Dating Services

Yes, you read that correctly. When you friends ask how you met the love of your life, your answer could begin with “Well, I spit in a tube, and…”

It’s probably not the romantic origin story you were expecting, but it’s certainly one of the most high tech. SingldOut.com claims to be the first online dating site to make matches based on your DNA (I don't think it is as the now defunct Scientific Match tried DNA matching back in 2008). The site is partnered with Instant Chemistry, a service that uses psychology and DNA testing to determine "biological compatibility" in a long-term relationship. Here’s how it works:

• Sign up for a SingldOut membership
• Get an Instant Chemistry DNA kit in the mail
• Spit into the enclosed tube
• Pack it up in the included prepaid envelope, then ship it back to Instant Chemistry
• Take a psychological assessment online
• Receive your results, which are posted to your online dating profile, a week later

Instant Chemstiry tests two "markers" in order to determine compatibility. The first is the serotonin uptake transporter, which is involved in how people react to positive and negative emotions. The second are the genes influencing your immune system.

Research shows there is a strong correlation between people in long-term relationships having different (but complementary) versions of the serotonin and immune system genes, but the science is still in its infancy. SingldOut is “looking at a very small number of genes, and you simply cannot extrapolate a prediction from those genes to long-term compatibility," says Mike Dougherty, director of education for the American Society of Human Genetics. It’s impossible to ignore the other genes and environmental factors that come into play during the complex process of attraction.

These days DNA seems to be the pinnacle of science. There are diets designed around your DNA. Crimes are solved via DNA. You can screen for diseases using your DNA. You can learn about your ancestors by your DNA. It’s no surprise that a company is now attempting to bring dating by DNA to the masses, though even they point out that it’s a stretch to consider DNA a top factor in the choice of a partner.

Is it a conceptually interesting prospect? Yes. Is it effective? Perhaps, when used in conjunction with more traditional methods. Is it deterministic? Absolutely not. Not yet anyway , but aren’t you a least a little bit intrigued at the idea of living in a sci-fi future in which we can be matched with perfect partners based on our biology?

Membership to SingldOut is priced at $199 for three months, $249 for six months or $299 for 12 months. 

When it comes to mobile dating, every company has just one goal right now: beat Tinder. The latest app to attempt the feat is Happn, a new mobile dating service from Fabien Cohen, Didier Rappaport, and Antony Cohen.

Like most mobile dating apps, Happn uses your phone's location to show you potential matches. Every time you cross someone's path, that person’s profile is added to the top of your feed. It works much like the app Highlight, but for your love life. The goal is to save the world from missed connections, augment coincidence, and boost luck. That cutie you keep running into in your local coffee shop but never say hi to? Happn is where you connect.

When you open the app, you're presented with the grid view of all your latest encounters. Scroll down if you want to go further back in time. Tap a profile to access all the normal features you expect from a dating app. Indicate that you like someone in order to discover if there is mutual interest, then begin a conversation. Note that, unlike Tinder, users can chat with anyone using credits, even if there is no match.

“The app tells you the story of your life through your movements,” co-founder, CEO, and former Dailymotion COO Didier Rappaport told TechCrunch. “The newsfeed personalization is really important. It’s based on real life and this is key. It could be people you’ve crossed paths with and that you really wanted to see on Happn, it could also be someone you came across 44 times because you live in the same area.”

The company is still relatively small, but last year French VC firm Alven Capital invested a significant amount of money in a seed round. Happn is now available in three countries and is gaining traction. Since its official launch in March 2014, around 200,000 people have installed the app. Happn has 40,000 daily active users in Paris, 10,000 daily active users in London, and in Berlin, after only one month, between 7000 and 10,000 daily active users.

The numbers are small compared to the massive competition Happn faces, but they’re strong for a company in such early stages. And now that its user base is building, Happn stands to hit it big. The company plans to launch its app in every major European city over the course of the next eight months, and maybe even in a big city outside Europe.

Dating is a numbers game, but what happens when you’re not 23 any longer – do the numbers start working against you?

No! The truth is, people are looking for partners of all ages. More than half the U.S. adult population is single, and many are baby boomers and Gen Xers looking to find love after a break-up or divorce, or want to get married for the first time. You are not alone.

