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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.

Let’s face it, we human beings are visual creatures. When you meet someone new in person, what’s the first thing you do? Most likely, you look at him and decide on how attractive he is. Would you pursue him if you had an opportunity?

This type of superficial behavior is pretty standard. Most of us assess and judge others according to their appearance. The soaring popularity of apps like Tinder give us evidence that even in the digital age when we can get more information on almost anybody we meet if we just took the time to Google them – we prefer to say yes or no based on their looks.

Case in point: in the two years Tinder has been on the market, smartphone sales have gone up dramatically, which means more people have access to the app. The statistics speak for themselves. Tinder processes more than a billion swipes daily, matches more than 12 million people in the same amount of time (only a fraction of the overall swipes are mutual however), and though the company won’t release information on the number of users, sources say it could be as large as 50 million active users.

More important than people signing up for Tinder is the fact that they use it – as regularly (if not more often) as other popular social media like Facebook or Pinterest. According to a recent article in The New York Times, on average, people log in to the app 11 times a day. Women spend as much as 8 and a half minutes on it, while men spend 7.2 minutes (sorry guys). If you add it up, that’s almost 90 minutes per day.

But is the phenomenon of Tinder purely based on our basic animal instincts? Are we really only looking for someone who is physically attractive, or who embodies a physical ideal of some sort?

Maybe not. Many of Tinder’s users (mostly men) are looking to rogue apps like Tinderoid that manipulate Tinder’s database so they can “swipe right” to multiple profiles at once without even looking at a single photo. They are looking to increase their odds of matching with a woman, rather than looking for someone they find physically appealing. But what is the goal - is it just to hook up with more women? Maybe, but that’s another matter.

Tinder is a vehicle for meeting more people, and works a lot faster than your traditional online dating process. Maybe it’s appeal is not just about the photos, but instead due to the vast quantity of people you can “pick and choose” anytime, anywhere - and how quickly you can match and meet up.

The real question is: does it improve the overall dating experience? The jury is still out on that one.

At the end of 2012, dating site Hinge had recently launched and was overshadowed by the popularity of dating app Tinder. Unsure of how to proceed with less than $32,000 in the bank and only a few thousand users according to Business Insider, Hinge decided to bet big on the mobile platform.

"We made some business assumptions that turned out to be wrong," Hinge CEO and founder Justin McLeod told the news website. "We were like, 'This thing is running out of money, and we need to do something drastic."

In what seems to be a spur-of-the-moment business decision, McLeod and a couple of developers holed up for a few weeks and launched a mobile version of Hinge on February 7th of 2013. But the launch wasn't as smooth as expected - Apple at first rejected the app, which caused many sleepless night for McLeod and his company. They had planned a huge launch party in Washington DC where the app first launched, and until the morning of the launch party, there was no app available.

The launch party turned out to be a success, and more people signed up right after it than had signed up for the beta in all of 2012. It seemed Hinge struck a chord with users where Tinder left them feeling insecure - especially women. Hinge does not just match users based on location like Tinder does (which means a lot of random profiles get into the mix) - you only get matched through your circle of Facebook friends of friends, so everyone you meet on Hinge has some kind of link to your circle. This security has been particularly attractive to female dating app consumers.

McLeod is not about to sit still. He is grabbing a good portion of the dating app market share, and expects to compete heavily with Tinder for its core user base. But he's taking things one step at a time.

Instead of launching his app nationally, he has launched city by city, building up a solid user base based on demand before he moves into a new market. Also, potential Hinge users must be invited by current Hinge users - adding a level of exclusivity and security to the app.

Hinge is now one of New York's hottest startups. Although Tinder is much larger (it makes more matches per day than Hinge has in its entire history), McLeod's company is starting to steal some Tinder users. It has expanded to 20 cities including Los Angeles, San Francisco and Washington, D.C. It uses a waitlist to assess demand in other cities, then launches when a few thousand people have signed up.

"There is no shortage of companies that have tried to build what we've built," McLeod says to Business Insider. "But we're using the organic, city-by-city method, which I think is the biggest thing ... We're a utility to help users meet great people in the flesh as effectively as possible ...We want to be a house party that has a really good host."

By now, you’ve probably heard of Tinder even if you haven’t already tried it. The app has taken the dating world by storm, mostly because of its easy access through your phone, simple set-up, and the sheer number of people using it. Tinder makes it seem like dating options are endless.

But accessing Tinder through your phone and looking through each individual match takes way too much time, at least according to some daters. Botinder intends to resolve this problem by offering a desktop version of Tinder, where you can see several potential dates at once.

Developers are launching new unofficial Tinder apps and complementary extensions regularly, just to capture this fast-growing market and capitalize on it with the latest and greatest in dating technology, or at least establishing their own marketing spin. Botinder is an unofficial Google Chrome Extension that allows you to like and dislike Tinder users even faster than you can using the official app. And if there’s one thing Tinder users need, it’s speed. Swiping left and right through each individual candidate is way too time-consuming.

There is a strategy to Tinder which makes technology like Botinder appealing, at least for the guys. By saying “yes” to as many women as possible as quickly as possible, you greatly improve your chances of getting matched (or laid). For the women, it’s a bit different. They tend to be much more discerning, turning down potential matches a lot more often than accepting. With Botinder, they too can dislike matches more quickly, making the process more efficient for everyone.

