Guys – Stop Doing This on Dating Apps

Tips
  • Friday, August 12 2016 @ 07:44 am
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Tips for Guys on using Dating Apps

Dating apps have made a lot of bad dating behavior even easier. Because of the anonymous, behind-the-screen nature of dating apps, there is little to no accountability for the way you treat people. Which means a lot of online daters are left wondering if using a dating app is worth it.

Dating apps are great tools, but both men and women make mistakes when it comes to meeting people and trying to connect. Many online daters put forward images of themselves that aren’t necessarily true to gain more matches, and many also tend to be flaky about follow-through and meeting in person. Instead of hiding so much behind your dating app, it’s better to take responsibility and treat your dates how you would like to be treated.

Following are some behaviors that guys do on dating apps that we wish you would stop doing:

Ashley Madison Faces An FTC Probe And A Serious Reboot

Ashley Madison
  • Thursday, August 11 2016 @ 07:23 am
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Big changes and big problems are on their way for Ashley Madison. The hits keep coming after the adultery dating site’s high-profile hack last year.

First, the bad news. Ashley Madison is back in hot water thanks to a U.S. Federal Trade Commission investigation and a flood of lawsuits over the site’s use of “fembots” to lure cheating men. An Ernst and Young report confirmed that Avid Life Media, owner of Ashley Madison, used fake dating profiles to impersonate women and scam unwitting male users into entering their credit card information.

According to Gizmodo, Ashley Madison created more than 70,000 female bots in a “sophisticated, deliberate, and lucrative fraud.” The faux females would initiate chats with men by saying things like “Hmmmm, when I was younger I used to sleep with my friend’s boyfriends. I guess old habits die hard although I could never sleep with their husbands.”

Avid claims it shut down the bot accounts in the United States, Canada and Australia in 2014, and by late 2015 in the rest of the world. However, some U.S. users say they exchanged messages with foreign fembots until late in 2015. Now a handful of such users have filed class action suits against the company.

A recent statement from Avid Life Media indicates how the company plans to proceed. The statement announces "a new direction and total repositioning" of the service, with newly appointed chief executive Rob Segal and president James Millership at the helm.

"Our new team is committed to taking care of our members and to building on our portfolio of unique and open-minded online dating brands," said Millership. "Millions of people have continued to connect on our sites during the past year and they deserve a discreet, open-minded community where they can connect with like-minded individuals."

Millership reinforced that bots will no longer be used at Avid Life Media and Ashley Madison. The company has also stepped up security and hired a cyber-security team to implement new safeguards and monitoring. Both Millership and Segal say they do not know the focus of the FTC investigation.

Former users of Ashley Madison may notice other key changes. The site has undergone significant makeover, with a new “look and feel” that is distinctly less obvious about the adultery theme.

"Ashley Madison today is about so much more than infidelity, it's about all kinds of adult dating," the website says. It remains to be seen if its 46 million members agree.

There’s Now A Brexit Dating App For Remain Voters

United Kingdom
  • Wednesday, August 10 2016 @ 09:40 pm
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Better Together Dating

Wear your politics on your sleeve along with your heart. In the wake of Brexit, a new dating app hopes to bring together British singles who voted to remain in the European Union.

"Why wait until you’re halfway through an evening before finding out your date voted Out?" says the site. “Better Together Dating is a unique dating service for the 48%; for those who know that Britain is stronger within Europe, for those who celebrate the diversity, joy, and love that our great continent provides, and for those with Bregret.”

Better Together has already been hailed as the Tinder take on Brexit. The service is the brainchild of M14 Industries, a Manchester-based startup founded by John Kershaw. Kershaw previously created Bristlr, a tongue-in-cheek dating app for singles with beards and those who love them. Though it was originally intended as a joke, Bristlr took off and how has about 20,000 monthly users.

Could Better Together become the same? Kershaw told The Atlantic that the site was designed to be a way to support the Remain cause, though it’s probably too late.

“We’ve got Europe in our DNA; half my family are French, we’ve got staff here on an EU visa, and some of us are the children of immigrants,” Kershaw said. “I wanted something to cheer us up.”

