Online Dating

The mobile dating world hasn’t been the same since the launch of Tinder. As a kind of “hot or not” app for grown-ups, Tinder has become a staple among online daters because of its ease, popularity and its accessibility – helping people close by to meet for an impromptu drink or just to chat.

Now, the company wants to move in a more mainstream direction, away from its infamous dating app reputation and towards a wider audience of both singles and couples who want to expand their social networks. So recently, it has launched a feature called “Moments,” which is similar to Snapchat in that it allows users to post photos that also have a limited shelf life. Only instead of Snapshot’s seconds, “Moments” photos last 24 hours, during which Tinder matches can choose to swipe left or right depending on whether they like or don’t like the photo.

Enter a new slew of people judging their potential dates, just for a simple spur-of-the-moment photo.

According to website Tech Crunch, the new feature is a step in the right direction as far as consumers go, with investors clamoring to throw their money at Tinder (which has reportedly been valued at over $500 million in a recent stock transaction). Adding a visual (and ephemeral) feature a la Snapchat seems to be the direction other companies like Facebook are going, too. Tech Crunch argues that this will help people engage with each other a little more over the elusive app. “The photos serve as a way to share a moment and re-engage and conversation–and that could translate to more lasting relationships,” the author says.

The company claims that Tinder is a way for people to meet friends, too – not just dates. The Moments feature will allow them to strike up conversations about similar interests.

Website Gigaom.com disagrees. While they advocate that Tinder needs to move beyond its reputation as “that dating app,” the site maintains that adding a feature like Moments will only add to users’ frustration, especially since Tinder hasn’t fixed certain problems with its app. For instance, you can’t delete someone you’ve already been matched with on Tinder, you can only file them away, so you’re already going to be bombarded with images from people you might not care to engage with further.

But according to Tech Crunch, you are allowed to opt out of the Moments feature if it’s not your thing – but this means you won’t get ephemeral photos from any of your matches, not just the ones you don’t want anymore. You also have the option to “go dark” and not be available to new matches, but still maintain communication with your previous matches.

Is the Moments feature going to launch Tinder into a new space in the mobile app world, or will it only confirm its reputation for being a hook-up app? We’ll wait and see.

To find out more information about this dating app for the iPhone and Android devices you can read our review of Tinder.

I know a woman that I absolutely cannot stand - and with whom I should be best friends.

On paper, we’ve got so much in common. We shared the same major in college. We have many of the same interests in books and movies. We share almost all the same political beliefs. She’s done many things that have earned my respect.

Now, if only we could have a conversation without one of us gritting our teeth. I’m not sure exactly what the problem is; there’s no apparent underlying issue, like competition, for instance. We’ve both tried to get along. I simply feel like we’re speaking two different languages. Chatting is never easy, even though we’re both extroverts. We’re somehow oil and water.

I’ve known her for many years. I’ve long accepted that we’re never going to be best friends, and that’s okay. Occasionally, though, I’m reminded by how compatible we ought to be, and I’m bewildered all over again.

The same thing happens on occasion in online dating. We see a profile that looks promising, and get excited, only to be disappointed when our personalities don’t mesh nearly as well in person as they do on paper.

The problem is that sometimes we want to believe the profile is the truth, not the person. We’ve become infatuated with that profile, and we’re not ready to let it go. So we try a second date, or a third.

Alas, like my non-friend and me, you can’t usually talk yourself into having chemistry. Sure, randomly bad first dates do happen, but that second date will confirm everything you need to know, if you’re honest with yourself. So if you find yourself in a similar situation, remind yourself: you’re not looking for a great profile, or a great emailer. You’re looking for someone who is just as good - or better - in person as they are on paper.

There are many online dating sites and mobile apps competing for the same market of single men and women, looking for innovative ways to position themselves differently than “just another dating site/app.” But How About We continues to make innovative moves in this industry and buck the trends, including its initial hook – taking online dating offline for better results. Now they're also offering services to couples and getting into the digital content space.

Online Personals Watch recently interviewed CEO Aaron Schildkrout about the success and challenges of How About We, the choices he’s made, and what he wants to do next with the brand.

How About We is focusing on the couples space, since Schildkrout claims it will be "twenty times bigger" than the dating space will be. The fundamental problem with dating sites is that it works to their advantage for people to stay single and looking, so the focus is on gathering more subscribers, not necessarily making a product that helps customers meet their goals of finding partners. Shildkrout maintains that meeting up in the real world works better for singles, which is why they made it their focus.

Now here's some news you probably never expected to hear: not only are more people meeting on social networks (which doesn't come as a surprise to anyone who hasn't been living in a remote jungle for the last decade), but their relationships are also happier than those that begin off-line in more traditional ways.

What?

