Now that Tinder has announced the integration of Instagram into its dating app, daters might become more self-conscious about posting selfies or an abundance of food photos. After all, if someone’s interested in your profile and wants to look further, it gives him/her more reason to judge you and move on.

That can be pretty stressful to your low-key dating style on Tinder. But if you are watching what you post – and want to put your best face forward, so to speak – then you might want to consider these tips about the kind of photos to avoid posting.

No drunk shots. It might seem festive to include a picture of you downing that margarita for Cinco de Mayo, but it might make your dates wonder if you party too much. Avoid polarizing potential dates based on a few weekend nights out having fun – find activities that represent who you are in your normal, every day life.

Keep group photos out. If you post a group photo, not only will potential dates wonder which one you are, but they are more likely to want to date your friends. Don’t fall into this trap – everyone has friends, so there’s no reason to promote it, and if you want to show off how attractive yours are, it will backfire.

Ease up on duck faces. The rise of the selfie has also resulted in the popularity of making duck faces at the camera. While you might rock your pout, don’t advertise it on Tinder. People don’t want to see your Kylie Jenner impression, they want to know who you are and what you really look like. Also, try smiling instead.

No posing with celebrities or ultra nice objects, like sports cars. I know you’re proud of that photo you took with George Clooney, or that you just bought a new car. Please don’t pose next to them for your Tinder photos. This is really screaming to potential dates: “I’m desperate for attention.”

Include a body shot. If you have nothing but shots of your face, people will make assumptions about what you’re not posting – your body. They might assume you’re hiding something, or you’ve lied about your weight or appearance in some way. Don’t let this happen. Be straightforward, and try to have a little fun with it.

Avoid all those photos of your pet and/or your food. You've heard this before, but please avoid posting all those pics of your adorable dog or cat making faces, sleeping, cuddling, whatever. Show these to your friends, not your potential dates. The same goes for food, no matter how artfully you’ve captured that plate of sushi. Endless pictures of food doesn’t tell your date anything about who you are, what you like, or how you spend time – except that you like to eat pretty things. The focus of your profile should be you.

For more about this dating app you can take a look at our Tinder review.

Tired of meeting flaky people over dating apps like Tinder? Turns out, there’s a reason for all the disappearing acts: a recent study by GlobalWebIndex reported that up to 42% of the population on Tinder are already in relationships. And incredibly, 3 in 10 users are married. Before you start bashing men, the report also broke down information by gender, and it turns out that married and taken women on Tinder outnumber the men on the app who are already in relationships.

In response to this, and perhaps to further differentiate themselves from the popular dating app, Hinge has announced that in the latest release of its dating app, it will publish whether or not you’re in a relationship, engaged or married.

Hinge did its own study among its users, and found that 1.6 percent of them were either married or engaged, while an additional two percent were already in relationships. While Hinge wins hands-down over the high percentage of cheaters on Tinder, it still wants to do better. So in Hinge version 3.5, users who reveal they are “married,” “engaged” or “in a relationship” on Facebook will have that information pulled and shared on their Hinge profile, in an effort to shame cheaters everywhere. And if you remove your relationship status from Facebook to avoid this problem? Then you may have to explain it to your spouse or partner.

Hinge utilizes Facebook to match people who are in the same circles – Facebook friends of friends who are also using the service – so you’ve never really meeting a total stranger. At least, you will have a Facebook friend in common, which helps daters reduce the anxiety about online dating.

The new version adds another great benefit, which is more transparency in dating. Instead of finding yourself devastated to find out several dates later that your match is otherwise involved, it’s out in the open.

This might be a problem for female daters, according to the GlobalWebIndex study, since the majority of cheaters on Tinder happen to be women – the target market and primary user base for Hinge. Hinge appeals to women because of safety issues, especially those who are nervous to try a dating app, because users are matched within their own social networking circles. But if married women take to the app (and perhaps they won’t – and don’t – because they would be called out by their mutual Facebook friends), they have to go to greater lengths to hide their movements.

Regardless, it is a positive step for online dating in general to create more transparency for those who are truly looking to date other single people.

Spark Networks – owner of ChristianMingle.com, JDate.com, BlackSingles.com, and more – has released financial results for the first quarter of 2015.

Revenue in the first quarter of 2015 was $13.5 million, a decrease of 19% compared to the year ago period and a 5% decrease from the prior quarter. The decrease was primarily driven by a 25% drop in average paying subscribers, particularly in the Christian Networks segment.

Direct marketing expenses in the first quarter of 2015 were $6.1 million, a decrease of 47% compared to the year ago period and an 18% increase compared to the prior quarter. Much of the decrease resulted from a new marketing strategy for Christian Networks.

You've agonized over every single detail in your profile. You've wondered if you should add an inch to your height or shave a year off your age. You've wondered if your tagline is witty enough. You've worried that saying you're looking for a relationship makes you look desperate.

In all that agonizing, you probably never worried about this: your profile picture may be too hot.

Yep, just when you thought you'd worried about everything you could possibly worry about, researchers have come up with yet another thing to stress out about. Ain't science grand?

A team from the University of Connecticut conducted an experiment to determine how people construct judgments using online dating profile pictures. They showed 305 volunteers between the ages of 17 and 36 a photo of a man or a woman. Some of the photos were casual – average lighting, no special makeup or hair treatment. The other photos were enhanced with makeup, hair styling, and strategic lighting.

