Dating Services

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Most daters are reluctant to reach out to someone of a different race on an online dating site, but will respond if they are approached first, according to a new study.

Although we think of ourselves as a post-racial society, the study showed clearly that the vast majority of online daters prefer to initiate contact with daters who share the same ethnic background. It seems most people feel comfortable dating, or at least reaching out to people with the same ethnic background. There's no clear data yet on why, though the assumption is that people expect to have less in common with others who don't share their heritage.

The data was different however, when daters were approached by someone outside their race. They were more likely to respond because someone else had reached out and said he/she was interested - in a sense, breaking the ice. Interestingly, these daters then would reciprocate - they were more likely to search and reach out to daters outside their race in future interactions. The lesson? It pays to make the first move.

Kevin Lewis, a researcher at University of California San Diego who headed the study told the New York Daily News, "We expect that someone from a different background wouldn't be interested in us. The willingness to reciprocate may tell us more about site users' 'real' preferences than their willingness to initiate contact."

The group most likely to initiate contact outside of their own race were white males. Asian women stood out too, as they were more willing to communicate with men outside of their race than within it. Once contacted by someone from another race, their exchanges went up 238%.

The study was published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, and researched over 126,000 OkCupid users to find out about their messaging preferences when it comes to dating outside of their race. They looked at messages sent between October and December of 2010. All identifying information related to OkCupid member messages was blocked, so that researchers only saw race, gender, and the timestamp of the messages in addition to the content.

Even though interracial marriages have increased significantly over the last 30 years according to the latest Pew research, with one in twelve marriages being mixed-race, we haven't known much about the behaviors and preferences of online daters and how many of them are open to dating outside of their race. This has been the first study to give insight to the early stages of a relationship in terms of race.

Most people are still calling Tinder the future of dating. But behind the scenes, Tinder is already looking at a future beyond the dating world.

At Disrupt Europe, Sean Rad, founder and CEO of the mobile dating app, acknowledged that the "unwritten context" of Tinder in its current form is romantic relationships, but he added that Tinder's foundational function - connecting two people when they express mutual interest in each other - is "a universal thing across friendships, across business, across anything." With that in mind, his goal is to turn Tinder into the solution for "every single problem you have when it comes to making a new relationship."

Wow. Someone might need to take his ego down a notch.

I'm kidding, of course, but there's no denying that goal is lofty. Is it too much of a stretch, or just the amount of stretch the industry needs?

Rad believes that the impact of social networks has been to allow users to improve existing relationships. Where they fall short is in making it easier to meet new people. Interactions on social networking sites and online dating sites have developed a "hunter/hunted" dynamic, he argues, in which hunters feel they have to hunt more aggressively and those who are hunted feel increasingly uncomfortable. That's no way to begin a relationship.

Rad hinted that Tinder may be facing a future in which it is more closely tied to real-world locations. Eventually, he said, users should be able to spot someone they want to meet in the same room and indicate their interest in connecting right then and there. That rapid-fire approach to introductions also brings up the question of superficiality, which Tinder is often accused of encouraging. Rad addressed the issue by saying it's something humans do anyway, and that at least while using Tinder, people have the opportunity to choose the optimal picture to "express themselves." He even went so far as to call Tinder less superficial than our everyday lives.

When questioned about Tinder's business model, Rad said the team is currently focused on product and user growth. They're also reviewing potential revenue options, including in-app purchases. The app sees 3.5 million matches and 350 million swipes per day (about 30% of which are swipes to the right that indicate interest). Over the course of its lifetime, the app has seen 30 billion swipes and 300 million matches total. Given Tinder's massive growth, it's unlikely the app will have trouble making money when it finally decides to take the plunge.

Things we were into in 2013: Nelson Mandela, the iPhone 5s, bingewatching, twerking, Bitcoin, Bat-Kid, Breaking Bad, the royal baby, Grumpy Cat, and screaming goats.

Earlier this month Google released its annual Zeitgeist List, a collection of the top Google searches for the last 365 days that reveal what defined the year in pop culture, politics, technology, and more. "Every day, around the world, we search," Amit Singhal, senior vice president and Google Fellow, wrote in a Dec. 17 blog post. "We want to find out more about our heroes, explore far-away destinations or settle a dinner-table dispute between friends."

Because of that compulsive urge to search anything and everything online, Google is given unprecedented access to what captures the public imagination. The year-end Zeitgeist list uses Google Trends and other internal data tools to tap into the top trending searches of 2013 from 72 countries, and create a snapshot of the biggest people, places, moments, companies, and gadgets of the year.

Online dating plays an increasingly large role in the way we meet and choose our partners, so naturally Google included the year's most popular online dating services on the list. According to Google Zeitgeist, 2013's top ten dating services are:

1. Match.com
2. Chemistry.com
3. PlentyOfFish.com
4. Zoosk.com
5. eHarmony.com
6. FriendFinder.com
7. Tinder
8. Hinge
9. OurTime.com
10. OkCupid

Many of last year's entries are back again, though none retained the same positions. Match moved up a spot from #2 to #1, while PlentyOfFish dropped from the first place to third. OkCupid took a major hit in 2013, falling to #10 from #3 in 2012. Zoosk climbed a couple of spots to the forth position, and eHarmony fell slightly to fifth.

