Technology

Users of online dating sites sometimes get frustrated and overwhelmed with all the lengthy profiles and messaging back and forth before they ever get to a date with a potential match. A simple solution: why not test the chemistry first by video chatting with each other before meeting for drinks or coffee?

Enter a new crop of online dating apps focused on video interaction. Among those making headlines in this growing field are Date.fm, Flikdate, Video Date and two new apps launched last fall -- View N Me and Instamour.

Developers of these apps saw an opportunity when they noticed how Skype and Facetime are fast becoming typical platforms for people to communicate. They figured singles would want to see if there's chemistry before spending the time and money and effort to meet a date in person. And why not do that from your laptop or mobile phone?

While it sounds great to meet a potential date through a video chat, some people aren't so convinced. Not everyone is a movie director or cinematographer who can figure out good lighting to highlight someone's most attractive features. All too often, poor lighting and strange camera angles can interfere with making a good first impression. View N Me offers tips for looking your best on video to address this problem.

Safety is another concern, and different app developers deal with it in different ways. For example, Video Date does not use phone numbers or e-mails for people to communicate through the service, and messages delete after 24 hours. View N Me offers a strict no tolerance policy for any type of inappropriate behavior on its site. Once someone is reported they conduct a review and terminate the subscription if the user's behavior is deemed inappropriate.

But the most important question for daters is: how easy is the service to use?

Date.fm works a bit like a video-enabled Tinder app. It is simple to use - the service provides general information like age and location along with photos of matches, and you can like or dislike them. If you both like each other, you are sent a notification and then can start video chatting from within the app. FlikDate touts itself as "the fastest date in the world." You simply connect with your Facebook account and play a type of video roulette, where you can chat with someone instantly, see if you click, and accept or reject your match on the spot.

It's no surprise that video dating is becoming more and more popular. People are looking for quick ways to get to know each other. But the real test for love still takes time and effort.

While POF has garnered a lot of attention over the years for its free online dating service and hook-up potential, its founder wants to get back to basics and is focused on the goal – finding people matches for the long-term.

POF does have an advantage over other dating sites: namely, its user base. With 70 million registered users all over the world, it can rightly call itself the largest online dating site. Three and a half million people log on to the site every day to look for matches and communicate with others. The company also estimates that over one million relationships a year begin on its website.

What does this mean for daters? For one thing, the sheer numbers POF draws from memberships means the company can determine how people date from country to country, including their cultural preferences and overall approach to dating. They’ve found that while daters in the U.K. largely embrace online dating, the rest of Europe is a bit behind. They can focus on areas of growth and potential.

POF began in Canada, but the U.S. is by far its biggest market, followed by the United Kingdom, Canada, Brazil and Australia.

“People in the United Kingdom will wear turtlenecks in the photos they send,” POF founder Markus Frind told The Provence, commenting on the cultural differences of dating he’s witnessed through the POF user base. “Women are way more aggressive in Brazil. They initiate as much as men.”

POF was started in 2003 when Frind was working for another technology company, and created the dating site in his spare time. He ran the company out of his apartment for five years until it reached ten million in annual revenue. Today he employs about 75 people in a large office space in Vancouver, and since POF remains a free service for daters, most of the revenue generated is from advertising.

Though Frind won’t disclose how much revenue his private company makes, he has put aside $30 million for acquisitions and intends to keep growing. In September of last year, he bought speed dating company Fast Life, hoping to add value to his online dating service by getting into singles events.

And as for success stories? Frind met his own partner through work, not over an online dating site. But he has gathered some success stories resulting from POF matches, including a young married couple who met each other five years ago on the site.

With its popularity unwavering, POF is focusing its efforts on technology and growth. The goal according to Frind is still to help people find long-term relationships.

What if you could meet, woo, and win your fiancé in just 90 days?