Yes, apparently it's true. Jeffrey Hall, associate professor of Communication Studies at the University of Kansas, discovered that 7% of people who married after meeting online didn’t meet in matchmaking chat rooms or on online dating sites. In fact, they met for the first time on social networking sites like Facebook.

Surprised by his finding, given that dating isn’t the purpose of social networking websites, Hall decided to investigate further. He was curious to learn more about who is meeting their significant others this way and how well their relationships fair. He put together a sample of 19,131 participants who'd been married once between 2005 in 2012. Each participant had met their partner in one of four ways: online dating sites, e-mail or instant messaging, online communities like chat rooms or virtual reality games, or social networking sites.

Hall found that those who met on social networking sites were more likely to be younger, married more recently, and African-American compared to those who met via other digital methods. He also found that, when compared based on marital satisfaction, the partners who met via social networking reported being just as happy as those who were introduced any other way – even on online dating sites, which are designed to nurture connection and tout their compatibility benefits.

What surprised Hall even more, however, was that the relationships that started on social media were actually happier than those that begin offline, in traditional ways like being introduced by mutual friends.

What explains his findings?

Hall has a couple of theories. “I think that social networking is the digital version of being introduced by friends,” he says. So although the medium has changed in the 21st century, the method has not. Social networks also have another potentially huge advantage over dating services: there is way less pressure. Online dating can be intensely stressful, so it's not hard to believe that romance might blossom better under more relaxed, Facebook friend-ly circumstances.

The result is conversations on social networking sites that are more casual and low risk, and removed from the anxiety of traditional online dating. Low risk + high reward = hello, online romance!

A few years ago, I was at an amusement park with friends when one of them shyly handed me his camera.

“Do you think you could take a few pictures of me today?” Kent asked. “I’m making a profile for an online dating site and I don’t really have any pictures of me. Especially ones that aren’t posed in some way.”

Happy to oblige, I did my best to grab good candid shots of Kent. Everything was quiet for some months, until I ran into him one morning, positively giddy.

“I just had the best first date!” he said excitedly.

“It’s ten in the morning! That must have been some first date!” I said, raising my eyebrows.

“No, no, the date didn’t start last night,” he said, blushing. “It was a breakfast date! She works nights, so this was the fastest way to actually meet in person.”

“Ooh,” I said, intrigued. “So you met her through your dating site?”

“Yep,” he said. “She moved here two years ago and only lives ten minutes away, but thanks to our jobs our chances of running into each other are practically zilch. And since we’re on opposite sleep schedules, it’s been pretty nerve-wracking writing her and then waiting a minimum of eight hours for a response. But still, that’s better than never having met her at all.”

“Well, it’s great that she seems so wonderful, but will you ever get to spend time together with such opposite schedules?”

“She’s going to get moved to a different position at the end of the year,” Kent said. “It won’t be forever. And - this may sound cheesy, but - even if it’s more work finding time to meet, she really seems worth it.”

Last month, Kent and his wonderful first date were married. Her inconvenient schedule was indeed not for forever - but hopefully her romance with Kent will be.

Related Article: Stories in Success, Part I

The perks of online dating are many, but spend enough time clicking through profiles and you’ll probably find yourself at least a little bit nostalgic for the old days. You can't beat the convenience of an online dating website, but there was something nice about being set up by your friends. It added an extra level of security. You felt comfortable in the knowledge that whoever you were meeting had already been vetted by someone you trust, and therefore probably wasn't a total jerk.

For a long time, that's been one of the biggest barriers online dating has faced. No matter what dating sites do to screen users, it never compares to the recommendation of a close friend.

Until now, that is. Enter MyCuteFriend, a new dating app that asks women to nominate their single guy friends as potential dates for other women. “Where every guy comes recommended” reads the app’s slogan, and that’s precisely what it offers: every guy who appears on MyCuteFriend has been vouched for by an actual, IRL human being.

Created by John Furneaux and Steve Chen, the app was designed specifically to make the online dating experience more pleasant for women – so you will see women nominating men, but never the other way around. After hearing constant complaints about online dating from their female friends, Furneaux and Chen realized that women needed a way to keep the creepy out. They enlisted a mostly female design team to create the functionality and user interface, and MyCuteFriend was born.

To use the app, women select a number of hashtags (which cover everything from body to brain) to describe their eligible friends. Photos are then pulled from the men’s Facebook profiles. Once a guy has been nominated, he receives a notification and must accept it and download the app before his profile becomes active. Women can nominate any man they are friends with on Facebook.

On the other side of things, women can browse the hashtags and photos, responding with a simple “Yes” or “No, thanks.” There are no long, boring questionnaires and no anonymous creepy stalkers. Women can only receive messages from guys they have said “Yes” to.

For even more customization, short video clips can be recorded and included in the profiles. Basically it's like the love child between Tinder and Vine, with a little bit of Facebook thrown in. So far the app has only launched in San Francisco, but will no doubt expand to other cities if it proves to be successful.