Dating Services

Online dating services like eHarmony and Match have long touted the science behind their matching process, claiming that specially designed algorithms hold the secret to lasting love. But how accurate is this claim? That is, are people who join online dating sites finding long-term relationships easier to come by?

Not according to a recent study by a group of researchers from five different universities in the Midwest, South, East Cost, and West Coast. The authors found that online dating sites offer a different experience and more opportunities compared to conventional dating, but the success of these sites is not clear – namely, the matching algorithms haven’t proven their anticipated success.

“There is one fundamental problem with all of these algorithms,” Eli Finkel, a psychologist at Northwestern University who was one of the researchers for the study, told the San Francisco Chronicle. “They have set themselves up with an impossible task: They assume that they can take information from two people who are totally unaware of each other’s existence and determine whether they are compatible. That is completely false.”

According to the study, the algorithms are misleading, because research has found both similarity and “complementarity” – the basic tenants of online match-making – have little impact on relationship quality overall. Not to mention, people are confused about what they actually want. For instance, in some studies of speed dating, the participants’ ideas of the perfect match often don’t align with who they end up being attracted to in person.

This conflicts with a 2013 study from researchers at the University of Chicago, who found that online couples have happier, longer marriages - assumingly because of the matching process.

Online dating has been around for over two decades, but until recently (thanks to the soaring popularity of apps like Tinder) – was not something the majority of singles pursued. Now, the tables have turned. According to Match, 40 million Americans have used an online dating service. On top of that, a study in 2013 (funded by eHarmony) showed that almost a third of marriages were made through online dating. So why are researchers poking holes in the science now?

“He is debunking a problem no one believes exists,” OkCupid coFounder Christian Rudder told The San Francisco Chronicle. “We’re there to get you that first date. We do use math and we do get people dates.”

Real connection however, according to Finkel, happens with face-to-face interactions, or virtual ones, through Skype of Facetime – which aren’t part of the online matching process. Tinder for instance, doesn’t claim to make good matches, but it does the job of getting people more dates.

The study was conducted by Eli J. Finkel (Northwestern University), Paul W. Eastwick (Texas A & M University), Benjamin R. Karney (UCLA), Harry T. Reis (University of Rochester), and Susan Sprecher (Illinois State University).

To help promote the global launch of Tinder Plus, co-founder and soon-to-be former CEO Sean Rad has been in the news a lot lately. Recently, he hopped on Reddit to answer questions from the general public about Tinder, the launch of its new premium service, and what’s next for the company.

Because of the recent backlash about Tinder Plus, people were interested in the reasons behind the pricing of the new service - $9.99 for those under 30, and for those 30 and older, $19.99. According to Rad, “months of testing and thought went into the feature and price mix for Tinder Plus. We tested a broad range of prices and found that users that saw value in Tinder Plus were more than willing to pay at the existing price points.” He goes on to talk about Passport and Rewind, the two most-requested features offered in the new service, which allow you to check out people in other cities and also to reconsider someone you rejected before.

Rad also fielded questions on whether the app creates feelings of rejection – after all, you can be rejected with one swipe in less than a second on Tinder. Rad countered this question by explaining how Tinder works. People won’t know that you liked them unless they swipe right on your profile. “We call this the ‘double opt-in.’ Even if you don’t match with another user, there’s no certainty that they saw your profile.”

Tinder’s history holds a series of lucky accidents – for one, it was almost named Matchbox. The first version of the app didn’t even have swiping, Tinder’s signature feature. Co-Founder Jonathan Badeen explains: “I snuck it in a few weeks later and told everybody after it was released that they could swipe. The swipe was born out of a desire to mimic real life interactions with a card stack. When organizing cards you put them into piles. Swiping right fittingly throws the card in the direction of the matches…The swipe just made sense in this case and seems stupid simple in retrospect.”

One of the participants asked how the founders came up with the idea of Tinder, to which Rad replied: “…we had this obsession with breaking down the barriers in meeting people around you. We noticed that people grew closer to their small groups of friends but grew farther apart from the rest of the world in the process. We knew that if we could simply take the fear out of meeting someone, that we could bring the people closer together. And we've done just that.”