Several hundred users have joined the site so far, primarily from the United Kingdom. The gender split is 60% male and 40% female, numbers equivalent to Tinder. Better Together’s interface also resembles Tinder. New users sign up with Facebook, and can only chat with people when they have mutually matched or both starred each other.

When it comes to profiles, Better Together is slightly more extensive than its predecessor. Members are asked to answer questions like: “What is your favorite city to visit in the EU?” “What languages do you speak?” and “What countries have you visited in the EU? Tell your favourite story!”

Like many mobile dating apps, Better Together targets a younger market. It’s a smart move for the company, considering that 75% of British citizens between ages 18 and 24 reportedly voted to Stay, along with 56 percent of voters between ages 25 and 49, according to a YouGov exit poll. It could be a sign that Better Together will find the same unexpected success as Bristlr.

As for Kershaw’s favorite creation, he hesitates to choose. ““The beard is less of a deal-breaker,” he told the Evening Standard. “If you had someone with a beard who wanted to vote Leave, that’s probably a no. But someone who wanted to back Remain but didn’t have a beard, that’s maybe OK. But it depends on the quality of the beard and the conviction of the politics.”

For more dating services you can check out our UK dating sites and apps category. Of those Match UK is one of the most popular among singles.

Judge Rules ChristianMingle Must Now Include LGBT Singles

Christian Mingle
  • Monday, August 08 2016 @ 07:44 am
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As Pride Month ends in America, there’s big news for the country’s LGBT singles. Faith-based dating site ChristianMingle.com must now allow users to look for same-sex matches following the settlement of a class-action lawsuit in California.

The site, which bills itself as the largest online community for Christian singles, currently requires new users to select one of two options when creating an account: man seeking woman or woman seeking man. That is now set to change, following a three-year fight for equal rights.

Two gay men filed class action claims against ChristianMingle’s parent company, Spark Networks, in 2013. The suit alleged that the dating site excluded same-sex users, thereby violating the Unruh Civil Rights Act, California’s anti-discrimination law.

The State of California's website states: "Under the Unruh Civil Rights Act, all persons are entitled to full and equal accommodations, advantages, facilities, privileges, or services in all business establishments, including both private and public entities. The Unruh Civil Rights Act protects all persons against arbitrary and unreasonable discrimination by a business establishment."

Spark Networks agreed to the judge-approved settlement on June 27. Under the settlement, Spark Networks will only require users to identify themselves as a man or woman. The company also agreed to add new options for gay and lesbian users within two years. The settlement applies to ChristianMingle.com as well as its sister sites CatholicMingle.com, AdventistSinglesConnection.com, and BlackSingles.com.

During the two years, “Spark will ensure that the ‘man seeking woman’ and ‘woman seeking man’ options on the gateway/home pages of the Mingle sites ask only whether the user is a ‘man’ or a ‘woman,’” reads the judgment. Spark Networks must not change the match prompts to “man seeking woman” at any time in the future, unless it also “provides similar prompts which allow individuals seeking a same sex match to enter and use the sites without having to state that they are seeking a match with someone of the opposite sex.”

Additionally, the judge ordered Spark Networks to pay $9,000 to each of the plaintiffs who brought the suit, as well as covering the full $450,000 in attorneys fees incurred by the two men.

Vineet Dubey, one of the attorneys for the plaintiffs, expressed gratitude for the case’s resolution. “I am gratified that we were able to work with Spark to help ensure that people can fully participate in all the diverse market places that make our country so special, regardless of their sexual orientation,” he said in a statement.

A spokesperson for Spark Networks told The Wall Street Journal that the company was “pleased to resolve this litigation.”

Facebook Algorithm Change Leaves Dating Apps Hanging

Facebook
  • Sunday, August 07 2016 @ 07:59 am
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Facebook Advertising for Dating Apps
In June, Facebook announced a small change to its algorithm. The platform will now be promoting your friends’ posts in your Facebook feed over news posts from relevant media, publishers and businesses. While this is great in theory because it can cut down the clutter you might not want, it puts a lot of businesses in a bind.

According to an article in International Business Times, more than 50 million businesses use Facebook Pages — from big brands like McDonald’s and Nike to small local businesses and tech startups. They will be forced to pay advertising dollars to reach people over the social media platform and increase visibility, instead of relying on Facebook’s grassroots appeal.

