Dating Services

Practically every business is expected to have a social media presence in 2015. When your business is a digital one, that pressure doubles. When your target audience is millennials, it triples. Dating services are all about helping people make social connections, but how socially savvy are they on their own profiles?

Digiday used proprietary data from two social media analytics firms, Unmetric and Socialbakers, to pit seven dating apps against each other in the battle for most effective social media strategy. Tinder, OkCupid, Hinge, Match.com, Zoosk, Coffee Meets Bagel and Bumble were put to the test in several different categories.

Number Of Fans

With over 13 million million Facebook likes, Zoosk has the largest social media fan base. Match and Tinder follow with over 827,000 and 369,000 fans, respectively. Twitter shows similar stats. Zoosk has the most followers by far at over 350,000. Match comes in second, with 65,000, and Tinder in third, with over 56,000.

Although Tinder currently has the smallest fan base, it's also the most rapidly growing. The game-changing dating app saw its fan base grow 228 percent between January and October 2015.

Geographical Popularity

Tinder, Hinge, OkCupid, Match and Zoosk all have an international crop of users, but Tinder and Zoosk are the most diverse on social. In fact, the majority of Zoosk's Facebook fans are international.

Other services proved to be particularly popular in specific countries. Hinge is big in India, while Match is favored by Canadians and Tinder has won over Brazilian singles.

Engagement Level

Zoosk is the most prolific poster on social media. The company published 226 posts between January and October, and received the most likes and comments. Despite Zoosk's high volume, Tinder took the top spot for highest average engagement and most posts shared by fans.

Bumble is a relative newcomer to the dating world, but already it's showing promise on social. The app saw over 3,000 interactions with fans on Facebook between July and October. The numbers are expected to grow.

Number Of Fan Posts And Mentions

Match.com's users are the most likely to talk about it on Facebook. More than 9,000 messages were posted to Match's wall between January and October. Hinge and Coffee Meets Bagel come next. Neither Tinder nor OkCupid had user posts on their Facebook walls. Their page settings most likely do not allow it.

Tinder leads the number of mentions on Twitter, perhaps because Twitter's audience skews younger than Facebook and Tinder attracts a similarly youthful user base. The app is followed by Zoosk and Match.com, which come in second and third with around 8,000 and 2,000 mentions apiece.

Lauren Urasek was surprised when a reporter from a major New York magazine contacted her to interview "the most popular girl on the dating site OkCupid."

The makeup artist and self-proclaimed technology nerd became an internet celebrity when the dating site declared her its most messaged female user in New York City. She made the most of her new-found notoriety, spinning it into an article for xoJane, a Tumblr blog and now a new book.

In Popular: The Ups and Downs of Online Dating from the Most Popular Girl in New York City, Urasek offers advice, personal stories and essays to help singletons navigate the crazy world of digital dating. Here are a few of her tips for making the most of your online dating experience:

1. Post photos that are flattering, varied and recent. Flatting goes without saying, but it doesn't count if your pictures are pixelated or highly filtered. Show off the real you. Group shots, sunglasses and outdated photos are also on the don'ts list. Be sure to choose a selection of snaps that feature face and body from different angles, as well as different facets of your personality.
2. Have realistic expectations. It's ok that you want to ride off into the sunset with Prince or Princess Charming. Just don't expect do it on the first date. Someone who seems awesome online may prove incompatible in person. Anticipating instant fireworks puts too much pressure on the date and is bound to lead to disappointment. Focus on more lowkey goals, like having fun and meeting new people.
3. Don't waste your time. Online dating can be a total time-suck. It's easy to fall into the trap of an endless message exchange, but writing back and forth for weeks before meeting can backfire. You don't want to go on a date only to discover that your fiery text chemistry translates to zero chemistry in person. Meet sooner rather than later so you can both move on if the spark isn't there.
4. Answer the compatibility questions. Not every dating service includes these, but if yours does, answer them. They may seem pointless or tedious, but they serve an actual purpose. Whether or not you believe in a dating algorithm's scientific accuracy, there's something to be said for knowing that you have common interests and values (or don't) with people you're interested in.
5. It's ok to be single. Despite being OkCupid's most popular female user, Urasek says she's happily single. If your swipes and messages and winks don't lead to love, that's ok too. Don't let societal pressure to couple up get to you. Being comfortable with your self is just as – if not more so – important.