According to website Business Insider, creating a desktop version of Tinder has been a popular request for a long time. Typically, users had been downloading an Android emulator to run a version of the app, but now this is a much easier way to run it on your laptop, for those who aren’t quite so tech-saavy.

Botinder sorts users by row, allowing you to organize your matches so you can compare or view photos several at a time. There is also a “Booster” function where you can choose “like automatically” and Botinder will start liking every Tinder user near you – multiple people a second – so you can’t really even see who you are liking. But that’s not really the point – it’s actually playing a numbers game with dating. It would take weeks of being a dedicated Tinder app user before you got the kind of instant matching success that is likely with Botinder.

The real question is: will Botinder improve the overall dating experience, or just add to the noise and confusion?

For more information on service this Chrome Extension works with you can read our Tinder page.

A recent report of Tinder’s financial worth shows that its users aren’t going away anytime soon. The massively popular dating app is poised to increase its value and market share further over the next year. According to Market Watch, Tinder is growing at such a rate that Barclays predicts its valuation will reach $1.1 billion by the end of 2015, adding to IAC’s current $5.68 billion market cap. IAC owns many of the most popular dating sites, including Match.com.

What makes its value so high, considering the app is free for download? The answer is in the sheer number of users who download the app. As with most online dating sites, perception is key: the more users a site has, the more people will gravitate to it because they think their chances of getting a date, relationship or even hook-up increase.

Tinder’s popularity has taken off thanks to younger daters who embraced the mobile technology and liken Tinder to a game that is easy and fun to use. Plus, it has taken the stigma that is part of online dating away, because the app is mainly to support single people meeting each other casually as opposed to those looking to find serious relationships.

Tinder’s popularity is not just PR buzz. Its growth in the past year has been explosive, with 750 million swipes per day reported in February of 2014, up from 5 million in December of 2013. Today, it manages more than a billion swipes per day (resulting in 12 million matches each day). According to Market Watch, Barclays expects Tinder global daily active users to reach 20 million by April, or 40 million on a monthly active user basis. It also expects Tinder to generate as much as $180 million in revenue in 2015.

How Tinder will get this kind of revenue is unclear. Lately though, they have been floating a few ideas, including a “freemium” service where basic use of the app is still free but restrictions are in place that can be lifted for a fee - like the number of matches you get, or how many photos you see, or the ability to communicate. The founders don’t want to advertise on the app, but they are open to partnerships that would generate revenue from “real world behavior,” though they don’t define what that looks like. They are also focused on the age of Tinder users, and how they might evolve in their dating preferences as they get older. Right now, Tinder is mostly a product that young people use, especially teens and young twenty-somethings - those who might later graduate to a more serious pay service like Match.com.

Eyeballs are currency however, at least to investors, who see Tinder as a golden opportunity. For more on this dating app you can read our review of Tinder.

Ever wanted to get inside the minds of thousands of daters to see what makes everyone tick? Maybe that seems cool, or maybe you’d rather sit in a dentist’s chair for five hours, but either way – it does make you curious.

So it’s no surprise that OkCupid Co-Founder Christian Rudder has decided to harness the power of OkCupid’s user data and create a book that piques our curiosity. After all, we all watched with fascination as the dating site’s blog OkTrends revealed its latest research, informing us of what types of people we are attracted to, we’re doing wrong in our online dating profiles, or how to effectively message other users. Rudder found interesting trends in the details, helping us ask questions we didn’t even know to ask. For instance, why does the angle of the camera matter in a photo, or how you smile? Why is it preferable to write a less descriptive profile? Why is it more attractive to have a guitar in your hand than a tennis racket, or possess an unusually-shaped nose than to be considered average-looking? Or the million-dollar question: what do people lie about the most when they are online dating?

OkCupid has given us the sometimes surprising preferences of online daters, based on all of the data they mine from their thousands of users. Because of the site’s format of creative questions and answers, it’s allowed them to dig deeper than most.

OkTrends has been on hiatus since 2011, when Rudder started taking the information to compile it into a book, rather than just posting the information for free on their website. Rudder’s new book is called Dataclysm: Who We Are (When We Think No One’s Looking), which comes out on Sept. 9 and examines interactions for insights into whom and how we date.

For one of Dataclysm’s studies, Rudder analyzed how men and women approach attraction. It turns out that as women get older, they like older men. Men, on the other hand, consistently prefer younger and younger women. Men will message women close to their own age, but only up to a point. For example, men in their mid-40s rarely talk to women older than 30. “We have a lot of serial daters on the site—men who just keep dating women 10 years younger than they are,” Rudder told Business Week in a recent interview. “Eventually their tactics start to fail, and the young ladies they’re messaging begin rejecting them. The result is a lot of 40-year-old men and women who find it hard to get a date.”

OkCupid isn’t worried about user backlash for mining their personal data. Rudder recently wrote a post to address this issue, pointing out that all websites experiment on users, admitting that OkCupid once tested its matchmaking algorithm by telling users who were not suited for each other that they were a near-perfect match. “We got maybe five complaints,” Rudder told Business Week.

Since OkCupid users don’t pay for the site or its advice, does Rudder have an audience willing to buy his book? We’ll have to wait and see.

Check out our review of OkCupid for more information on this popular dating site.