The biggest losers in the new algorithm changes however, are dating apps, because many don't even have the option to advertise. Back in early 2014, Facebook introduced restrictions on the dating industry that required all companies, no matter the size, to be pre-approved for advertising. It was an effort to crack down on dating services that were abusing their advertising privileges with suggestive images and messaging to potential users, because their content could be interpreted as too explicit or inappropriate.

As a result, all dating apps are paying the price. Even traditional and reputable dating apps that boast large followings like Match are prevented from advertising until they go through an application process to be whitelisted. Some dating services that applied over two years ago are still waiting to hear if they have been approved.

The rules for approval and advertising guidelines were decided by committee - a roundtable Facebook held with some of the largest dating advertisers in the industry, including Match and Zoosk.

The basic process is this: after being accepted to advertise, approved dating services have to adhere to certain standards, such as only targeting people 18 and older who list themselves as single and interested in meeting men or women. Sites that have a sexual emphasis are not permitted, nor are dating sites that use any suggestive or pixelated images.

Dating apps like HER, which markets to the lesbian community but is a platform for forming friendships as well as dating, was affected negatively by the new policies. In fact, 30% of their users are in relationships, but they use the app to find groups of friends with similar interests. HER is not allowed to advertise to these users over Facebook, only the single users.

More dating apps as a result have been turning to Twitter and YouTube for advertising their services. While Twitter doesn’t allow explicit advertising, their platform is less restrictive for dating services overall. And this might change the way dating services appeal and market to potential customers, as they leave Facebook to spend their ad dollars on other platforms.

EliteSingles Celebrates User Growth And Continues Global Rebrand

Elite Singles
  • Friday, August 05 2016 @ 07:42 am
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Elite Singles Update

EliteSingles is an online dating service aimed at professionals who take their love lives as seriously as their time at the office. The site's intelligent matching algorithm prioritizes long-term happiness and compatibility using a thorough personality questionnaire and profile, helping marriage-minded singles escape the casual nature of most modern dating.

The formula has proved to be a winning one. EliteSingles has seen significant user growth, particularly in the UK where it reported year-on-year growth figures of 37% in Q1 2016. Overall, the company is currently growing at a rate of 25-30% each year.

The latest figures from the UK come hot on the heels of a rebrand in March. EliteSingles’ global makeover includes graphical and user experience improvements to the website and app, as well as significant improvements to the "Wildcard" function, which enables users to enjoy more potential matches every day. The UK, the United States, France, Ireland, New Zealand, Canada, and South Africa have all been updated with the fresh functionality, logo, and colour scheme.

Two years of solid growth inspired the rebrand. The site receives an average of 215,000 new member sign-ups per month across all its English speaking EliteSingles platforms, with 100,000 from the US, a further 40,000 from the UK, and 20,000 monthly sign-ups in Australia.

EliteSingles has become a premier online dating destination for professional singles looking for long-term relationships since its launch in 2013. The site’s average user is aged between 30 and 45, and the majority (85%) are university educated to at least a Bachelor degree level. All profiles on the site are manually verified and, using a sophisticated algorithm, matched based on a combination of education, profession, and personality.

New users complete an extensive questionnaire upon sign-up that analyzes unique personality traits. After completing the questionnaire, users fill out an in-depth profile that covers passions, hobbies, desires, dealbreakers, strengths, and more. From there the site takes over, presenting users with 3-7 matches each day that meet their personality and search criteria. The system is a perk for busy professionals who have little spare time to dedicate to dating.

Jeronimo Folgueira, CEO of EliteSingles, says “As our business rapidly grows, we want our brand to better reflect our positioning and to stick with our target audience. By adopting a more modern, friendlier, green logo we hope to increase our appeal among our core demographic of university-educated professionals as well as emphasise our commitment to delivering the best premium online-dating experience on the market.”

“Together with the redesign of our mobile app,” he continues, “we want our new more-recognisable brand aesthetic to embody the combination of assurance and excitement our users feel when they join EliteSingles.”

For more on this dating service you can read our review of Elite Singles.

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