General News

If you are among the 150,000 Tinder users in Ireland, your chances of finding a match are only one in a hundred - or about 1% - according to a new study.

Researchers for Ipsos MRBI, who surveyed people living in Ireland who say they use Tinder, discovered that dating app users’ chances for finding someone they click with are not that much greater than randomly meeting people at bars and pubs. In fact, the odds may be less favorable with apps, likely because there is the perception of browsing through a seemingly infinite number of eligible singles each time you log on to the app, making commitment seem unappealing. The more choices you have, the less willing you become to settle for just one person.

There is an addictive quality to apps like Tinder, according to its own figures. The average Tinder user spends between an hour and 90 minutes using the app every day, logging in 11 times. There are also an estimated 50 million active users of Tinder, compared to 864 million active Facebook users and 300 million active Twitter users – proving that the dating app has as much power to hold users’ attention as the major social media platforms.

Part of the reason for its low percentage of matches might be Tinder’s demographic, at least in Ireland - preferred mainly among fickle twenty-somethings who log on to the app several times a day. Only 12% of Irish Tinder users are between ages 35 and 44, and for those between 45 and 54, the number goes down to 3%.

Men are also less picky than women when it comes to saying yes to a dating app match. According to the study, they are three times more likely (46%) to swipe “like” on a woman’s profile whereas only 14% of women say yes to a man’s profile. The study also shows however that women invest a little more thought and time - women spend 8.5 minutes reading profiles on Tinder each time they log in, compared to a man’s 7.2 minutes (which are spent swiping).

So what does this mean for daters? The U.K. might not be much different from Tinder users all over the world. There is an accessibility and ease to the app, which has made it extremely popular and given its users a lot of options when it comes to meeting new people. But just like flipping through magazine pictures, sometimes it’s easier to just look at more photos than to reach out and contact someone, even if you find them intriguing. The real test is – can Tinder translate to real-world relationships?

Maybe your chances are about the same on Tinder as they are at your local bar. But until you reach out to try and meet in real life, you won’t know.

Bye Felipe has become an Instagram sensation, with female daters posting their awkward, annoying, uncomfortable and sometimes even harassing message trail with other online daters, mainly men. It seems that in the wake of Tinder’s popularity, there have been a few casualties and women are looking for a more genuine tool to meet guys, sans the weird pick-up lines.

While there isn’t a dating app that can screen or prevent all creeps from making their way into your matching possibilities, at least some apps give women the power to decide what we will and will not tolerate.

Following are a few to watch for in 2015:

Bumble. While I’m not a fan of how this app came about – it’s the brainchild of Whitney Wolfe, one of the former Tinder executives who also filed a sexual harassment lawsuit against co-founder Justin Mateen. And since she walked away with a bit of money from a settlement, she has decided to launch her own dating app, where women decide who they want to meet (and have 24 hours to make that decision before the option disappears). According to its marketing, the app “promotes a safe and respectful community…Bumble suggests matches based on more relevant signals than other, more shallow apps.”

LuLu. This has been around for a couple of years, allowing women to rate their dates and share information about men with other female app users. While LuLu sounds like it has the potential to be a giant slam book, many women also use it to promote their guy friends who are looking for love – kind of an online voucher for a guy’s character. The Grade is another new app that has a similar kind of review system through – you guessed it – grading them. If you get an “F” guys? You’re off the site.

Siren. True to its name, Siren allows women to put a question out to men they choose on the site (or to all men in their area) to schedule a last-minute date. For instance, a woman could ask: “want to meet up for a jog?” - and then see who responds. She can also browse profiles in private without revealing herself.

JessMeetKen. This online dating site works through Facebook connections, and allows women to post a profile of their male friends who are looking for love, recommending them to other women. (Think of that guy you really like but just aren’t attracted to.) The guys all come recommended by a woman, so it’s less likely the men you’ll be meeting will be creepers, which makes it worth it even if you aren’t a match.

Happy dating!

The new year is upon us, and here in the United States and Canada eHarmony is celebrating by having a Free Communication Weekend that is 5 days long. It starts Friday January 2nd and runs to the end of day on Wednesday January 7th.

The month of January is the busiest month for dating sites and eHarmony is starting off with a bang by allowing new and existing members to communicate for free on their service. No credit card is required and all you need is a free eHarmony membership and your profile filled out. This promotion is available on their website as well as their dating apps. eHarmony is famous for their matching algorithm and the research they put into it. When filling out your profile it is important that you answer all questions the best you can. This way you will get the most accurate matches. There is almost 150 questions which will take you about 45 minutes to complete. If you don’t have time the first go around, no problem, as you can save your partial profile and continue on at a later time. The only thing free communication on eHarmony does not include is profile photos, the phone service called secure call, and skipping the guided communication process straight to email.

With most people still on holidays it is an ideal time to try out eHarmony as it will be extra busy with free communication going on. To find out more about how this dating site works and how to best use the service you should read our eHarmony review.