That's exactly what Chris McKinlay, a Boston mathematician, did in June 2012. McKinlay was good at math, but not so good where his love life was concerned. So he did what any enterprising mathematician would do: developed complex algorithms and used robot profiles to systematically sift through thousands of profiles on OkCupid to find his perfect match.

McKinlay was working on his PhD at UCLA in June 2012 when he first joined OkCupid. After answering 350 questions from the thousands available on the site, he discovered that he only had a compatibility rating of over 90% with fewer than 100 women. Six disappointing dates later, and McKinlay realized that something needed to change. He decided to apply his data skills to his dating life.

He began by creating 12 robot profiles that answered all of the questions randomly and used them to mine the survey answers of all women on the site. Then, armed with 6 million answers from 20,000 prospective mates, he used an algorithm to analyze the women he would like to meet. He limited his search to LA or San Francisco based partners who had logged on within the last month and clustered their personalities into two types that appealed to him most: "indie" women in their mid-20s and slightly older creative-types. After creating two different profiles for himself designed to target each cluster, he then answered the top 500 survey questions for each group.

The hack worked. McKinlay suddenly found himself with a 90%-plus compatibility rating with more than 10,000 women. Because OkCupid notifies users when someone looks at their profile, McKinlay designed software that would automatically view as many profiles as possible, prompting curious matches to initiate conversation with him. He received about 20 messages per day and went on 87 dates, but just one - the 88th - was special.

28-year-old Christine Tien Wang, an artist pursuing a master's in fine arts at UCLA, caught his attention and the two hit it off. They've been together ever since, surviving through Wang's one-year art fellowship in Qatar and McKinlay's admission that he'd used rather unconventional means to meet the woman of his dreams. "I thought it was dark and cynical," Wang told Wired. "I liked it."

McKinlay maintains that he was just doing "a large-scale and machine-learning version of what everyone does on the site," and unusual though his approach may sound, it's hard to argue with success. McKinlay and Wang are now engaged, and he has written a book to help others find spouses through online dating...it doesn't get much more successful than that.

Our smartphones have changed the way we do...well, pretty much everything...and dating is no exception. Some people remain dating purists, committed to only communicating via phone call, abiding by the 3-day rule, and never, ever using an app to meet someone. Others have fully embraced the new technological era, and are probably swiping their way through matches on Tinder as we speak.

I have no doubt that both sides have valid points, but frankly I prefer to consult someone (or in this case, something) a little less biased: research. A new study examining mobile's impact on dating and relationships has shed a teeny bit of light on how our smartphones affect our love lives. Here's what the study found:

• To call or not to call? That is the question. When asked, women tend to say they prefer men to call before meeting face-to-face, while men say they feel a call is too forward. The data, however, tells a slightly different story. Around 1/3 of both sexes agree that it's less intimidating to ask someone out via text, although 68% of singles say they still want to chat on the phone or in person to schedule dates. We modern techies typically type, but seeing as confidence is widely considered to be the most attractive trait in a partner, maybe the text is doing us a disservice. Perhaps we should opt for the proactive approach and pick up the phone.
• Stop with the 3-day rule already. If things didn't go well on your date, put everyone out of their misery and end things sooner rather than later. Just do it like the nice, responsible adult you are, please - don't be one of the 50% of singles who said they would consider breaking up with someone they were casually dating with just a few swipes on screen, or the 24% who said they would end an exclusive relationship via text. On the other hand, if things went well, make your feelings clear in low-pressure way. A simple thank you text sent within 24 hours of a good first date keeps you on your date's radar and opens the door for further flirty conversation.
• Your smartphone speaks louder than words. The iPhone vs. Android battle is fierce, and it turns out which side you fall on reveals insights into your personality and behaviors. Android users are apparently the politer daters - more likely to pick you up at home, pay for the first date, and send a post-date text. They're also more trusting of their partners - nearly 50% said they would allow someone they're dating to look through their phones!

So are smartphones good or bad news for our love lives? It's hard to tell. But what we do know is that they aren't going anywhere any time soon, so we're far better off learning to love them as another tool in our dating arsenals.

