Profiles

Tencent, China’s largest social networking platform and operator of the immensely popular app WeChat, has launched a new dating app that seems positioned to compete with both Tinder and Tantan, China’s most popular dating app.

Qingliao - roughly translated as “light chat” – is kind of a hybrid of different dating app features already on the market. There is no swiping, but users can choose to “like” or “pass” on a potential match by choosing an “X” or a heart. When two users are matched, they can start chatting, according to details described in South China Morning Post.

A new study called "Pressure Points Study 2019" by popular dating app Plenty of Fish revealed that modern dating has become a source of pressure and anxiety for many people. They also found that while daters crave authenticity, they also embellish their own profiles to attract more dates.

In a survey of about 2,000 singles, Plenty of Fish set out to find what singles wanted from their dating apps.

First date jitters are a big concern among daters, especially women, with only 22 percent saying they weren’t concerned, but the vast majority saying they worried about how they come across to their dates. Forty percent of all singles were worried if they were interesting enough, 16 percent were concerned about whether they talked enough, and 12 percent worried if they were considered “fun.”

Facebook Dating has announced the launch of its new “Stories” feature, which allows users of the service to include stories from their Facebook and Instagram feeds.

Stories can’t be directly created in a user’s dating profile, according to Forbes. Instead, when they are created in Facebook or Instagram, the feature allows for that content to be shared to the Facebook Dating profile. In order to access the new feature, users are required to opt-in by linking their Facebook and Instagram accounts to their dating profile. Once the accounts are linked, they can add any stories they’ve posted in the last 24 hours.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg called Tinder co-founder Sean Rad “irrelevant” back in 2014, but still gave him special access to user data, according to leaked emails reported by Forbes.

Zuckerberg had considered entering the online dating industry as far back as 2014, but ultimately put the decision on hold and granted the founder of Tinder, now one of the most popular dating apps in the world, special access to user data. Facebook colleagues suggested he meet with Rad, but Zuckerberg rejected the suggestion, saying in the emails, “I don’t think he’s that relevant. He probably just wants to make sure we won’t turn off their API.”

Dating app users find those who have typos and grammatical errors in their profiles to be less attractive, according to a new study published in the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships.

Interestingly, only 33.5 percent of participants noticed the errors and called attention to them, so most participants didn’t catch the mistakes. But those who did notice rated the grammatically incorrect profiles as less attractive than those profiles without errors.

Hornet Profile Verification Badge

Image: Hornet

If you’ve ever spoken to someone on a dating app and thought, “This person is too good to be real,” you are not alone... and you might be right. The virtual world is full of scammers and other shady characters, including the notorious “catfish” — a person who creates a fictitious online identity to lure unsuspecting mates on dating services. The ever-increasing popularity of online dating means that catfishing, too, is increasing at an alarming rate, and more and more singles are falling victim to the cons.

Hornet has a solution. In a bid to stop would-be fraudsters in their tracks, the popular gay dating app has announced that will let users earn a badge of authenticity, akin to the blue checkmarks of verified profiles on Instagram and Twitter. Hornet is the first major gay dating app to intoduce a veification symbol to identify genuine users.