Please read our Tinder review for more information on this popular dating app.

Back in December of 2014 Zoosk abandoned their IPO and hired a new CEO Kelly Steckelberg. This month she did an interview with Fortune in which she discussed the future of the dating service and how she plans to turn it around.

Zoosk earned over $178 million and was profitable in 2013. In 2014 the company earned more than $200 million, but they again slipped into the red and lost money. For this reason they let go 15% of their staff and canceled the planned IPO.

With her eye on Zoosk being profitable again, this pass November Kelly switched Zoosk to a premium model. This means a subscription is now required for Zoosk members to send messages. It is still free to create a profile and search for other Zooskers though and this is the same model that other companies like Match.com, eHarmony and Christian Mingle uses. Zoosk also plans to introduce a number of other new features for their premium service to entice more users to pay. This includes a photo verification system and a badge to identify members who have been verified.

So far it appears the turn around of Zoosk (or at least the start of it) has been a success. Kelly Steckelberg says Zoosk will soon announced that the first quarter of 2015 was profitable.

For more on this dating service you can read our Zoosk review.

Since 1987, South by Southwest's annual film, interactive, and music festivals and conferences in Austin have become an increasingly bigger deal. These days it's one of the biggest festivals in America, and with that comes all the exciting excesses you would expect.

It's no stretch of the imagination whatsoever to expect that online dating explodes in Austin during that time, particularly location-based services like Tinder. This year's SXSW has indeed seen a flurry of activity related to online dating, but it isn't making a splash in the ways you'd think.

Meet Ava, a seemingly normal 25-year-old who turned out not to be normal after all. In fact, she simply turned out not to be. Ava was a Tinder bot created to promote a sci-fi thriller, Ex Machina, that premiered at the festival. An Adweek staff member wrote about his encounter with Ava in an intriguingly named piece called Tinder Users at SXSW Are Falling for This Woman, but She's Not What She Appears.

Ava was capable of having a conversation via the app, but as soon as she directed users to her Instagram, it was clear that something was off. There was just one photo and one video, both promoting Ex Machina. The link in her bio went to the movie's website. And the woman in the photo is a Swedish actress, who just happens to play a role in the film.

On one hand, it's pretty invasive and – yes – pretty spammy. No doubt “Ava” pissed plenty of SXSW-goers off. On the other hand, it's also kind of brilliant. It ties in perfectly with the concept of the film - “she's a bot in the movie, so of course she's a bot on Tinder.”

And that's not the only example of online dating being a big news story at SXSW. Dating app Quiver turned heads with a “Stop The Robot” protest at the festival. On most online dating sites, users are matched via some kind of algorithm. On Quiver, on the other hand, humans help by matching users they think would be good fits.

“Since the idea behind Quiver is to rely on users rather than artificial intelligence,” writes International Business Times, the team behind it held a fake protest outside the Austin Convention Center to “highlight the dangers of tech – and get some good PR, of course.”

Protesters at the faux-demonstration sported shirts promoting Stop The Robots, an alleged organization (but in fact just a website) raising awareness about the dangers artificial intelligence and other advanced tech could pose to humans. They carried signs with slogans like “Stop the AI threat,” “Robots won't care” and “Humans are the future.”

Who knows whether these publicity stunts convert into actual business, but they're certainly fun for the spectator.

IAC, the company who is the majority stakeholder in popular dating app Tinder, no longer wants Sean Rad in the driver’s seat. As of late March, the company has named the new CEO who will be taking his place: Christopher Payne.

Payne previously worked for eBay as a senior vice president in the company’s marketplaces division, where he was responsible for the North American market. He also founded Positronic, a search technology company, which eBay acquired in 2008. Before that, he worked for 13 years at Microsoft, including heading its search unit, which was then called Windows Search Live.

“Christopher brings invaluable experience running consumer technology businesses that operate at massive scale,” Mr. Rad said in a statement.