Tired of the selfies you see populating dating apps like Tinder? Would you like to know a little more about the person before you start messaging? The folks behind Twine Canvas think you do.

The free new app allows you to create a visual "canvas" of pictures that show your interests and hobbies, rather than revealing photos of yourself to attract someone's attention. The idea behind this is simple: it allows people to begin to engage on a deeper level than just a superficial selfie or headshot - marketers are labeling it as the "anti meat-market app."

Twine Canvas is a brand new app, separate from the original Twine, also created by developer Sourcebits. After studying user feedback, the company decided to create a new app altogether rather than just revamping the old app.

Getting started with Twine Canvas is pretty simple. You download the app to your iPhone or iPad (no Android version yet), and login with your Facebook account. You can create your own "personality canvas" to add to the gallery, which expresses what you like to do or what your hobbies are. It's basically a type of virtual vision board, with a mosaic of user-generated pictures - from a cup of coffee (coffee lover) to a sailboat that shows you love to be on the water. You can also describe yourself in a few short words, shown underneath the canvas.

Then you can start searching through a gallery of other user's canvases to "like" them (swipe down for canvases of people you want to meet). You can adjust your filters to sort by age, gender, and location. If you both like each other's canvas, your profile photos are revealed and then you can start messaging.

"Twine Canvas adds creativity and personality to flirting by giving men and women a unique way to express themselves. When someone creates their canvas of likes, hobbies and experiences, it's far more insightful than a shallow selfie or an impersonal stat," said Rohit Singal, founder and CEO of Sourcebits.

The developers also claim that the app was inspired by the visual self expression of other platforms like Instagram, Pinterest, Whisper and Tumblr. They wanted to allow people a certain level of creativity and visual expression when it comes to mobile dating.

While daters might get frustrated with not being able to see what potential dates look like until they are mutually matched, it's an interesting idea to engage people visually as with Instagram. Now I'll be waiting for the Android version.

HowAboutWe is about to take over the world - literally.

The dating service has announced the launch of the first internationalized versions of its iOS application. Though the web-based version of HowAboutWe already had international users, the app was only available in English, significantly limiting its reach. Now it's available in 15 new languages that cover more than 30 countries, including France, Russia, and Japan.

And it gets even better. The company says it's also making all features in the mobile application available for free to international users. (Sorry, America, you still have to pay. Premium features for United States-based users, like unlimited membership, will continue to cost between $8 and $35 per month.) In addition to full access to all of the exclusive features offered to American HowAboutWe members, global users will also enjoy:

• Browsing date ideas suggested by local singles
• Finding people who want to meet in person
• Checking out profiles and full-screen photos
• Posting their favorite nearby places as date ideas - instantly
• Seeing who's online now, nearby

When asked why the company was choosing to offer services entirely for free, HowAboutWe's head of PR, Jade Clark, explained that their primary concern is to extend their reach as a brand and become an established figure in a new market before weighing monetization options.

HowAboutWe isn't just planning to bring its emphasis on real-world activities to the international stage. Half a million members are signed up for HowAboutWe for Couples. When asked about mobile and international plans for the couple's product, Clark adds that the company is working to expand their mobile offerings and plans to make some major announcements in the early parts of 2014.

To celebrate the launch of the app around the world, co-founder and co-CEO Aaron Schildkrout posted a guide to his blog called "10 Things You Need To Know Before Internationalizing Your App." I'll spare you the details, because many of them are quite technical, but Schildkrout did speak of the challenges that come from language barriers and different cultural expectations. His final piece of advice is something we can all understand, regardless of your location: "It will always take 3x longer than you think!"

I'm intrigued by this new development. Just think of all the opportunities for cross-cultural connections that might now be possible. Imagine being an American tourist in a foreign land, connecting with locals (and possible tour guides) using the same dating app you're already familiar with. It could add a whole new dimension to travel.

For more on this service you can read our HowAboutWe review