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Tinder only launched in 2012, but already new apps are trying to make its popular “hot-or-not” visually-based format a thing of the past. TrueView, a new location-based dating app wants its users to take dating a little more seriously.

TrueView is based out of London, and its founders advocate a switch from Tinder to improve not only your dating experience, but your odds of matching with someone at all. As many people as there are logging on to Tinder regularly, TrueView points out there are 998 million rejections daily.

The app works more like a social media platform than a traditional dating app. Similar to an app like Zoosk, TrueView logs a person’s actual behavior while using the app so users have a better, “truer” view of who they really are. Users are encouraged to share things they love to do (while they are doing it), discovering people who have similar interests. The app has a “stuff to do” section which lists events, clubs, restaurants, sports and concerts in your local city. The “news” section keeps you up to date on the things most important to you, and prompts more discussions.

The idea behind TrueView is that you can have a more organic conversation online first to see if you’re interested in someone before you meet him/her – as opposed to just swiping through photos.

True View was inspired by Andrew Ibbotson, one of the founders whose real-life online dating experience left him frustrated. He was tired of the hook-up scene and a lot of matches that led to nothing, spending more time and money for very little return. He wanted to create a better experience for himself, so he teamed up with friends Matt Verity and Damian Mitchell. They came up with the idea of a service that uses what they call "real-time micro-blogging" to make two people meeting feel more organic – and True View was born.

Tinder is still the app to beat, despite all the recent apps who are trying to outdo it, like TrueView. But it seems there is room for a new player, since even the celebrities who made it popular are now starting to turn against it. As actor Sam Smith said: "No offence to people who go on Tinder, but I just feel like it's ruining romance...why would I swipe people who are 'unattractive' when I could potentially fall in love with them?" 

TrueView is betting the people who become disillusioned with Tinder will look to the app for a new experience. While this may be true, it has hit some bumps along the way. According to a dozen reviews in the Google Play store, people are encountering some bugs with the technology, but they have had a few thousand installs so far.

TrueView is available on both iTunes and Google Play. Currently, the app isn’t available yet in the U.S.

How much do people in Indiana love auto racing? So much that NASCAR is the most frequently used word in online dating profiles from the state.

Mashable recently teamed up with Match.com to analyze thousands of US-based online dating profiles and discover how daters differ from state to state. Anyone who ventures into the untamed wilds of online dating quickly discovers the same words and phrases appear over and over again. Surprise: it turns out that pretty much everyone likes all music except country. Yawn.

Tired of feeling like all online dating profiles are the same, Mashable and Match broke down which words are used with relative frequency in certain states, compared to relative frequency in the rest of the country. If you're in the mood for making the most cliché online dating profile possible, find your location on this map and see what daters in your state are most obsessed with.

Here are a few highlights:

• California: desert
• New York: museum
• Texas: oil
• Florida: Disney
• Alaska: cabin
• Georgia: grilling
• Hawaii: surf
• Nevada: casino (duh)

Match and Mashable aren't the only ones who recently delved into state-by-state dating. The dating app Lulu (think Yelp, but for ranking and reviewing men) did some research to find out who the most popular man in each state is. Female Lulu users can anonymously rate men they know on everything from looks, to ambition, to relationships. to, yes, sex. Lulu also recently introduced anonymous messages and questions called "Truth Bombs.”

As you can probably imagine, the app was controversial when it first launched, but Lulu has since cleaned up its image and allowed men to sign up for the service. They can’t rate women, but they can promote their profiles.

The men in this experiment (all Lulu users themselves) were rated on a scale of 1-10 by women who know them. Business Insider reports: “While there are no perfect scores in the US, a man in Texas and a man in Illinois men both received a 9.7 score. Their friends used the following hashtags to describe them: ‘#DoesDishes,’ ‘#RemembersBirthdays,’ and ‘#OneOfTheGoodOnes.’”

All descriptions in Lulu are hashtags, because longer free-form answers could earn the writer an accusation of libel. Some of the top hashtags include #OpensDoors, #CaptainFun, #MakesMeLaugh, #RespectsWomen, #AlwaysHappy, #CanTalkToMyDad, #NerdyButILikeIt, and the simple but effective #NotADick.

