Reviews

Dating and communication between two potential romantic partners has reached a whole new level thanks to the growing popularity of apps. If you’re nervous or shy, you can approach a woman or man through an app and never experience firsthand rejection. You can swipe left or right, without having that uncomfortable conversation if one of you isn’t interested.

Tinder is an app where users interact with each other through profiles and information pulled from Facebook. You can see, at least through photos, who is messaging you. But other apps are surfacing to channel all of that flirting through a new, underground form of communication.

Truth is the latest in a series of anonymous messaging apps that sends private flirtations or missives to people on your contacts list. It's undercover one-on-one messaging between friends.

So, if you like a guy but aren’t sure if he likes you, you can hide behind an avatar and anonymous username with Truth to message him and see if he might be interested. If he doesn’t have Truth on his phone, he can download it to read your message, making him another user. This is a cool and exciting feature for shy types.

On the other hand, if you want to slam your friend without her knowing who did it, you can do that, too.

Truth is different from popular apps like Secret and Whisper because it utilizes your own contacts list instead of broadcasting through a feed like Twitter. So, the focus of communication is between friends. But all of these apps share one thing in common – they allow you to be anonymous. Which means in the online world – you can say or do whatever you want with no accountability.

One of the objectives for the app is to allow people who are uncomfortable flirting or asking someone out face-to-face a means to do it without having to feel the sting of rejection. On the other hand, it’s a perfect platform for bullying.

Truth’s co-founder Ali Saheli tells website Mashable that, “We try to keep it light and playful,” but acknowledges that from day one they have seen the potential for abuse. He estimates content reported as abusive represents less than 5% of all messages. "The most common usage is flirting with classmates. And obviously we've seen a range of uses, like people giving feedback in workplaces.”

The app has taken off among the most vulnerable age groups – specifically high school and college-aged people. But is it making dating any easier or a better experience? As one young woman told Mashable, “You're just playing a game to figure things out."

If you would like to try the Truth app you can visit their site called Use Truth.

The incredible proliferation of niche dating sites is a popular topic these days. When we say there's something for everyone, we really mean there’s something for everyone. Whether you’re looking for a vampire, a farmer, or a sea captain (or maybe all three?), there’s a site looking to match you with your perfect partner.

By comparison, dating sites for foodies seem downright normal. Stefanie Tuder, culinary school graduate and online food writer for ABC News-“Good Morning America,” decided to take three foodie sites for a test drive (make that "a taste test") to survey the scene.

HowAboutWe

First on her list was HowAboutWe, which recently announced a partnership with Serious Eats. The sites are collaborating to get online daters offline, via activities like “tacos and a spin around the Bronx zoo" or "a crawl of the essential dumplings of Flushing." Other popular food-focused sites also have similar partnerships to connect like-minded singles. All members, regardless of which co-branded page they use to sign up, can interact with all other members in order to offer as wide a dating pool as possible.

For Tuder, that wasn’t ideal. “Rather than see other readers of Serious Eats, Eater, etc.,” she writes, “which is the reason I signed up and went to that branded landing page, I see everyone in my area on HowAboutWe. And not even only the ones who are particularly interested in food.” It’s possible to narrow down searches to people who suggest food and drink date ideas, but messaging someone requires at least an $8 monthly membership.

HiDine

HiDine stirred up some controversy when it hit the scene in November. Taking a staunchly traditional approach, only men can ask women out on a date on Hi Dine and by doing so they commit to picking up the tab. Tuder found that she received many more messages and date requests on HiDine than on the other sites she experimented with. Her two critiques include the messaging system, which she calls "pretty clunky," and the fact that women do not have the option of messaging men. All a woman can do to indicate her interest in a profile is "wink" at it.

SamePlate

“While SamePlate has the best of intentions,” Tuder writes, “it simply doesn't have enough members yet to be successful." SamePlate was founded in 2012 by a man who wanted to find a partner to eat Paleo with him. SamePlate covers the Paleo phenomenon as well as anything else a food lover could want. Members can use the free site to cross-reference search any mix of diet and food combinations, which is a pretty unbeatable feature if you consider yourself foodie.

Ultimately, Tuder concludes that foodie dating is “interesting,” but doesn’t have “strong enough of a pull to stay on full time."

BroApp

Let’s say you want to keep your girlfriend’s interest but don’t want to invest the time to text her sweet or flirtatious messages. Turns out, there’s an app for that -  BroApp, a new dating app that calls itself “your clever relationship wingman,” can help you out.

With inspiration presumably drawn from guys who didn’t want to deal with the lofty expectations of girlfriends to text every now and then, the BroApp automatically messages your girlfriend sweet things at the times you request. Of course, you can be creative and write your own texts which are stored in the app and doled out at the appropriate times. But the goal isn’t to win her heart over – it’s so you can free yourself up to spend more time with your bros.

The app has a few complications figured out, too. It will not send messages if it detects that you are at your girlfriend's house (by being connected to her WiFi), or if you have recently messaged her on your own. Well, at least there’s that.

It seems there’s a new online dating site every time I turn on my computer. And why not? It’s a billion-dollar-a-year industry and growing, especially now that most sites are adding mobile capabilities, which are growing at an even faster rate.

So to make an entrance at this point with the saturation of the market, you really have to come in with an interesting idea. And DreamCliq has high expectations – dubbing itself as “the Pinterest of online dating.”

The horror-filled days of Halloween may only come once a year, but that doesn't mean fright fanatics can't get their creep on all year round. There are some seriously scary online dating sites (and I'm not just talking about Craigslist ax murderers). Check out these ridiculously specific niche online dating sites designed for your inner horror movie enthusiast:

We've all heard of dating apps like Tinder and Grindr, aimed at those who are single and not necessarily looking for anything long-term. But what about targeting a community of people who would rather form relationships than have a quick hook-up?

Ariella Furman, founder of dating app Wing Ma'am, saw a need that was missing among lesbian daters. When she moved from New York to Pittsburgh, she found it very hard to meet people outside of the bar scene. She wanted friendship as well as a relationship, but the dating apps that were available didn't really serve her needs. And many of the bars were focused on gay men clientele, rather than gay women. So she decided to create her own way of meeting new people.

It all started when she decided to host her own events every month so lesbians could meet each other for dating or friendship, and so they could form a more tightly knit community of support. When her RSVPs blew up to 4,000 attendees and bars were fighting to host the events, she decided to take it to the next level and develop her app Wing Ma'am. During the beta phase of the app, memberships grew to over 8,000. It launched in the iTunes store on January 23rd.

Part of the way Furman gets the word out is through volunteer sign-ups on the website and through the app. People are invited to share about Wing Ma'am over social media, or even by handing out flyers at local LGBT events, helping to grow the user base in each city.

The app has two components - a location-based matching system that helps you meet women nearby, but also a social component, where you can browse events going on in your area and see if there's something you want to attend. In this sense, the app more closely resembles HowAboutWe, because it is focused on the proposed activity as opposed to just pictures or a profile. Users are able to create their own events as well as browse at what's out there. For instance, if a user wanted to host a cocktail party or go to a concert, she could post the invite and see who RSVP'd.

"The attempts that were out there were very focused on hookups," Furman tells website Mashable. "Women tend to look for relationships."

The app is being used by lesbians who are in partnerships, too - especially ones who moved to a new city and are looking to form friendships based on interests rather than just meeting through the bar scene.

Since its launch, the largest user base for Wing Ma'am is in larger cities like Boston or New York. The app is currently only available for iPhone but will launch for Androids in the spring.