Urasek's debut book Popular is available now on Amazon.

Popular dating app Tinder, which many daters have described as a hook-up app, has decided to get a little more serious with its latest update. Instead of upping the volume of swipes, the management team decided to focus on encouraging users to be more selective, and is now offering a feature dubbed “Super Like.”

Instead of just swiping right when you like someone special (like all the other right swipes before), the new feature allows you to swipe up – or Super Like - one special match per day. When two people Super Like each other, Tinder reports that they tend to have conversations over the app that last 70 percent longer. (Tellingly, the company is rolling out this feature in the wake of Vanity Fair’s controversial article on the so-called “dating apocalypse” fueled by Tinder, which ended in a Twitter rant from Tinder co-founder Sean Rad.)

Tinder is definitely getting its new more serious message across in marketing campaigns, including a video the company made highlighting the Super Like feature, which is targeting female daters. In the video, a woman is being harassed by a bunch of men who are trying to flirt with her, and she’s not interested. So to save herself from their aggressive tactics, she Super Likes a nice guy on the app. In other words, she is saving herself from the awful herds of pushy guys on Tinder by using Tinder’s latest feature.  

Will it be effective for Tinder to appeal to women? It is still by far the most popular app, but other developers are using Tinder’s hook-up reputation as a reason to choose another app. So Tinder is fighting back.

The new feature is a way to make women feel safer. But more than likely, it is also a response to Bumble, a rising star in the dating app world that has been getting a lot of attention.

Bumble is a female-centered dating app that looks like Tinder but gives the messaging power to women by having them make the first move. Coincidentally, Bumble was also founded by one of Tinder’s co-founders Whitney Wolfe, who sued the company and subsequently launched her own dating app. This past week, Wolfe made an appearance on The Daily Show, in which she answered questions about how her app is changing the world of online dating by putting women in the seat of power to ask the men out.

It’s great that daters have more options, and the competition from apps like Bumble means that Tinder will continue to improve its offerings. And that’s always a plus.

A recent article in The Wall Street  Journal pointed out the importance of using correct grammar in your online dating profile. According to surveys done in recent years by dating websites OkCupid and Match.com, grammar is by far one of the most important aspects of an online dating profile. If you mix up “your” and “you’re,” many daters will move on to the next.

But why is this? Aren’t people more concerned with great photos, as we’ve seen with apps like Tinder and Grindr? Why should online daters care about how people write – it isn’t necessarily an indication of who they are in real life or how great a match they would be. Besides, aren’t most daters attracted to physical appearances rather than writing style?

Apparently not. Match.com found that 88% of women and 75% of men in their survey of 5,000 singles said they cared about grammar most, putting it ahead of a person’s confidence and teeth.

The WSJ attributed this trend to the rise of dating apps and the common use of text slang, with abbreviations like YOLO (You only Live Once) replacing standard phrasing and sentences. While messaging has now become more of a convenience than an art, grammar has fallen by the wayside, and one way to make yourself stand out among the millions of other daters out there is to approach communicating with someone as though you put in some effort. After all, most dating apps don’t require much more effort than a swipe.

In other words, think about your professional life and how much time and care you put in to communication with your bosses and co-workers. When you send an email to a group of work colleagues, chances are you spell-checked it before pressing the “send” key, and most likely it isn’t filled with acronyms for every common phrase. If you apply the same protocol to online dating, it might seem a bit formal at first, but it definitely scores you more points. The person receiving your message is more likely to take you seriously because it looks like you have put in more time and effort.

In other words, you come across as smart and caring. Thoughtfulness goes a long way.

Grammar has been important in the online dating scene for a while, even before the popularity of texting and dating apps made bad grammar much more common. Dating websites like Match and eHarmony encouraged users to use complete sentences in their profiles and check for spelling errors. Wouldn’t you be turned off if someone you didn’t know turned in a report or emailed you with a couple of brief sentences, rife with misspellings?

A little effort goes a long way.

