Matching

It’s almost unfathomable: a dating app with no swiping and no ability to chat with other users. Is it possible for such a service to break into the crowded online dating scene? helloTruly hopes so.

The new Chicago-based app is taking the Goldilocks approach. helloTruly wants to give singles just enough technology to get the ball rolling, but not so much that they’re glued to the app and neglect actual, in-person meeting. Not too much, not too little - just right.

Father-and-son founding team Andy and Jack Kenoe describe the app as a “digital icebreaker” focused on connecting people in physical spaces like coffee shops and bookstores. Users of the free iOS and Android app are alerted when another user is in the same location and matches their indicated preferences.

Many online daters don’t really think about the time or day they login to their accounts to see their new matches. Because we have our phones on us all the time, we tend to check whenever we have the chance.

But a new study has come out from dating website eHarmony, which found that 2:00pm on Tuesday afternoons seem to be the best time to find love online.

eHarmony studied more than 800,000 logins to identify the peak hours throughout the week for finding matches and scheduling dates. Not surprisingly, nine of the ten peak times happened on Monday and Tuesday, right after the weekend, and also around lunchtime. (Perhaps this is to help with that “back to work” melancholy we all feel from time to time.)

But at 2:00pm on Tuesdays, eHarmony found that three times as many people log in than any other time of the week. Perhaps after a quick lunch date gone wrong? On the other hand, they found that the fewest people are online Sundays from 8:00pm to 8:30pm, Monday nights from 6:30 to 7:00pm, and strangely, Tuesdays from 7:30pm to 8:00pm. (Maybe that’s because they are on the dates they set up earlier in the afternoon? Or maybe many people are bored at work during the day, but prefer to watch Netflix at night rather than asking people out.)

This study is only based on eHarmony users, however. A similar study was released earlier this year by Nielson, who studied the patterns of online daters in the UK using Tinder and OkCupid. They found that the most people log in to find dates around 9:00pm, in direct contradiction to eHarmony’s users. (This could be because eHarmony’s users aren’t looking for the last-minute hook-up like some Tinder users.)

Previous studies, like those from Match, have indicated the best time of year for online dating is typically between January 1st and Valentine’s Day. Specifically, the best day of the year to snag some online dates is the Sunday evening after New Year’s Eve, around 9:00pm.

Regardless, there is no “right” or “wrong” time to log in to your online dating account. The best strategy is to check in on a regular basis, preferably every day, because people move fast. If you aren’t active, your profile goes inactive, too. Send more messages and try to engage when you can, even when you’re waiting in line at the grocery store.

Making time for online dating has become really easy and accessible, so take advantage.

Millions of singles using dating services each day, searching through a stream of faces in hopes of finding a mate. Pictures have always been an important part of the online dating process, but with the rise of simple, image-centric mobile apps like Tinder, photographs are more important than ever.

New online dating research reveals a secret side to swiping. According to the study, potential dates may be evaluating you based not on your profile, but on the profile they saw before yours.

Huh?

"From an evolutionary perspective, attractiveness is a key social characteristic that determines how approachable or desirable we are. Perceived attractiveness is determined not only by our own attributes but by the attractiveness of people around us," says the study.

Here’s how that relates to your luck on Tinder. If your profile comes after an attractive person’s profile, you appear more attractive as a result and are more likely to score a left swipe. The opposite is also true: if an unattractive face comes before yours, you’re more likely to get a rejection.

Over two experiments, 32 women were shown 60 male profile pictures and asked to rate them as either attractive or unattractive. The images varied in composition, face size, clothing, and background cues. Researchers presumed that all the pictures were intended to attract female attention as they were sourced from heterosexual sections of dating sites.

Each participant looked at a computer screen that presented the profile photos. After about 300ms, they were asked to rate the image as attractive or unattractive. At the end of the experiments, the researchers concluded that profile pictures were significantly more likely to be deemed attractive if the picture in the previous profile was rated as attractive.

"While online dating is popular, and is certainly an efficient (and anonymous) way to sort through potential mates from the comfort of one's own home,” concludes the study, “it may not be quite as reliable as it seems given the recent evidence for sequential dependencies when judging rapid sequences of faces."

As you sort through a string of faces, evaluating each one in the few seconds it takes to swipe, you could be affected by this phenomenon - in which case, your final choice of desirable mate might be one face too late. Is this the start of songs about love at second sight?

The findings are published in the journal Scientific Reports and can be read in full here.To find out more about the dating app you can read our Tinder reviews.

Tinder has been at the forefront of online dating industry growth, making it more accessible to more users than any other online dating platform. So it’s only natural that its accessibility extends to daters in the transgender community.

Transgender online daters don’t have many options when they go online to try and date, because most apps, including Tinder, only allow them to identify as male or female. In the next couple of months, Tinder has said they will be adding more gender identification choices along with more dating preferences.

Tinder is owned by Match Group, but it’s late to the party: other online dating platforms within Match Group, such as OkCupid, have already added more gender preferences to their platforms. In addition to “woman” and “man,” OkCupid’s gender options include “agender, adrogynous, bigender, cis man, cis woman, genderfluid, genderqueer, hijra, intersex, non-binary, other, pangender, transfeminine, transgender, transmasculine, transsexual, trans man, trans woman,” and “two-spirit,” as of November 2014.