For a full list of the winning men, see the original post on Business Insider. For more on one of the dating services that conducted the study please read our review of Match.com.

Dating apps like Tinder have taken the dating world by storm – and some argue have rendered traditional online dating a thing of the past. While sites like Match.com and eHarmony offer matches based on preferences and compatibility, Tinder offers the ability to look at a photo and instantly decide whether or not you’re interested.

In a recent article in Business Insider, eHarmony’s Vice President of Brand Marketing Grant Langston looked at Tinder’s success as a boost to his business. For instance, he’s seen a surge of new subscriptions since Tinder launched in Australia – 2.5 million members, up from 2 million the same time last year.

“The press [Tinder is] receiving is bringing lots of people to the online dating world, including people that find Tinder isn’t the right choice for them,” Langston told Business Insider. “Globally, this trend has helped us tap into new markets and led to an increase in our membership numbers.”

But why are more people choosing eHarmony when Tinder seems to be taking off? For one thing, Langston argues that people who would have never joined an online dating site before find it a little easier to start when they use a dating app. It’s made online dating in general lose its stigma.

Langston also attributes the surge in subscriptions to the high quality matchmaking that is eHarmony’s business model, compared to Tinder’s superficial match-making process. With Tinder, choosing a match is entirely dependent on photos and a couple of sentences, which aren’t much better odds for finding love than meeting someone at a bar. There isn’t necessarily any kind of compatibility – aside from that initial physical attraction.

People who are matched on eHarmony however, are compatible in specific ways. Matches aren’t made via liking the same music or TV shows or someone’s photo, but based on similar dispositions and compatible personalities – which is a bit more complex and relational. Langston says that eHarmony’s matching creates a foundation for a relationship to start, where Tinder is more fleeting, intended for a hook-up. So when people are disappointed with the matches they are meeting through Tinder, they look to other more serious online dating options, which is when they gravitate to eHarmony.

Langston also noted that eHarmony’s growth in the past year has been due to young professionals ages 23-33 flocking to the site, looking for people who are more compatible whether or not they are looking to marry.

According to Langston, eHarmony owes much of its recent success to the fact that Tinder isn’t producing many serious relationships. Then again, it seems that despite the appeal of Tinder, people are looking for something deeper.

Earlier this year, Tinder co-founder Whitney Wolfe left the company after raising a lawsuit against her colleagues over allegations of sexual harassment and discrimination. In case you need a refresher, Wolfe alleged that she was sent inappropriate messages by one of Tinder's male co-founders, who pursued a romantic relationship with Wolfe and then publicly shamed her. She also says she was stripped of her co-founder title over fears that her age and gender would damage the company's perceived valuation.

Heavy stuff, but it looks like Wolfe might soon get her revenge. TechCrunch reported that she's teamed up with Tinder alumni Chris Gulczynski and Sarah Mick to create a similarly swipe-based dating app they've dubbed Bumble. According to its Facebook page, Bumble is “an exciting, new place to meet people” and “everything you've always wanted from a social discovery app with none of the things you don't.”

Ok, sounds good so far. So how does it actually work?

According to TechCrunch, the app looks (unsurprisingly) much like Tinder. The famous swipe interface is in play, as is the basic large photo/snippet of personal info structure. A key difference is that Bumble appears to use more detailed information than Tinder – including job position, company, college, and graduation year – supporting the idea that it is intended for more serous daters.

Bumble explains its process like this:

• Two people like each other and it's a connection
• The girl has to make the first move by starting a chat within 24 hours
• If she doesn't chat, the connection disappears forever
• But... guys can extend ONE match per day for an extra 24 hours

A 24-hour rule seems a little harsh, but otherwise the idea is interesting. Will flipping the traditional dating dynamic on its head actually work, or will Bumble end up being a service where almost everyone is silent?

Bumble's behind-the-scenes structure also raises some interesting points. Competing with Tinder is no easy feat, but if anyone stands a chance, isn't it a Tinder founder and former employees? They have experience and insider knowledge that no one else has, plus enough public visibility to spread awareness quickly.

Really quickly, as it turns out. A source told TechCrunch that Bumble has already raised millions of dollars from a number of different sources, including social dating service Badoo and a multi-millionaire heir to an oil fortune. Bumble claims the app will be launching any day now, so we should find out soon enough whether that's enough to take on Tinder.