Participants were then asked a series of questions to determine the profiles' physical attractiveness, similarity (to the participant), trustworthiness, and their desire to date the person featured.

The researchers found that men considered the beautified pictures more attractive, but also considered them less trustworthy than the non-beautified pictures of the exact same woman. Women, on the other hand, found the beautified male profile picture both more attractive and more trustworthy than the non-beautified picture of the same man.

Study co-author, Rory McGloin, explained the findings in a news release: “This finding suggests that even when men suspect that a woman may not look exactly like she does in her profile picture, they are willing to take the risk and pursue a date with her. In our sample, attraction seems to be more important than trust.”

McGloin also suggested that the mistrust of enhanced photos could come from the increasing spread of the catfishing phenomenon. "This finding provides an empirical highlight to the concept of catfishing and the larger phenomena surrounding online dating,” he said, “in which it is both normal and acceptable for individuals' to mislead or deceive their potential suitors."

The study – colorfully called "Too Hot to Trust: Examining the Relationship Between Attractiveness, Trustworthiness, and Desire to Date in Online Dating" – will be presented at the 65th Annual International Communication Association Conference in San Juan, Puerto Rico, 21-25 May 2015.

Can a profile picture really be “too hot to trust?” And if so, what does that mean for apps like Tinder that rely so heavily on photos?

I'm the optimistic sort, but in the face of online dating, even my normally unshakable optimism can start to quiver.

It's not that online dating is bad – far from it – but it isn't always easy. If you've been slogging through dead-end date after dead-end date, online dating might feel like a quick fix for a dull love life. You basically just put up a profile and go shopping for a significant other, right? How hard can it be to swipe until someone tickles your fancy?

Optimist Me says you might get lucky. You could come across someone who's perfect partner material right away and be an instant online dating success story. On the other hand, Realist Me knows those stories are rare, and you'll probably have your fair share of dating fails before you meet your dream date.

The hard part is not getting discouraged when you're in the failure stage. If there's anything that guarantees you won't be an online dating success story, it's giving up on online dating. It will have its hard moments, but it will also have its rewarding ones. Set your expectations accordingly by accepting these 4 online dating truths:

1. Eventually you will run into someone you know. Even in a big city, this feels like an inevitability. It could be a Facebook friend. It could be a co-worker. It could even be a sibling. Try not to feel too awkward and move on. It's pretty much a fact of modern life that this will happen and everyone just has to get used to it.
2. You will be ghosted. You've met someone you're into. You share a few messages back and forth, things seem like they're going well, and then... the person disappears, never to be heard from again. Is it polite? No. But is it the price of doing online dating business? Yes. It will happen, and when it does, you have to let it go and move on.
3. Photos will lie. Everyone knows this is a risk with online dating, yet we still act surprised when it happens. Most people online are genuine, but there are plenty who use filters, strategic angles, careful lighting, and years-old photos to appear younger or more attractive. You'll get burned at some point, and the only response is to pick yourself up and carry on.
4. A 99% match could be meaningless. Fancy algorithms sound like the key to Dating 2.0, but at the end of the day it's just guesswork. No algorithm (yet) gets it right all the time. Chemistry just isn't quantifiable. Dating sites do the best they can, but don't let it get you down if a person you thought was perfect on paper doesn't hold up in person.

Are you on Tinder? Chances are, you’re also a member of a traditional online dating site – and many of you are paying for the service. According to a recent survey by Global Web Index, 70% of Tinder users also use an online dating site – and the majority are accessing all dating sites through their phones (58%).

Tinder has changed the online dating market in a big way – more people are participating, simply because Tinder has helped online dating lose its stigma by providing a low-intensity, game-like experience. It’s much easier to swipe left and right according to potential matches' looks, and have Facebook and Instagram photos populate your profile without having to do much. It takes the pressure off of the whole experience, plus it’s free unless you upgrade to Tinder Plus.

However, many people who use Tinder want to add to their online dating experience, and therefore join paid sites like Match.com along with other online dating sites, paid or free (although most free online dating services are moving to a tiered premium service model to create more revenue).

Global Web Index found some interesting statistics in their study – including the fact that 31% of those surveyed used an online dating site in the last month, but only 1% used Tinder. Six percent used a location-based dating app, which means people are looking for other alternatives to Tinder, even in the dating app market.

Obtaining revenue from Tinder Plus could be an obstacle for the company. According to Global Web Index, only 14% of online dating site users as a whole pay for a service, while 24% of Tinder users pay for an online dating site (which makes it seem likely they wouldn't also pay for Tinder). And more than a third of dating app users say they use ad-blocking software, which means premium services like Tinder Plus have to come up with compelling features to attract paying clients, in addition to promising an ad-free experience. Perhaps this is why the company is placing limits on its free service, restricting the number of profiles a user can look at each day – to get people to invest in the paid service.

One last interesting statistic from the study: men outnumber women on Tinder 6 to 4, so ladies are definitely at an advantage using the app. However, although half of Tinder users are single, a substantial amount (30%) are married, and another 12% consider themselves in a relationship – even though they are on Tinder.

So if you decide to use Tinder, it’s a safe bet that your online dating experience will be enhanced if you decide to invest in another service as well.