Members of the LGBTQ community have pushed for this change in online dating, as they have felt excluded and left out of the conversation as more features are added and improvements made to the online dating experience – except when it comes to their needs and preferences.

Huffington Post Live’s Alex Berg reported deleting her online dating account, writing: “In the grand scheme of problems for LGBTQ people, the options of a dating website might seem like minutia ... [but] that recognition has the power to change the hearts and minds of those who would deny our rights in the physical world.”

It seems Tinder Founder and CEO Sean Rad agrees. “For a long time we haven’t done enough to give [transgender members] a good experience,” he said at the Code Conference in Rancho Palos Verdes, Calif. “It’s harder for them to get what they are looking for. We have to modify our experience to address that.”

Tinder is working on the changes with transgender activist Andrea James and GLAAD, as part of its promise to be more inclusive to its community of daters.

“One challenge we face at Tinder is making sure our tens of millions of users around the world have the same user experience. No matter who you are, no matter what you’re looking for, you should get quality matches through the Tinder experience,” the company said to Fortune Magazine. “There’s an important transgender (and gender nonconforming) community on Tinder who haven’t had that experience … yet.”

OkCupid has always been bold when it comes to analyzing data in interesting ways and making it easier for people to interact online. They were one of the first online dating sites to offer transgender identity options, and now they are aiming to provide a little more depth to the swiping madness we all crave from our online dating apps.

The company is launching “Quickmatch Flavors,” a cute name for an interesting new feature. While most people swipe quickly (in the span of less than a second), making decisions based on a single profile picture, OkCupid aims to provide users with a little more information so they won’t potentially miss out on someone great. After all, the faster we swipe, the more we miss.

The new feature is designed to counter this photo-based one-dimensionality, allowing users to also see a snapshot of someone's personality, too.

Look at it this way: you could like someone’s profile who looks hot, but maybe you’re a couch potato and she is unreasonably obsessed with the gym. Or maybe you’ve passed on a bookish nerd who’s actually great in bed. The OkCupid team wanted to bring more depth to swiping, so they examined user profiles to come up with different types – or “flavors” – of personalities. 

For a taste of the flavors, OkCupid listed some options they tested on their website, and provided a background of their methodology. Flavors are curated groups of people within Quickmatch that fall into a specific category, like liberals, indie music fans or outdoorsy types. But OkCupid found that the feature wasn’t so fun to use when the categories were so boring and simple. 

So instead, OkCupid (being the irreverent website that it is) has come up with some interesting twists for the categories to make it more fun. For instance, in the first round of flavors they included “tattooed cuddlers” and “mannerly metalheads.” Also for more lifestyle-based choices, “holy rollers” (with a smoking joint icon), “Hipster vegans” (again with an avocado smoking a joint), or even “Best in Show” which I can only assume means dog lovers.

OkCupid measured the results, noting which descriptions its users were most likely to choose. People seemed to respond best to descriptions that were more sexual and playful, so they came up with another round of categories, including “Night Owls,” “Bookworms,” “Thrill Seekers,” “Easy Goers,” “Early Birds,” and “Star Gazers.”

OkCupid said in a statement: "We executed this idea because we wanted to explore how to reinforce what makes people unique. Personality and opinions matter when it comes to connecting with people. If it didn’t, we’d all be plain old vanilla. And Flavors speaks to that.”

For more on this online dating service please read our review of OkCupid.

If you’re single and own a smartphone, chances are you’ve downloaded a dating app.

Many people try at least one or two apps, swipe and message for a few weeks, and then quit in frustration because they don’t get many matches, their messages go unanswered, or they never actually get a real date out of it.

Instead of going into app dating full force with no results, it’s better to keep a steady momentum and a few things in mind for successful swiping. Following are some tips to get your dating app game in shape:

Be respectful all the time.

It’s important to remember that even though you might be a great catch, people on dating apps are strangers who don’t know you. They don’t know your sense of humor, your background, or your close friends, so they have to take what you say at face value. So don’t start out being presumptuous – save the overt flirting, gross jokes, or sexual references for a more appropriate time – like when you are dating and are aware of your attraction for one another!

A picture is worth a million words.

Dating apps have really helped those who don’t want to spend the time writing a funny, clever profile. Instead, people can look at one or two photos and swipe based on that. (Most people don’t even read the descriptions or tags on your profile unless they like your pic.) So, you have to tell a visual story. Show a photo doing something you love that will spark a conversation. Include a headshot and a body shot, with no sunglasses or hats covering your face. Remember to smile!

Don’t message endlessly.

It’s fun to get a little flirtatious banter on, but at the end of the day, what do you have to show for it if you haven’t met in person? Instead of endlessly messaging, be bold and ask your matches out sooner rather than later – it doesn’t matter if you’re the guy or the girl. Ask, meet, and then see if there’s a spark.

Don’t swipe right on everyone.

Guys have a tendency to play the dating app game – swipe right on everyone and see who matches back with you. This is a bad strategy for many reasons, but most of all, because you’ll look like a robot to the app, and greatly reduce your swiping options. Instead, be a little more discriminate.

Check in during peak hours.

The best time to log in to your dating app is 6:00 in the evening, according to Bumble founder Whitney Wolfe. Checking in daily is a good idea, especially around happy hour time. But also make sure to log in on Sunday, which studies have shown to be the busiest day for online dating in general. People are ready to make plans, so get on it!