Believe the media hype about Tinder and you know it as the epicenter of youth hookup culture. The app is constantly plagued by accusations of promoting casual sex, but a recent survey from college jobs startup WayUp says the perception of Tinder could be a far cry from its reality.

The survey asked 200 college students about their dating habits. Seventy-three percent ranked Tinder as their favorite dating app, followed by Bumble at 13% and OkCupid at 10%. A lone student listed Facebook as her dating site of choice.

It’s not a surprise that college students show a strong preference for Tinder. They were amongst Tinder’s most active users when the app launched in 2012, and today Tinder says 50% of its users are in the college age group.

What’s more surprising is what they say they’re using it for. Twenty percent said they're looking for a hookup, 27% said they’re looking for a significant other, and the majority - at 53% - said they use dating apps to find friends.

So is that Tinder’s deep, dark secret? It’s not the sex-fueled free-for-all everyone thinks it is?

Both college students and researchers believe the survey isn’t an accurate reflection of the dating landscape. Sydney Mastandrea, a sophomore at University of Miami, told CNN Money, "I think people use [Tinder] for random hookups rather than [finding] friends — but say it's for 'friends' so they aren't judged."

Aditi Paul, a Ph.D. candidate researching online dating at Michigan State University, believes students don’t need an app to assist in finding friendships, as the college experiences provides a wealth of opportunities for social interaction.

Or perhaps students say “friendship” because they don’t actually know what they’re getting. Kathleen Bogle, professor and author of Hooking Up: Sex, Dating, and Relationships on Campus, told Inside Higher Ed that the tendency for college students to use the term could come from their proclivity for unlabeled romantic interactions. Without a more formal term, they default to “friendship” to keep their options open.

“I don’t know that I believe that people are just trying to make friends via Tinder and have no other intentions beyond that,” Bogle said. “I think that’s just a sign of being open to whatever happens, happens.”

Rosette Pambakian, vice president of communications at Tinder, takes a more open-minded view of the application. In 2014, she told Elle, "The purpose was never just for dating, it was for social discovery in general ... The co-founders wanted to create a really efficient way to meet people around you who you probably would have never met before."

In the end, it doesn’t matter to Tinder. Whether college students are looking for friendships, hookups, or long-term love, they’re still using the app. For more on this service, you can read our review of Tinder

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.

For the sixth year in a row, Match.com surveyed singles from across the United States to examine what it means to be single and looking for love in the 21st century. More than 5,500 were surveyed for the 2015 edition of the annual ‘Singles in America’ study. The report covers a wide range of topics, but two are especially hot: sex and exes.

The survey begins by comparing the two most talked-about generations. Match found that Boomers, despite being older, are hardly prudes. They’re 118% more likely to have a one-night stand on vacation and 53% more likely to have a threesome. Millennials, on the other hand, are 165% more likely to have filmed sex and 236% more likely to be completely drunk the first time they sleep with someone.

Singles In America goes on to present sex stats on a range of subjects:

• 44% of respondents lost their virginity by 18
• 75% had sex by 21
• 16% of women said they’re open to making a sex tape
• 24% of men admitted to having sex in public
• 55% of women have had multiple orgasms
• 3% of men never orgasm from sex
• 50% of singles have had 6 or fewer partners
• 47% of singles have had fewer than 15 partners
• 46% of singles have had a friends-with-benefits arrangement
• 25% of singles have turned a one-night stand into a relationship

What happens that those relationships don’t work out? Match.com also studied the behavior of exes in America. Unsurprisingly, sex was still a hot topic. Twenty-five percent of singles said they've hooked up with an ex, while 33% confessed to dreaming about doing it.

The biggest questions involved breakups and friendship. Forty-two percent of women said they would stay friends with an ex, but fifty percent of female respondents said they wouldn't be okay with a friend dating their ex-boyfriend. However, 25% of women and 50% of men said dating an ex’s friend is totally cool.

Your likelihood of scoring that date in the first place depends on the language you use in your profile. A ‘LOL’ or a ‘Haha’ boosts your odds of a date by 255% and your chances of hitting the sack by 39%. But the real winner of the language race? It’s 2015’s most trendy phrase: ‘Netflix and chill.’

Match.com found that the sneaky sex reference increases your odds by an astronomical 99%, a sizable advantage over some of the year’s other trendy terms. ‘Ghost’ bolstered your chances by 63% and ‘Bae’ by 64%, with ‘on fleek’ pulling up the rear at a disastrous -26%. Time to give your profile a linguistic spring cleaning. Read our review of Match.com for more information on the dating service which conducted this study.