Q3 2014 financial results are in for Snap Interactive, owner and operator of AYI.com, and things are looking rosy. How rosy? Positive operating cash flow, higher revenues, and reduced net loss rosy.

Snap Interactive reports the following highlights in a press release:

• Positive operating cash flow of $0.4 million
• Third quarter revenues increased by 16.5%
• Bookings increased by 16.7% over the comparable 2013 period (a fourth consecutive quarter of revenue growth)
• Positive Adjusted EBITDA of approximately $155,000, an improvement of approximately $1.2 million year over year and $93,000 sequentially
• Net loss of $218,000, an improvement of $1.5 million year over year and $42,000 sequentially
• Increased active subscriber count by 30% in the first nine months of 2014
• New subscription transactions increased approximately 34% in the nine month period, compared to the same period in 2013
• Commenced development of a new mobile-only app for iOS

Snap's Chief Executive Officer, Clifford Lerner, commented, "We are delighted to have successfully achieved the target we announced to the market in January 2014, that Snap would deliver positive cash flow in the quarter ended September 30, 2014. The $377 thousand of cash generated from operations for the quarter ended September 30, 2014 contributed to an increase in cash of approximately 67% during the quarter ended September 30, 2014. The business growth and discipline that got us here has also delivered two consecutive quarters of positive Adjusted EBITDA."

Snap's Chief Operating Officer, Alex Harrington, adds, "Snap also invested significantly in future growth in the most recent quarter. Though the Company expects future gains in AYI subscription revenue, the vision for Snap includes growing from a single application to a portfolio of applications. The Company undertook several initiatives to position itself to scale the business across multiple dimensions."

Those initiatives include launching optional premium add-on features, diversifying the company's marketing sources to expand its reach, increasing the prominence of the company's native mobile apps to consumers, and beginning development on a mobile-only iOS dating app that targets younger users.

Lerner concluded, "We are excited to hit our financial objectives and deliver on our promises to the market. We have an exciting roadmap ahead of us for AYI, with the goal of improving retention and revenue generation. And with the prospect of new application releases, the future is bright for Snap."

Every new dating app on the market is trying to compete with Tinder’s soaring popularity. The only problem is, not many differentiate themselves enough to do it effectively. Most of the new apps have the same basic concept – swiping through photos of people nearby, seeing who you might want to message. Clover wants to do things a bit differently in the latest version of its dating app.

Clover launched back in April 2014 with little fanfare, but recently they have debuted a new feature to try and distinguish themselves from the Tinder-like apps. While many people enjoy “Tinder-ing, ” there is still a gap between what people expect from an online dating site or app and what they actually get – leading to much disappointment. Fortunately, this problem might persuade daters to try new apps – hoping to find the right formula for dating success.

Part of the problem Clover execs noticed with Tinder is that people weren’t actually meeting up in real life – they were just scrolling and messaging. So they decided to make Clover focused on getting to the actual date - but with simplicity and ease like Tinder, rather than complicated matching algorithms and a long communication process like traditional dating sites.

Instead of encouraging people to just scroll through photos, Clover’s newest version includes an “on-demand” feature that allows you to meet matches IRL (in real life) more quickly. It works like this: you pick a date and time in the calendar and where you want to meet (your favorite bar, restaurant, etc.), and the app suggests a potential prospect to join you. You then decide if you’d like to spend your time with him/her. If you do, the date is confirmed and all you have to do is show up on time.

“Our new on-demand service will find people that actually want to meet you and you’ll be able to find a date as easy as it is to order a pizza or a cab,” says Clover CEO Isaac Raichyk.

Raichyk argues that it is difficult to actually go on a date using other apps or even dating sites like OkCupid. Just because people are matched doesn’t mean that they will make the effort to meet. So why not do it more organically by confirming a date and time to see if there’s chemistry between you in person rather than waste more time texting back and forth for nothing.

While this sounds really good in theory, the app will have to prove itself in practice. The premium service is free for users to download and test for a week, but after that, it will cost you $9.99 per month - a hefty fee compared to most apps, but cheaper than online dating subscriptions and personal matchmakers. There are also certain pay-to-play features like a $.99 charge to change your name/ handle. The new on-demand feature however will be included in the free version.