Get out of the pajamas. Put down the Seamless delivery containers. Log out of Netflix. It's time to make a change around here.

If you've been avoiding online dating like the plague, no one would blame you. Sometimes it feels like online dating is a plague, except instead of the usual symptoms this plague comes with shirtless mirror selfies, terrible pickup lines, and unwanted dick pics.

Luckily, there's a new crop of dating apps designed to prevent exactly that. These apps hope to decrease the creep factor that's keeping many women away from mobile dating, by offering women more control over the process. Try out these five female-friendly dating apps in 2015:

Do singles prefer taking selfies or traveling? What city has the highest number of active daters, or at least those who message the most? What height do most women prefer when they filter their matches?

If you like knowing the answers to these kinds of questions – in other words, identifying peoples’ preferences and what are they actually doing when they’re online dating - Match has just presented a wrap-up list of dating stats for 2014, culled from its extensive database. 

Tinder might be taking the dating world by storm, but so far the traditional dating websites like OkCupid and Match have been studying their users and providing us with valuable data about how people actually date, instead of just making assumptions. As it turns out, not everyone is into hooking up or taking selfies despite popular opinion and Tinder. But singles do tend to be visually stimulated. It’s all about the photos.

According to Match.com, 4.8 million photos were added to its site in 2014, and 280 million total were “liked.” It seems the ladies know that men are looking at their photos more than anything else, because straight women topped the list of most photos posted, with an average of 3.6 photos uploaded per woman (compared to Lesbian women and Gay men with 2.3 photos on average, and straight men with 2.8 photos on average).

And what cities are the best in terms of active online daters? Interestingly, Miami subscribers sent the most messages (over both New York and Los Angeles); users in Albany, New York logged in the most; and not surprisingly, those from Anchorage, Alaska searched most frequently outside their city looking for potential dates. Salt Lake City was the runner up, with the second highest number of users looking outside the city limits for love.

As for keywords people include in their profiles, “travel” came in first with over 1,000,000 people using the term to describe their interests. “Down to earth” is another popular phrase used in online dating profiles, with over 232,000 including it in theirs. The word “selfie” appeared in profiles far less often – just north of 5,600 times. Match.com even discovered who included the most hashtags in a profile – (44 hashtags to be exact).

Among the most common words used in profiles: Electrician, Welcoming, Warmhearted, Quickest, and Ladies. Other interesting choices that were among the most popular include crochet, sewing and Cosmetology. (I’m kind of surprised things like “jogging” or “watching football” didn’t make the top of the list, but maybe people are starting to branch out?)

And apologies guys – the height that most of your female Match.com counterparts were looking for was 6 feet. Being tall is definitely an advantage for men.

What’s in store for 2015? I guess we’ll have to wait and see. For more information on this dating service please check out our Match.com review.

Back in May, things were looking good for Zoosk. The company had just filed its S-1 registration statement with the SEC and announced plans to raise $100 million in an initial public offering. The website had reached 26 million members across 80 countries, including 650,000 paying subscribers. Revenue was up 63% from 2012 to 2013, rising from $109.1 million to $178.2 million, and net loss had decreased drastically.

These days, the story is a little different for Zoosk. The company just announced major changes in leadership. CFO Kelly Steckelberg will be taking over as CEO. She is replacing co-founder Shayan Zadeh, who will become a member of the board. Zadeh will be joined on the board by co-founder Alex Mehr, who is currently president.

Along with the leadership shuffle, Zoosk is reconsidering its IPO. “Since the time we filed, the market condition around comparables that would be used to help value our company, like Angie’s List and Care.com, have not performed well,” Steckelberg told TechCrunch. “While the overall market might seem receptive to a public offering, subscription businesses have suffered.”

Zadeh agrees, saying that consumer subscription business are not currently fairing well in the market, forcing Zoosk to table it's plans for an IPO until a later date. He, Mehr and Steckelberg are adamant that the leadership changes have no bearing on Zoosk's decision and are merely coincidental.

Still, however, there is plenty riding on them. TechCrunch notes that Steckelberg is a logical replacement for Zadeh, because “She has experience building internet subscription businesses serving as controller and chief accounting officer at WebEx, joining Cisco as part of an acquisition and later serving as divisional CFO in Cisco’s WebEx consumer segment.” She has also held positions of power with Epiphany and PeopleSoft.

At a time when online dating, especially in the ever-evolving mobile sphere, is hotter than ever, Zoosk's changes stand to have a huge impact. Mehr explains that “Since day one of the company, we’ve been making product decisions over long periods of time. It created more of a top-down approach to design, where people were focused on decisions that Shayan and I were making. Kelly’s approach is more collaborative. She wants to listen to many more voices in the company when it comes to product decisions.”

Can that new collaborative approach keep Zoosk alive – and profitable – in the years to come? Steckelberg is confident. “Zoosk will be in a situation when cash-flow and current cash balance are going to be enough to carry this company forward,” she assures.