What is love in the time of Tinder and marriage in the age of Ashley Madison? You've heard the critiques. Detractors say Tinder encourages shallow hookups at the expense of meaningful relationships. And Ashley Madison... well, we all know how well things are going for them lately.

But it's not all bad news. Despite being one of the earliest players in the online dating game, eHarmony remains one of its strongest. Founder Neil Clark Warren sat down with Bloomberg to discuss how the site remains relevant despite the increasingly competitive landscape.

Warren shared some impressive stats about eHarmony. The site boasts over 66 million users and is responsible for around 2 million marriages. It's divorce rate is only 3.86%. Its fastest growing demographic is 25-35 years old. Sixty-two percent of users now come through mobile platforms. eHarmony even saw 80,000 new users sign up in a single weekend. Clearly, growth is not an issue for the company.

As to competitors, Warren feels eHarmony has nothing to fear from services like Tinder and Ashley Madison, because they're designed for difference audiences. Tinder users tend to be young and Ashley Madison users are typically not looking for long-term relationships. eHarmony, on the other hand, primarily serves older users who looking for serious partnerships.

That's not to say eHarmony is lazy in its approach to business. The company works hard to keep up with the rapidly changing online dating market – lately, for instance, by bumping up its security measures. “We've never been so serious about security,” says Warren. “We're spending several million dollars a year to make sure our security is as solid as it can be.”

eHarmony also keeps things fresh by introducing new features. Most recently, the company has announced plans to enter the professional world with a careers platform called Elevated Careers, expected to launch by December. The aim is to apply what eHarmony has learned about playing cupid to the workplace, using algorithms and other assessment tools to match applicants with their dream jobs.

Warren notes the far reaching implications of the career matchmaking service. Today only 30% of Americans say they like their jobs. If eHarmony can successfully help users find better employment opportunities, Warren promises a revolution in America – one in which people are happier in their professional lives and, in turn, happier in their personal lives.

All in all, Warren is feeling confident about the company's future. “eHarmony has never been in better shape,” he says.

Dating app Hinge is taking after OkCupid by collecting its user data and publishing results that might help people better connect. The latest report outlines the best pick-up lines among users of its app – and as it turns out, the way to a woman’s heart might just be through her stomach.

To conduct the survey, Hinge recruited copywriters and data analysts to compose 100 original openers, and sent them to 22 percent of Hinge users, who were then given the option of sending these openers to their matches. After studying eight million impressions, trends began to emerge. Some were expected - daters who want to connect should definitely avoid generic statements like 'Hey, what's up?' as an opening line, for example. The data was refined and categorized to give more in-depth info about who was responding—including their gender, age, and location across the U.S.

Results of the month-long experiment showed the most effective conversation starters for women include food references. For instance, a guy could ask a question like: “Chocolate, red velvet, or funfetti?” referring to cupcake preferences, or “Best discovery: Netflix or avocados?” for example. Hinge noted that “women are 40% more likely than men to respond to openers that are food-related.”

Men were most responsive when asked out directly, and particularly if those messages were assertive (the types of messages most women don’t like, which should be noted). For instance, if a woman put herself out there and confidently asked “Drinks soon?” or “Free this week?” men were 98% more likely to respond favorably.

Males were also found to have shorter attention spans: If they don’t receive a response to a message within six hours, a quarter of them will drop out of sight, compared with only five per cent of women.

As far as age groups, the 35 and older crowd prefers pop culture references. For instance, they responded best to “Katy Perry or Taylor Swift?” or “Bears, beets, or Battlestar Gallactica?” The 20-somethings preferred introductions about lifestyle with lines like: “Better adventure: Rock climbing or scuba diving?” or “Sunday priorities: Exercise, sleep or aggressive mimosas?” The 18-23 age group seemed to prefer novelty questions like: “Pain reliever personality: Advil, Tylenol or complaining?” and “You’re having your portrait painted – what’s your backdrop?”

Regional responses varied too, with folks in Los Angeles preferring entertainment-related questions (no surprise), and users in the Mid-West liking the 90’s references.

Hinge connects people through Facebook circles, and is available for both Android and iPhone. For more on Hinge, you can read our review.