Matching

Since its debut, The League has earned a somewhat elitist reputation. True to its name, the dating app screens all of its applicants according to their career and education, making it a place for singles of a certain stature to find each other online.

Recently, the company launched a new version of its dating app in Los Angeles following a soft launch in New York and San Francisco, and is now focusing on events. Potential members are still required to apply before being able to use the app (the company claims more than 100,000 are on its waiting list). But once you’ve been approved as a member, you can join or create new events based on your interests.

TechCrunch interviewed CEO Amanda Bradford about the app’s new focus, and she emphasized its potential. “The overall goal,” Bradford told the news website, is to turn The League into a “members-only club,” with “a killer singles scene.”

Business Insider was a little more skeptical about the relaunch, calling it a “do or die moment” for the company, since they need to make some cash soon. According to Business Insider, The League spent most of the last year rebuilding its app from the ground up because it wouldn’t scale properly – hence the focus on events. The company needed to see if people were just curious about the app because of the media buzz, or if it was a viable platform where its members would truly engage. Although the app is still free, Bradford did say that the plan is to offer a freemium service and start charging a tiered membership fee, similar to a members-only club. “Ads aren’t feasible for us,” Bradford told the website.

The newest version of The League is meant to encourage friendships and networking among the site’s members, and not necessarily limit connections to dating. For instance, a female user can create a “women’s wine circle” or a running group. The focus is more on the activity, event or interest, and less on meeting potential dates, which makes these events more organic and fun compared to a singles party. The League has done its own events for members, but these are limited in comparison to members taking charge and creating events themselves.

So while the company says it’s not moving away from the dating space, it seems to be focusing more on the app’s potential to create connections – whether it’s friendships, business contacts, or potential dates.  The bigger question is how soon the app will be able to grow its membership, stickiness, and eventually its revenue stream.

Are you a Republican or Democrat? According to a study by dating website Match, most people looking to date wouldn’t care one way or another, but something has changed in 2016, and people are becoming more polarized and politically active.  

Perhaps it’s the entertainment aspect that Donald Trump has brought to the campaign trail, or the enthusiastic support of Bernie Sanders among young liberal voters, but something has shifted in the collective American psyche---so much so, that it has inspired two new dating apps.

So now the question has become: Are you a fan of Bernie Sanders, or not a fan of Donald Trump? Regardless of how you feel, there are two new dating sites you should know about.

Bernie Singles launched a few months back, when app developers found that there was a real market for young activists looking to meet each other – for friendship or something more. It seemed that many Bernie Sanders fans on Facebook were eager to meet like-minded activists in person, and there was an instant show of support for the dating app.

Bernie Singles definitely embraces the progressive slant of the candidate who first inspired it. When you join, you can register as male, female, genderqueer or transgender - and as straight, gay, lesbian, bisexual, pansexual, queer or asexual. There’s no gender bias, which also seems to be a good selling point.

In fact, so many people downloaded it when it first launched that the site crashed in the first week. Several thousand have joined to date.

Not to ignore the dating app potential with the current political groundswell of young activists, there will soon be an app for those looking to avoid a Trump Presidency. Maple Match, whose tagline is “Make Dating Great Again” – a play on Trump’s campaign slogan of “Make America Great Again” – has been making headlines with the announcement of its product, coming soon to market.  The app promises to find Americans who are looking to flee a potential Trump Presidency some Canadian matches. Even before its launch, 5,000 people have signed up for the site.

As it turns out, Trump isn’t the only reason Americans want to flee the country. According to a recent interview in The Guardian, Joe Goldman, Maple Match’s founder said: "This site shows that a lot of people are frustrated with the current dating options. A lot of Americans really want to meet Canadians. They're looking for something new and something better."

Bernie Singles is coy in its approach, noting on its website: “The one percent aren’t the only ones getting screwed this election season!” 

Either way, politics has entered the mix in online dating. We'll see what happens in 2017.

There seems to be a new dating app launching every week. In such a crowded market, you’d think investors and developers would shy away from creating something new, but it seems everyone is trying to take a piece of the dating market away from Tinder.

