, checking back for new matches at any time.

Because many dating apps have also modeled themselves after the swiping aspect of Tinder, where potential dates are judged instantly, and some argue, superficially, there is not much incentive for singles to get serious in their searches, and especially to pay for an online dating service. This has contributed to a dating app culture where daters aren’t necessarily invested or interested in serious dating.

However, a new study from Earnest, an alternative lending firm based in San Francisco, California, has revealed that people are willing to pay for a dating app, if it means they get more quality matches and have a better chance of connecting with someone and starting a relationship.

As we saw with online dating sites like Plenty of Fish, free doesn’t necessarily mean that daters are getting their needs met. In fact, many daters tried these free services only to return to the paid services later on, assuming that people using them were more serious.

Online dating services and apps vary in cost, with some starting as low as $10 per month while some can cost as much as $65 per month.

One surprising find from the study is that men seem to be more serious in their search, outnumbering women in terms of who will pay for dating services by sixteen percent.

Another interesting find: those living on the West Coast are 55 percent more likely to pay for a dating service than in other parts of the US. (So no, California residents aren’t so flaky after all!)

Overall, nearly 10 percent of those surveyed said they paid for a dating app, with Match, OkCupid and E-Harmony edging out Tinder as go-to romance resources. Forty-four percent of participants were willing to pay for Match, while 32% were willing to pay for OkCupid’s services and 22% will pay for eHarmony. (Tinder came in fourth at 9%.)    

And no surprise, older singles ages 36-50 are 50% more likely to pay for a dating app than their younger counterparts, aged 18-26.

For more information on the services mentioned in this study, you can read our reviews of Match, OkCupid, and eHarmony.

Hinge is focusing on helping their customers find long-term relationships these days in order to compete with apps like Tinder, an app known mostly for its hook-up reputation. One of the ways Hinge is catering to the more serious dating crowd is by studying their behavior online.

Now, Hinge has published a new relationship study, with data from 1,000 couples who met through Hinge within two months of joining the service. The company found several insights about what seemed to work for these couples and the experiences they shared.

One interesting revelation from the study is that men who are successful with dating apps (or at least with Hinge) were actually pickier than your average guy. Instead of endlessly swiping right in the hopes that a few women will respond in kind, these guys on Hinge decided to be a little more selective in choosing their matches.

On the other hand, women from the study who managed to find love on Hinge turned out to be less picky than your average female dater. The successfully coupled females on Hinge were 20% less picky on average. (Yes, they were swiping right more, not less – keeping more of an open mind.)

This change of approach seemed to make a winning combo for both genders. Also, in case you were wondering, Sunday turns out to be the best day of the week for online dating, so be sure to log in to your app. Response rates are 36% higher on Sunday evenings compared to any other day of the week. (Perhaps because the Tinder dates over the weekend didn’t quite work out as planned?)

So, if you’re using a dating app but want a more focused, successful experience (read: not just hooking up with people or messaging endlessly), here are some additional stats for you:

• Don’t just stop messaging, because you never know. Couples who met on Hinge messaged an average of 16 people before finding their matches.
• Messaging can work. On average, couples who met through Hinge messaged for 3 days and swapped 25 messages before giving their phone numbers to their partners. (However, don’t get carried away and message endlessly – try to get to the date sooner than later!)
• 80% of the couples listed their education and job, because they considered them important factors in making decisions about potential dates.
• Don’t expect instant gratification. Couples who met on Hinge went on 4-5 dates on average before meeting their significant others.

The bottom line? Keep an open mind, and keep your options open. For more on this dating app you can read our review of Hinge.

If you believe Beyonce, girls run the world. But if you’ve spent any time using an online dating service, you may have noticed a different story.

Despite the continuously decreasing stigma around online dating and the increasingly loud conversation about feminism, women on OkCupid remain surprisingly traditional in one key way. Data published recently by the site found that its female users, regardless of sexual orientation, do not initiate contact. Straight women are 3.5x less likely to send the first message than straight men.

Naturally, being the inquisitive types, the folks over at OkCupid had a question: why are ladies — in particular, straight women — less likely to spark a conversation?

According to a post on The Deep End, the successor to the OkTrends blog, the initial hypothesis was that women are more passive because they can afford to be. Their inboxes are already flooded with messages, so why bother initiating conversations with anyone else?

The team compared messages sent vs. messages received for straight male users and straight female users and found that, contrary to their hypothesis, the number of messages received does not affect how many messages they send. Even if a woman receives no messages, she’s not likely to send any of her own. Men, on the other hand, initiate no matter what and do increase the messages they send when they receive more.