The media would like us to think that young daters are the only ones out there who are actively dating and forming relationships, but that is far from the truth. Older daters are higher in number, but are slowly adapting to the technology available to them – specifically online and mobile dating. The stigma is gone for the most part, thanks to the ease, accessibility and popularity of mobile dating apps. How many 40-somethings do you know using Tinder? Probably more than you’d expect.

If you are over 40 and wondering how to approach this whole dating thing, here are some tips:

Try different sites and apps. Not everyone over age 40 should be on eHarmony. Not every guy should be on Tinder. Before you join, ask yourself what your goals are. Do you want to test the dating waters without getting serious? Do you want to get married? Or would you like to find a girlfriend/ boyfriend for companionship? Different sites and apps offer different experiences, so be sure to research first.

Be honest in your approach. So many women lie about their ages, and so many men lie about their height. They want to attract more people, but in the end when you are meeting dates in real life, they will be upset by the lie. Don’t start any relationship this way. The people who are right for you won’t let age or height be a factor, so don’t you either.

Let go of your baggage. There’s nothing more important than examining past relationships and seeing where we can get rid of old beliefs and thought patterns that aren’t serving us. Anger and fear are the two worst things to hang on to – for anyone. Go to counseling, talk with a friend, start a practice in yoga – do what it takes to help lift you beyond your current fear and anger, and into a place of greater peace before you date. It will be worth it.

Think about what you want in a relationship. It’s more important to understand how you want to feel in a relationship, rather than looking for a guy or girl who checks off those “boxes” – like being hot, or educated, or successful. These don’t matter nearly as much when you are in the relationship. Instead, think about the kind of person you’d like to spend time with.

Cultivate your own happiness and personal life. Do you enjoy travel, riding your bike, or cooking? Don’t wait for a partner to plan your next trip, or a cycling buddy before you research new biking trails, or a boyfriend before you start cooking elaborate 4-course meals. Do it for you! When you do things that make you happy, it puts you in a great headspace to attract others who are happy in their lives, too.

If you’ve heard Brandon Wade’s name lately, it’s likely because he’s the CEO of SeekingArrangement.com and SA is currently embroiled in quite the scandal. Earlier this summer, the Web was rocked with the news that Google executive Forrest Hayes died of a fatal dose of heroin, allegedly injected by a prostitute named Alix Tichelman while the two were on a yacht.

Tichelman and Hayes met on SeekingArrangement.com, the infamous Las Vegas-based sugar daddy dating site. The news has put the spotlight on Wade, his company, and the complex world of financially-motivated dating. In the wake of the scandal, Eric Van Susteren of the Silicon Valley Business Journal spoke with Brandon Wade about the past, present, and future of his notorious website. Here are a few highlights of their conversation:

Van Susteren: How’d you get into this business?

Wade: I got into it because I was dateless, and I was shy and I was just completely awkward. My mother had always told me when I was growing up to channel all my sexual frustration into my books because when you get older and have money to be generous with, the girls will flock to you. When I graduated I was making six figures, and I still had that problem so I created this website because normal dating sites weren't working for me.

Van Susteren: How did your mother feel about being the inspiration of this business?

Wade: She loves it, and she thought it was funny that her advice would turn into a dating website eventually. People are going to want to criticize this any way they can but it's the same kind of advice mothers are giving daughters anyway. Telling them when you grow up you'll be treated like a princess by your knight in shining armor who's going to take care of you. How different is that? It's the same message: That you want to find a good, wealthy, successful husband or boyfriend who will take care of you.

Van Susteren: So how’s business?

Wade: Business has been doing better and better. We keep seeing growth and I don't think it's going to stop. We're moving away from the sugar daddy angle as well. It's still an important aspect of the site, but our marketing message is a more general now: “Relationship on your terms.”

Van Susteren: What’s the purpose of that move?

Wade: I think we sort of reached a plateau. When you look at relationships, not all people are really wealthy and successful, but they have specific conditions that they want in terms of what they want to find in a relationship. And that's what Seeking Arrangement is all about: It's about two people coming together, defining what want from each other, what they expect from each other, and creating a relationship based on that. It should be about anything — it shouldn't be just about sugar daddies.

For more information on this dating site you can read our review of Seeking Arrangement.