But the change might not be completely embraced by Rad, who was embroiled in a very public sexual harassment lawsuit brought about by former employee Whitney Wolfe. They settled out of court for an undisclosed amount, and she has now launched a new dating app of her own that directly competes with Tinder. Rad will remain President of Tinder and retains a seat on the company’s board. According to reports, he will still be in charge of product and marketing, but Payne will take over everything else.

The spotlight that has been on Rad the past few years has not been flattering, and the most recent scrutiny has come as a result of the new premium service Tinder Plus, which is costing as much as $19.99 US per month for two additional features. Users have asked to be able to use Tinder in multiple cities, as well as to “go back” and swipe right on matches they’d previously turned down. The new service offers these features for a price – but if you want to just keep the basic free service, the company has also put limits on the amount of swiping you can do in a 24-hour period. This caused controversy when it launched in the UK, and the app’s rating in the iTunes store went down to one and a half stars as a result.

Another controversial decision was pricing for the new service, which is based on age. For users under 30, Tinder Plus costs $9.99 per month, but for those 30 and older, it goes up to $19.99, and even more in European countries. Rad says a lot of research went into the pricing, and he stands by what he says customers are willing to pay.

Tinder also plans to launch an ad product, but has not disclosed how this will affect the service or user’s experience. Until now, advertising revenue has come from product placement, but the app has a lot of valuable user information for marketing departments to tap into.

IAC hopes that Payne can refocus Tinder’s business goals and help it grow into a more profitable as well as popular company.

Read our review of Tinder to find out more about this popular dating app.

eHarmony has weathered more than a few storms in its fourteen-year history, and has recently shared its trials and tribulations with The Wall Street Journal. The company has redefined itself as a “matchmaking site” as opposed to an online dating site, putting the emphasis back into long-term relationships.

The strategy seems to have worked – according to figures revealed by eHarmony founder Neil Clark Warren and COO Armen Avedissian, the company has more subscribers than ever before – 778,000 – and they make up to 15 million matches per day. But this is after the company almost collapsed. In 2012, after a few ousted CEOs and some advice from a board member, Dr. Warren made the decision to take back the reigns of the company and get it back on track. He came out of retirement at 78 years old to reclaim his spot as CEO and turn the company around – about the time when Tinder hit the market.

Before Warren took over, eHarmony was struggling to figure out its market, delving into new technology instead of focusing on its branding, leaving it vulnerable to the explosion of new dating sites and apps that came along. As Dr. Warren told the Wall Street Journal, “I think under CEO Greg Waldorf, users started seeing us more like the other dating sites Match and Zoosk, when we’re really a social science site. We were never meant to be a dating site. We were meant to be a matchmaking site. I think our leadership lost sight of that, too. We want good technology, but what we’re really, really interested in is long-term relationships.”

For its rebranding campaign, Dr. Warren returned to the television commercials, emphasizing the long-term matchmaking aspect of the technology. The company has also focused on its mobile app, something that has become a necessity for traditional dating sites since Tinder hit the market. When asked about Tinder, Dr. Warren emphasized that the app is actually helping bring more awareness and acceptance of online dating as a whole, which has been good for all online dating sites. According to Warren, eHarmony’s marketshare has stayed even despite the competition – Tinder claims to match about 22 million people a day.

Not to mention, Tinder’s reputation for being a hook-up app has helped differentiate more “serious” dating websites like eHarmony.

Warren told The Wall Street Journal: “People who are eHarmony customers probably aren’t going to be lured away by Tinder. We’re a serious bunch when it comes to matching for long-term relationships. We’re really not interested in short-term relationships.”

Tinder hasn’t been the only thorn in eHarmony’s side. The company came under fire when it didn’t include gay and lesbian relationships in their matching services – only creating “Compatible Partners” after a high-profile lawsuit. And now, eHarmony plans to launch a whole new matchmaking service called “Elevated Careers” – which will match job candidates with potential employers, based on factors like company culture and personality profiles in addition to skill sets. The new service will be available in June.

For more on this matchmaking service you can read our review of eHarmony.