The next step was to test by age. Perhaps older woman act more assertively because they’re more confident and more particular about what they want. Again, the hypothesis proved incorrect. Regardless of age, the outboxes of female users remain empty.

So OkCupid turned to the next logical factor: attractiveness. Women with a higher attractiveness rank on the site may feel like they don’t need to reach out first because they’re used to getting attention. Yet again, the team was stumped. The most attractive men send the most messages, but the same pattern does not appear amongst female users.

What OkCupid did finally find was one striking habit: online daters tend to reach out to people who are more attractive than they are. More specifically, men reach out to women 17 percentile points more attractive, and women contact men who are 10 percentile points more attractive. That means that if women do nothing, they’ll be inundated with offers from less attractive men.

A small adjustment has a dramatic effect. If a woman sends the first message, everything changes in her favor. Men tend to respond frequently. Women on OkCupid are 2.5x more likely to receive a response if they initiate. “If you’re a woman who sends the first message,” concludes the report, “not only are you more likely to get more responses in general, but you’ll be having conversations with more attractive guys.”

The message is loud and clear, ladies: stop waiting to be approached. Read our review of OkCupid for more information on this dating site and app.

"Are you an overworked tech industry employee? Does it feel like you are spending more of your precious time putting out fires than searching for sparks in your own life? If potential suitors are struggling to understand your SQL skills, or if trying to explain Java over an Americano is leaving you feeling frustrated, we can help."

Thus begins the homepage of the newest company to join the jam-packed dating industry. DateADev promises to be the professional version of the friend you go to for dating advice. The company, launched by two Amazon employees this month, aims to help struggling techies find love online.

Becca Goldman and Mahvish Gazipura came up with the idea for DateADev after hearing countless stories from frustrated colleagues who had no luck in love, especially when it came to online dating.

“We both work at Amazon and are surrounded by software developers and project managers all the time,” Goldman told GeekWire. “We just noticed their need. We talk to them all the time about their frustrations with dating — they are a great target audience.”

The process begins with a consultation ($99 for 1 hour) in person or via video chat in which a DateADev coach reviews a client’s profile - aka their online brand - to suggest improvements. Coach and client also discuss dating history, strategy, and goals. Upgrade to the “Perfect Match” option for a more in depth, 2-hour consultation.

For additional help, the company offers three monthly membership packages:

• Silver Membership: Designed for the casual dater, a Silver membership includes 8 interactions per month, a personal brand review and optimization of 2 accounts, and 24/7 support from coaches ($259/mo)
• Gold Membership: A Gold membership, meant for singles with long-term relationships in mind, promises 16 interactions per month, a personal brand review and optimization of 4 accounts, and 24/7 support from coaches ($399/mo)
• Platinum Membership: Platinum members are serious about finding a soulmate - with that aim in mind, they receive unlimited interactions each month, a personal brand review and optimization of unlimited accounts, and 24/7 support from coaches ($599)

For now, the service is aimed at residents of Seattle, where Goldman and Gazipura live. “Seattle has the most online daters of any other city, even San Francisco,” said Gazipura, “which is shocking.”

Given that Seattle the home of multiple tech companies - including the aforementioned Amazon - it’s a smart move. “It makes it harder to stand out amongst all of the quality candidates,” Gazipura said. “There are a lot of successful, smart people with great jobs, a good personality, and a good education, but how do you set yourself apart from such a great pool? That’s why we are focusing on tech workers.”

DateADev is currently only a side project, but both founders are open to pursuing it full-time if the idea takes off.

Having survived its first quarter as a standalone public company, Match Group Inc. has released fourth quarter 2015 results.

"Match Group had a seminal fourth quarter, completing our initial public offering, the acquisition of PlentyOfFish, and the realignment of our management structure to better reflect our increasing global scale," commented Greg Blatt, Chairman and CEO of Match Group. "At the same time, we delivered solid revenue and profit growth and we head into 2016 with increasing momentum, which we expect will continue to build throughout the year."