Judgment and dating go hand in hand. Even before online dating became so popular, singles would assess their dates based on a few traits they deemed important – like sense of humor, work ethic, kindness, or how hot they looked in a pair of jeans - to see whether or not they were worth a second date. But at least you could go on a first date knowing essentially nothing, hoping for the best. You had to deal with the element of surprise before you were allowed to judge.

Now, all of the mystery has been removed from dating. Dating websites like OkCupid allow you not only to see the profiles of potential dates and pick them apart, but you can also see ratings given by other people (that is, if you pay $10 for the premium service). If one of your matches gets two stars out of five, you’d be less likely to ask him/ her out. After all, aren’t we influenced by the opinions of others?

The more important question is: should we be so influenced, especially when it comes to meeting someone for the first time?

Dating apps like Lulu are focused solely on reviews. The app was intended to be a place where women could get feedback about potential dates before they decided to go out with them, kind of a girlfriend safety mechanism. But it is actually more like a Yelp for dating – where women rate guys according to their looks, how they behaved on a date, sense of humor, and other qualities. So if a guy receives a low score, women who check him out on Lulu would probably avoid dating him.

The problem with this rating system is two-fold. First, the numbers can be skewed. Sure, maybe the guy is a jerk and has twenty women who will agree with that assessment. Then his low rating makes sense, and other women would want to know before going out with him. However, if a guy only has a couple of reviews, and one of them is from a jilted ex, then it brings his overall score down. In fact, what’s to stop any woman from retaliation through Lulu’s rating system?

The second problem with Lulu’s system is that it disqualifies too many potential dates based on factors that might not be important to every woman. For instance, maybe a man’s sense of humor rates low because the women he’s been out with didn’t understand his quirky style. Does that mean you – his next potential date – shouldn’t go out with him? What if his sense of humor is exactly your type?

Rating systems serve a good purpose in dating as far as warning women of potentially bad dates. But if you base whether or not to take a chance on someone solely on a rating system, you are severely limiting your options. Because you never know who the right guy for you is until you actually meet him.

Are you an eHarmony or OkCupid user? Chances are, you wouldn’t join both sites, because they cater to two different types of users. eHarmony attracts daters who are more serious and committed to finding a partner, whereas OkCupid skews a bit younger and takes itself a lot less seriously.

But regardless of which online dating site you choose – wouldn’t you want to understand how to use it most effectively, so you could obtain better results? Would you want to know how other people are using the site, and potentially how they are matched and communicate with you?

Harvard Business School professor Mikolaj “Misiek” Piskorski is the author of the newly released book A Social Strategy: How We Profit From Social Media. In conducting research for his book, he obtained data sets from both OkCupid and eHarmony to determine how different demographics communicate, flirt, and connect over the websites. He set out to see the differences in communication styles between men and women as well as older and younger users.

In the course of writing his book, which is designed for businesses with social media presences, Piskorski studied the online dating habits of millions of users. After personal information was made anonymous so it wouldn’t be compromised, he started his search: specifically, how online daters send messages to each other, how they flirt online, and how they use the sites.

In a recent interview with Fast Company magazine, Piskorski said, “Where eHarmony varies dramatically is communication. People reach out to each other more on eHarmony, and get more responses on there. The people you traditionally would think have the hardest time reaching out to people do very well on eHarmony.”

What does this mean in terms of day to day use of the site? Generally speaking, because each person's pool of matches is smaller on a site like eHarmony where the matches are qualified, they tend to have an easier time reaching out. For timid users, it’s an empowering thing – they will message more on a site like eHarmony than on OkCupid when they know they are competing with thousands of other members.

Another reason for the increased communication on eHarmony is due to the fact that older women and men who are older, more overweight, or shorter than average daters are also more likely to reach out on eHarmony without feeling intimidated. Again, the limited number of matches he feels is a primary reason. Because eHarmony users have fewer choices than okCupid users, they are more likely to reach out, especially women, to people they are matched with.

So does less mean more? Perhaps. OkCupid users tended to gravitate towards specific matching services that offered more bite-sized options, too. For women, it was Quiver, which showed them matches that OkCupid thought would be good based on their likes and communication patterns. For men, it was a service called Quickmatch, where they could look at photos and basic profile information and rate the users according to what they find attractive.

Perhaps a study of dating app communication will be next on Pikorski’s list.