If you’re a lucky online dater, you’ll be going on a lot of first dates.

If you’re an unlucky online dater, you’ll be going on a lot of first dates.

Online dating is pretty much the definition of "double-edged sword." On one hand, it's exciting to go on so many dates and meet so many new people. On the other hand, it's totally taxing trying to get to know that many strangers. And the worst part about it is answering the same tired get-to-know-you questions over and over again.

You could be on a date with someone who is perfect on paper (or is that “screen?”), but the second they open their mouth and one of these questions comes out, you know you’re headed straight for Boredomland:

• What do you do for a living? “What do you do for a living?” is the first offender you're likely to hear. It's not that it's wrong to want to know, because of course getting to know someone means understanding what they do in their professional life, it's just that it's incredibly dull. In this same vein are questions like “Where did you grow up?” and “Where did you go to school?” They're all generic queries that sound more like a job interview than scintillating first date conversation.
• What do you do for fun? Again, it's not that you wouldn’t want to know how your date enjoys spending their time, it's just not a very memorable or exciting question. Your job on a first date is to set yourself apart, not to sound exactly like every other snoozefest your date has had dinner with. Besides, what are the odds that their answer will actually give you serious additional insight into who they are as a person?
• Why are you single? Ouch. Why does anyone ever think this question is a good idea? There’s pretty much no way to answer without feeling like a total failure for one reason or another. Also steer clear of backhanded compliments like "I can't believe someone hasn't locked you down already!" Thanks. Guess it must be because something is totally wrong with me.
• What kind of guys/girls are you into? Awkward. Irrelevant. Pretty much destined to end in disaster. At the end of the day, a person's "type" doesn't matter at all – all that counts is that they’re attracted to you. And if you’re on a date together, it’s safe to say you already know the answer to that question.
• Why did your last relationship end? No. Just no.
• Where do you live? Do you live alone? This is the part of the night when you start worrying that your date is a serial killer. If you’re lucky, all they’re doing is calculating the likelihood that you'll hook up that night. If you're not so lucky, there is a dark alley and an ax in your future.

Once upon a time, back in the 2000s, Hot Or Not was a phenomenon sweeping the Web. By now most of us had written the site off as a piece of early 21^st century nostalgia, but it’s just gotten a mobile makeover and has plans to join the booming online dating business.

The new version of the addictive rating game is owned by UK-based online dating company Badoo, and is now available in the iTunes and Android app stores. Like other mobile dating apps, Hot Or Not uses location-based data to show you the most attractive people in your vicinity. That idea is nothing new. What Hot Or Not hopes will catch users’ eyes is the app’s customized Hot Lists, which are based on how users vote on profiles created in-house of celebrities, politicians, authors, and other recognizable figures.

The Hot Lists feature calculates a person’s hotness based on user votes, then updates in real-time to show the prettiest people near you. The radius the real-time Hot Lists span depends on the number of users active in a given area – so the more users who are around, the more the radius will shrink to keep it localized.

The rest of the app works exactly as you would expect a mobile dating app to work. Users can connect their Hot or Not profiles to Facebook, which autofills their Hot or Not profiles with their Facebook likes and profile pictures. In the games section, users can browse the profiles of other members in their area and rate them with a heart (for “hot”) or an X (for “not”). If a user hits the heart, they can strike up a private conversation with the person who tickles their fancy.

Russian entrepreneur Andrey Andreev, who launched Badoo in Spain in 2006, is the man behind the plan to bring Hot Or Not back. Badoo is one of the largest international dating sites in the world, with roughly 200 million users in 180 countries, but its presence in the US is lacking. Andreev hopes Hot Or Not will change all that. So far, he claims the new Hot or Not app has amassed 10 million users in its short lifetime.

It’s impossible to prove the validity of Andreev’s claim, but according to the Google Play store, the app has been installed on Android devices between one million and five million times. In the iTunes App Store, shortly after its release, the Hot or Not app ranked 321st overall and 21st in lifestyle.

You can download the app for iPhone, Android, and Windows phones.

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.

We’ve all seen romantic comedies where the guy falls hard for the girl. Their mutual attraction is so strong that they inevitably kiss when they first meet - they can't help it! But is this something we should expect in real life?

Singles are more old-fashioned than you might think, at least according to a recent study. When it comes to the right time for the majority of Americans to go for the first kiss on a date, it’s usually date number two. That’s because many people feel that a first date is too soon when you’re just getting to know someone.

More than a quarter of Americans feel that it is okay – even more appropriate – to wait until the second date to kiss someone. Surprisingly, this number holds steady for both men and women (27 and 25 percent, respectively), gay or straight (27 and 26 percent respectively).

The ethnicity of study participants didn’t seem to make a difference, either. Roughly the same quarter percent would go for a second date kiss among whites, blacks, and Asians. Only Hispanics had a higher percentage from the norm to wait for a second date kiss - at 31%.

Not surprisingly, there does seem to be a difference among different age groups, with younger singles tending to be more open to the idea of a second date kiss. At 34 percent, younger Americans had the highest response among the 1,080 people surveyed. Men and women aged 18 to 24 had a 79 percent higher likelihood of kissing a potential partner on the second date than men and women aged 54 to 64.

People from different regions tended to agree as well, with 27% of respondents from the West, MidWest, and South agreeing that waiting for a first kiss on a second date is preferable. But those in the Northeast varied slightly, with only 21% agreeing that a second date kiss is the way to go.

Rachel Dack of DatingAdvice.com who commissioned the study, said that it suggests more people are tuning into their own connection or lack thereof with their dates to determine if kissing on the first date is the right option for them.

“The hope is single individuals will determine when to kiss their date based on their own sense of internal readiness, attraction, values or gut feelings as opposed to acting out of pressure from society,” she said. “I think it is also important to note it might feel like you should kiss your date or get sucked into the belief that ‘everyone’ kisses on the first date, but clearly that’s not the case.”

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.