DateHookup, ChristianMingle, AdultFriendFinder, JDate, and SinglesNet all ranked last year but failed to make it on the 2013 Zeitgeist list. Instead, FriendFinder, OurTime, Chemistry, Tinder, and Hinge came from behind to take their place.

The most interesting additions to the list are, without a doubt, those last two. Tinder uses Facebook profiles to match members who respond with a simple left or right swipe to say "Yes" or "No." Hinge appears similar at first glance, but uses a "romance graph" to pair you with friends of friends that best suit your style - in other words, Tinder might get you a great hookup, but Hinge will find you a great relationship. Mobile dating took off in a big way this year, and shows no sign of stopping, so expect to see even more mobile services on the 2014 Zeitgeist report.

Zoosk's domination of the online dating scene isn't ending any time soon. The online dating site, which first rose to popularity by making romantic links between Facebook users, is preparing to create an important connection of its own - with investors in public markets.

Zoosk was founded in 2007 by Iranian entrepreneurs Alex Mehr and Shayan Zadeh, who met as students at Tehran's Sharif University of Technology. They moved to the U.S. in 2000 and launched the company seven years later. Zoosk acquired users quickly by tying itself to Facebook and the hundreds of millions of users who already used the ubiquitous social networking site to post personal information and photos. It's since branched out to mobile, the most rapidly-growing sector of the dating market, and has raised more than $60 million from investors including ATA Ventures, Canaan Partners, Bessemer Venture Partners and Crosslink Capital.

Zoosk is now taking steps to go public in 2014. The San Francisco-based company has picked Bank of America to lead its initial public offering, along with Citigroup and Royal Bank of Canada. Oppenheimer & Co. and William Blair & Co. will serve as co-managers.

In the $2.1 billion dating services business, Zoosk has a 2.9 percent market share, trailing behind Match.com and eHarmony in the competitive industry. Zoosk currently has more than 40 million active members, a success rate that can be attributed in part to the additional features the site offers. The challenge faced by most online dating sites is that, if their service is successful, their users have no reason to continue using it. Forward-thinking companies like Zoosk are counteracting that problem by offering other social features - like sending relevant discounts to couples or making date suggestions - to keep users coming back.

The approach is working. Close to 4,000 businesses compete in the dating services market, according to IBISWorld, yet despite that heavy competition, Zoosk said in May that its first-quarter revenue topped $40 million and that visitors to the website more than doubled from the prior year.

There's no question about Zoosk's impressive track record, but there are some questions about the success of these kinds of sites' attempts to go public. Following Facebook's troubled IPO in May 2012, there was a lull in social-networking deals. But Twitter Inc.'s debut last month seems to have put some people's fears to rest, and Twitter is now up 89% from its IPO price. Whose footsteps Zoosk follows in remains to be seen.

Mobile dating apps like Tinder have been getting all the attention because of their hook-up potential. But what if a dater wants the convenience of an easy-to-use mobile app like Tinder but with a little more promise that a meet-up might progress to a relationship?

Enter new dating app Hinge.

Hinge started in the Washington D.C. area and is now moving to other parts of the East Coast, including New York, Philadelphia and Boston. According to founder Justin McLeod, there are about 110,000 single college graduates in the D.C. area, and about 20,000 are actively using Hinge. The total user base is 30,000 and the average age of the users is 27. It's made about 200,000 matches, which are pretty good odds for a mobile dating app.

Part of the appeal of Hinge is that unlike Tinder, it relies on your Facebook networks (friends and friends of friends) rather than a location - (like who is single within a two-mile radius of the bar where you're having a beer). A good amount of information is pulled from your Facebook profile too, so there is a lot more transparency and more qualified matches than with other dating apps. You can only join Hinge if you already have friends on the app, so networking really works to your advantage. Also, it displays your last name along with your age, workplace, school and mutual friends so there's no hiding if you're behaving badly.

Hinge generates the basic profile but there is a bit of personalization you can do, including adding your height and religion as well as "personality tags." These tags are created by Hinge and offered as a list for the user to choose from, adding a little creativity to your profile ("Zombie Survivalist" and "Lawn Game Champion" are a couple of examples.)

Hinge borrows a bit from dating app Coffee Meets Bagel, where a set of matches appears every day at noon. (CMB offers only one match however, whereas Hinge offers five to seven.) The point of restricting potential dates is to ensure you have enough friends of friends to last for a few months, rather than trolling through all available singles in your network right away. You rate each other with either a heart or an "X," and like CMB and Tinder the hearts must be mutual for you to be a match.

This app might end up attracting more women, since Tinder doesn't really offer the same kind of pre-screening for its potential matches. Hinge is definitely an app to watch.

And I'm sure 2014 will keep offering us better and better options for mobile dating.