However, I came across a new app trying in a more interesting way to differentiate itself from the popular app – not by being more “female-focused” or offering profile verification as other competing apps are doing, but by focusing on what the actual goal is – the real-life date.

Dating app Dine offers users a chance to match not only through common interests, but through restaurant preferences. According to the company, the goal is to get you from an online match to an actual date – dinner or drinks – as quickly as possible. (Avoiding the Tinder problem of messaging endlessly with no results.) The app is integrated with Yelp to offer local eating choices.

Dine is owned by Mrk & Co., founded by veterans of Japanese gaming giant DeNA, which Nintendo partnered with to bring its games to Smartphones last year. But Dine isn’t incorporating the game-like elements of Tinder or its parent companies' popular games in its dating app. Its premise is similar to dating website How About We, where people can search for matches based on ideas they come up with for a first date. But Dine is all about the eating experience.

The concept of Dine is simple: After filling out your profile, you pick three restaurants or bars where you’d want to meet for a date. Dine offers you 2-5 potential matches per day, along with which three places they chose, so you can request to go on a date at a particular location.

When you send someone a date request and they match (accept), you can message each other. However – Dine provides users with suggested messages ready to go, with the language focused on scheduling a date and time for your meet-up. Of course you can erase their suggestions and add your own message, but the app is focused on getting you to set the date and meet in person.

According to an article in Business Insider, about half of accepted requests lead to actual dates within a two-week period, at least for the beta phase of the Dine app launch.

Dine has now launched all over the U.S. and Canada. Also noteworthy: Apple was impressed enough with the concept to feature it on its list of "best new apps".

You’ve heard of love at first sight, but what about love at first bite? This year’s crop of corporate April Fools’ Day pranks included Burrit-oh!, a dating site from Zoosk that matches users based on burrito compatibility.

The gimmick was all in good fun, especially considering that April 4 was National Burrito Day, but now the Chicago Tribune is reporting that the humorous site unintentionally exposed a major online dating myth.

“This year, one prank remains stubbornly present, almost four weeks after the day came and went,” writes the Tribune. “In fact, Burrit-oh! - the dating site that pairs singles based solely on their taste in portable Mexican - has proven so unexpectedly successful that maker Zoosk is thinking of keeping it.”

Nearly 2000 users have joined the site so far. Some joined just for laughs, but others are taking the scrumptious service seriously. Zoosk said they've seen an unexpected surge of people exchanging more than 20 back-and-forth messages. To put that into perspective, consider that OkCupid deems a match successful if a conversation survives only four exchanges. Burrit-oh’s record so far is 56.

"We all thought this was a really good idea and hoped it would take off," said Megan Murray, the site's senior content strategist. "But we didn't think it would take off like this."

So why is this important, other than for a quick giggle over the silliness of the internet? Almost every major dating site (including several Burrit-oh took a swipe at in a press release) touts the importance of sophisticated matching algorithms. They’re praised as the most effective way to pair people based on some "deeper" measure of interests or personality that guarantee “real” compatibility.

But Burrit-oh? Well, it’s anything but sophisticated. The algorithm is as basic as it gets, and it’s built on the flimsiest of foundations, and yet… users are still hitting it off. This supports the finding, long promoted by social scientists, that matching algorithms aren’t really science - they’re just good marketing. Behold, the unbeatable power of the burrito.

Then again, the silly service is a marketing stunt at the end of the day - a funny and clever one, but a stunt nonetheless. There’s just a teeny chance that it may outlive its initial purpose to become a real destination for single foodies. Zoosk said they've decided to keep supporting the site as long as people continue to use it.

“Personally, I am single and love burritos," Murray said, "and think it would be amazing if I could meet the love of my life on a burrito dating app."

For more information on the online dating service who launched Burrit-oh! on April Fools, please read our Zoosk review.

Hinge doesn’t want to be another version of Tinder. Instead of focusing on the swiping game with attractive profiles, Hinge wants its users to engage, message and date – in other words, take the process of dating a bit more seriously.

Millennials are by far the biggest users of dating apps, and are less inclined to pay for a dating service. They also take dating less seriously than older daters. Tinder attracted the young market because the app was free, easy and accessible. But then apps like Hinge came along, who wanted to change the “hook-up” mentality many online daters have become accustomed to.

