Dating Services

Recipient
Are You Interested?

The Top Pick - Innovative 2013 Editor's choice Award goes to the dating service called Are You Interested? (AYI for short). This site worldwide has over 70 million users and 3 million Facebook fans. Are You Interested main audience is adults under 40. Their matching strategy is based on activities and what each person enjoys doing. There are no in-depth tests that try to figure out your personality and what makes you tick by taking hours of your time and asking hundreds of questions. AYI is a great choice for the casual dater.

How is Are You Interested innovative? They have their service available on a large number of relevant platforms. Along with their website you can find AYI as a Facebook App, Android App and iPhone App. Allowing their service to be available on so many devices means almost anyone has the ability to access the service. For you this means more members to be matched with. Are You Interested also kept up with the technical challenge of making sure all of their dating apps are bug free and share a consistent look and feel.

Read our review of Are You Interested? for more information about this online dating service.

This Year's Runner Up for this award is: OkCupid

There has always been a nagging problem lurking in the back of the online dating industry's head: when you've built your business around helping singles find true love, what happens when they find it? On one hand, your marketing department has a lot to brag about. On the other hand, you just lost a customer.

HowAboutWe has answered the question and solved the online dating paradox with an innovative strategy: aim for a whole new market. Co-founders Brian Schechter and Aaron Schildkrout turned the problem into a business advantage by creating a dedicated site for people who are already paired up. The site was christened HowAboutWe for Couples, and a new era of online dating was born.

"We had always focused on bringing online dating offline," Schildkrout told Fast Company. "All the sites are designed to keep users chatting, poking, and endlessly searching profiles online," but HowAboutWe's purpose was "to connect people in the real world." Its original incarnation earned over 1 million users easily, but the dating experience doesn't end at a meet up.

"Couples go on thousands of dates in the course of their relationship," Schildkrout observed. Multiple studies have shown the positive effects of date nights for committed couples. One such study from the National Marriage Project found that married men and women who go on dates at least once a week are 3.5 times more likely to report being "very happy" in their marriages. Consequently, they're also less likely to get divorced than those who do not spend dedicated time with their mates.

To help its couples stay together, and keep them coming back for more, HowAboutWe for Couples curates a list of date ideas culled from existing data on dates, information gleaned from the site's user base, and a team devoted to uncovering the best undiscovered dates. Think dessert tastings, archery lessons, hot air balloon rides, and an aphrodisiac pop-up dinner, whatever that is.

The couples' site operates similarly to the original dating site. Users pay a membership fee ($18 per month) to browse dates, and pay per date based on the ones they choose. Unlike coupon sites like Groupon or LivingSocial, HowAboutWe doesn't extract a percentage from the cost of the date. 100% of the proceeds go to the vendor. Because of this, Schildkrout says, HowAboutWe is able to offer more unique experiences then the daily coupon companies.

So far, HowAboutWe's move seems to be a good one. Though only 12% of users who met through the site are currently using the couples service, Schildkrout reports that it has maintained a 90% month-over-month retention and has over half a million users. To find out more about this dating and couple service you can read our How About We review.

Recipient
Passion.com

Passion.com is the winner of the Editor's Top Pick - Sexy Award. With millions of members spread across many countries Passion.com is the most popular by far here in North America. If you are looking to hook-up with someone or want an intimate encounter then Passion.com is an ideal dating site for you to try out.

It doesn’t matter if you are a man, woman, or couple you will find Passion.com easy to join with lots of features and tools which will make finding your partner(s) a snap. Along with the profiles you have photos and videos to look through. You can commutate with other members either via email or in real-time via instant messaging or video. It is a lot easier to figure out if things will work when can communicate directly with someone, especially if it is for a one night stand.

Passion.com is free to join but to communicate with members you will need to buy a monthly membership.

Read our review of Passion.com for more information about this dating service or visit Passion.com directly.

There was no runner up in 2013 for this award.

We all love reconnecting with old friends on Facebook - including checking status updates just to see what everyone else is up to. But when you're unhappy with your own life, this could be the worst thing you could do.

Have you ever been frustrated by a string of bad dates, checked Facebook, and suddenly noticed all of your friends are posting pictures with their new boyfriends or changing their status updates to "in a relationship?" While it might seem like everyone is coupled up except for you, it's not reality. But Facebook can make us think so.

How often do you post pictures of yourself when you're feeling down - sitting alone on your couch watching TV? Probably not many.

Well, your friends aren't going to share their lonely nights on Facebook either. They won't share the fact that they weren't invited to that awesome party, or the fights they have with their boyfriends, or the issues that come up soon after they get married. These are the parts of a relationship that people don't want to share. Which is why Facebook isn't an accurate depiction of reality. If you feel depressed after logging on to Facebook, you might want to take some time off.

Social media is a great tool, but it can also be harmful if we take it too seriously. You don't want to sabotage your own love life, yet that's exactly what we do when we obsess over everyone else's Facebook status.

Following are some tips to help you focus on you, instead of everyone else on Facebook:

Don't look at Facebook before a date. It can put you in a bad mood, make you more judgmental of your date, cause you to obsess about your successful Facebook friend, and generally change the whole vibe of what the date could be. If you approach your date with a relaxed and confident attitude, trying to have a good time, you likely will have a good time. If Facebook is getting you down, leave it out. With every new person you meet, you have a new opportunity to connect. So let it happen, without Facebook clouding your view.

Don't share your date stories over Facebook. Your friends might love your crazy dating life and offer their opinions, or maybe their own bad date stories, but do you really need them? There's no need to have a public forum on how your dating life is going. Just focus on yourself, who you're meeting, and having a good time. This isn't a contest.

Don't friend your dates too soon. There's too much temptation to see who he's friended and who he's dated. If you're just getting to know him, keep it limited. You might get the wrong idea from his Facebook page, like he would of yours!

Facebook is a great tool, but it's good to know when to disconnect.

Recipient
OkCupid

The Editor's 2013 Top Pick - Free Award once again has been given to OkCupid. In the last 4 years OkCupid has won this award 3 times. While POF may be bigger OkCupid has a better reputation among its users for matching. OkCupid members also tend to be a little bit older and have more education.

OkCupid uses a lot of math to perform it’s matches. It’s success in matching you with other members depends on how honest you are with OkCupid when answering question (and with yourself) along with how many actual questions you do answer. With each question you answer on OkCupid you also have to indicate how you want your potential match to answer, along with how important the actual question is (on a sliding scale). The questions you answer along with its parts are then compared with other users answers and a percentage is found for each comparison that indicates how happy you would be with that member. OkCupid returns these results as matches. OkCupid can only base how happy you would be with other members on the questions you answer, so the more you answer the greater the chance you will have of finding love.

The basic OkCupid service is free. You can create a profile, answer questions, search for matches and communicate with members. They do have an upgraded membership called the A-List which does give you a few perks. These include removal of ads, advanced search features, order of search results, and private photo albums (not a complete list). Even with a paid component OkCupid still falls under our free site listings since the upgrade is not required to actual communicate with members.

Read our review of OkCupid.com for more information about this online dating service or visit OkCupid directly.

This Year's Runner Up for this award is: Plenty of Fish

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This coupon code listed above is only valid on eHarmony in Canada (eHarmony.ca).

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Read our review of eHarmony for more information about this online matchmaking service.