Highlights of Q4 2015 include:

• Total revenue increased 12%, or 16% excluding the effects of foreign exchange, driven by a 14% increase in Dating revenue attributable to 30% higher Average PMC, which grew to over 4.6 million globally.
• Excluding both deferred revenue write-offs related to acquisitions and foreign exchange impacts, total Dating revenue would have been $259.4 million, or 22% higher than in Q4 2014.
• Adjusted EBITDA for Q4 2015 was $99.3 million, an increase of 16% versus Q4 2014.
• ARPPU was $0.53 for Q4 2015, compared to $0.62 in Q4 2014, a decline of 14%. Excluding the effects of foreign exchange, which was approximately 400 basis points, and deferred revenue write-offs related to acquisitions, which was approximately 300 basis points, ARPPU declined 7%.
• The increase in Average PMC compared to Q4 2014 was driven primarily by significant growth at Tinder and the acquisition of PlentyOfFish, which closed on October 28, 2015.
• Net Income and GAAP Diluted EPS declined by 26% and 44%, respectively, in the fourth quarter of 2015 compared to Q4 2014, driven primarily by an increase in stock-based compensation expense of $14.9 million and an increase in interest expense of $16.9 million, which includes $7.3 million of debt issuance costs. Adjusted Net Income and Adjusted EPS, which exclude the impact of the stock-compensation expense, declined 2% and 26%, respectively, as a result of the increased interest expense.

Total revenue for the October-December period was $268 million, up 15% but short of the $278 million expected by Wall Street analysts polled by Thomson Reuters. The company reported a net income of $35.6 million, a 26% decrease from $48.3 million in the same quarter last year.

Tinder and Plenty Of Fish were behind the greatest growth in paid subscribers in the quarter. Tinder reported January 3 as the single busiest day in its three-year history, responsible for the highest volume of downloads and growth in active users.

Despite the existence of several major players in the dating app industry, Tinder is the clear leader. Deutsche Bank analyst Ross Sandler valued the company at $1.2 billion, and according to SEC filings from Match Group in November, Tinder boasts 9.6 million daily active users and 583,000 paid members.

Those solid numbers, along with Tinder’s commitment to regularly updating its product, mean the app is unlikely to be dethroned any time soon. Going forward into 2016, Match Group will likely continue to focus a substantial measure of its efforts into Tinder to maintain its top spot. For more information on Match Group dating services you can read our Match.com review, OkCupid review, and our Tinder dating app review.

Hinge doesn’t want to be another version of Tinder. Instead of focusing on the swiping game with attractive profiles, Hinge wants its users to engage, message and date – in other words, take the process of dating a bit more seriously.

Millennials are by far the biggest users of dating apps, and are less inclined to pay for a dating service. They also take dating less seriously than older daters. Tinder attracted the young market because the app was free, easy and accessible. But then apps like Hinge came along, who wanted to change the “hook-up” mentality many online daters have become accustomed to.

The majority of Hinge users are Tinder’s target market – Millennials. Hinge is betting on the fact that many young daters want to be more serious in their search, and not just use apps for that last-minute hook-up.

Hinge has done several things in trying to find its sweet spot, including launching a new feature this past November where users had to respond to a new match within 24 hours or they would disappear from their match list. Apparently, this didn’t go over well, because in February, the company announced that it was removing the feature.

In an email sent to its users, Hinge said: “You are busy, and 24 hours is sometimes not enough. At the end of the day, our job is about helping you find someone great, and timed matches didn’t do that. We want to make it right. So we’re turning off the clock. The 24 hour clock that is.”

Users still have to make contact with matches within a 14-day period, because the company maintains a time limit does increase communication and the likelihood of matches actually getting to the date.

And last month, Hinge launched a feature called Story Cards that helps users initiate conversation by letting them answer yes or no to “life experience” questions. According to website Global Dating Insights, the app’s CEO Justin McLeod revealed that during beta testing, Story Cards “generated a 20% increase in two-way messages between users, as well as more phone numbers exchanged.”  

News website Tech Crunch has suspicions that the next Hinge announcement will be a paid service, since Tinder is the only app that can really make money solely on advertising spend. 

In the article, writer Jordan Crook says: “Hinge is undergoing a huge makeover, ditching the swipe mechanic and adding a paid subscription layer to ensure folks who use it are there for the right reasons.”

Hinge also provided the following statement, causing more raised eyebrows:

“We are continually focused on helping our users find meaningful relationships. To that end, we’re always working with our users to test new concepts. However, at this point nothing is confirmed – everything from friend endorsements to concierge matchmaking has been on table. What we do know is that each global release continues to be the result of enormous amounts of work alongside our community in an effort to understand what sparks online connections that have the power to become lasting offline relationships.”

One thing seems clear: Hinge wants to focus on the sweet spot that is missing in popular dating apps – building real, lasting relationships. To find out more about this dating app you can read our review about Hinge.