The majority of Hinge users are Tinder’s target market – Millennials. Hinge is betting on the fact that many young daters want to be more serious in their search, and not just use apps for that last-minute hook-up.

Hinge has done several things in trying to find its sweet spot, including launching a new feature this past November where users had to respond to a new match within 24 hours or they would disappear from their match list. Apparently, this didn’t go over well, because in February, the company announced that it was removing the feature.

In an email sent to its users, Hinge said: “You are busy, and 24 hours is sometimes not enough. At the end of the day, our job is about helping you find someone great, and timed matches didn’t do that. We want to make it right. So we’re turning off the clock. The 24 hour clock that is.”

Users still have to make contact with matches within a 14-day period, because the company maintains a time limit does increase communication and the likelihood of matches actually getting to the date.

And last month, Hinge launched a feature called Story Cards that helps users initiate conversation by letting them answer yes or no to “life experience” questions. According to website Global Dating Insights, the app’s CEO Justin McLeod revealed that during beta testing, Story Cards “generated a 20% increase in two-way messages between users, as well as more phone numbers exchanged.”  

News website Tech Crunch has suspicions that the next Hinge announcement will be a paid service, since Tinder is the only app that can really make money solely on advertising spend. 

In the article, writer Jordan Crook says: “Hinge is undergoing a huge makeover, ditching the swipe mechanic and adding a paid subscription layer to ensure folks who use it are there for the right reasons.”

Hinge also provided the following statement, causing more raised eyebrows:

“We are continually focused on helping our users find meaningful relationships. To that end, we’re always working with our users to test new concepts. However, at this point nothing is confirmed – everything from friend endorsements to concierge matchmaking has been on table. What we do know is that each global release continues to be the result of enormous amounts of work alongside our community in an effort to understand what sparks online connections that have the power to become lasting offline relationships.”

One thing seems clear: Hinge wants to focus on the sweet spot that is missing in popular dating apps – building real, lasting relationships. To find out more about this dating app you can read our review about Hinge.

Human matchmakers have plied their trade for hundreds of years, but only in the 21^st century could something like this exist. Meet Connectidy, a new app that uses IBM's Watson AI to improve the dating experience.

Connectidy bills itself as “the dating app for evolved people.” Powered by a mix of Watson and proprietary algorithms, the app promises to give you a higher level of emotional intelligence and a deeper understanding of what you really want in a partner. Connectidy hopes to empower users to make smarter choices and, ultimately, increase the odds of meeting that special someone.

How does it work? Connectidy analyzes what users write and, more importantly, how they write, then presents an objective personality profile. The assessment is based on the Big Five personality traits, commonly used by psychologists to describe the human personality: openness to experience, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism.

To create your profile, IBM’s Watson AI inspects written text pulled from any or all of your social media accounts. You will also be asked to answer a series of open-ended questions. Leveraging the Praescripto Engine, Connectidy then uses its patent-pending 5 pass algorithms to deliver a highly accurate personality assessment. The more you communicate with others, the better Connectidy understands you. Answer the questions thoroughly and the website promises a profile that is 90 percent accurate or better.

Connectidy users aren't just able to create more authentic profiles. They also develop a deeper understanding of their own personalities so they can find partners who best complement those traits. Connectidy reveals how your dating decisions affect an outcome, allowing you to weigh the impact and adjust accordingly.

When a match is made, the service acts as a go-between to make sure you're sending the most effective communication possible. Tone Analyzer, also powered by Watson, evaluates your messages to provide tailored advice on word choice and tone. A user who scored highly on the extraversion personality trait, for instance, will get different recommendations that someone Connectidy deemed to be more introverted.

The goal at the end of it all is simple: meaningful relationships. There are apps a-plenty for users who are into serial dating and hookups, but it's harder to make an effective service for finding real, lasting compatibility. Connectidy hopes to be that app.

According to the company's president, Dineen Tallering, “Connectidy’s mission is to say ‘goodbye.’ As part of our success, we will change the current system that pulls daters in and never lets them out. We want to help users find that special someone so we have built technology that truly can end the online dating merry-go-round.”