Profiles

When we talk about dating, it's often referred to as a game. We even call some people “players.”

But as much fun as games are, it isn't the most effective metaphor for online dating. Real success comes when you put your power suit on (mentally) and treat online dating like a business. You are the product, and the best way to sell that product is to run a strong marketing campaign.

Think of your profile as a sales pitch. The right one will attract the target customer and motivate them to make a purchase. Here are a few tips for writing a profile like a marketing guru:

1. Define the product. You can't sell something if you don't understand what that something is in the first place. What's your story? What's your personal brand? What are your most marketable qualities? Choose a few and optimize your profile to highlight them.
2. Define your audience. Who are you marketing to? Somewhere in your head, you have a vision of the ideal partner. Make that vision as clear as possible, then write your profile in a way that's designed to attract their attention.
3. Write a catchy hook. Email marketing is all about the subject line. If it's lame, no one will open the email and the message inside will never be read. Many online dating profiles also have a tag line feature. Make sure it stands out from the crowd and piques the reader's curiosity.
4. Stay on top of the latest trends. Marketers know the times are always changing and their strategies must evolve with them. You, too, are always changing. Make sure you update your profile regularly so it always presents the most accurate picture of you possible.
5. Test. A marketing guru is constantly pouring over metrics and analytics because it's the only way to determine the success of a campaign. Take a look at who is messaging you. Is it the kind of person you want to attract? If not, switch up your strategy and try again.
6. Keep it professional. You won't see many marketing materials with mistakes (and if you do, someone's probably getting fired). Use your spell check. Avoid negative language. Don't sound desperate. Keep it short, sweet, simple, and to the point. Remove all opportunities for your audience to see you as anything less than a great investment.
7. Create a call to action. A business fails if it never makes a sale, so after you've shown a customer how amazing your product is, ask them to buy it. Prompt your audience to take the next step. Try adding a “You should message me if...” section to your profile, or ask an interesting question that prospective suitors can respond to in a message.

This isn't to say that dating is all work and no play. Of course it isn't, and thinking of yourself as a product isn't a healthy long-term mindset. Instead, find the happy balance between game and business. That's when you become a success story.

The most successful dating apps are based on visuals, and typically pull your photos from Facebook to create your dating “profile.” This allows potential dates to swipe left and right, rejecting or showing interest – depending almost entirely on the photos you have posted.

Now dating app Glimpse takes things one step further. Acknowledging the power of visuals, the new app uses your Instagram account to help you find matches. That is, Glimpse reveals photos you have taken on Instagram to potential matches, so they can get an idea of your interests, who you are, and what you like.

Instagram seems like a natural fit for online dating, but Glimpse is not the first to make a dating app using visual social media platforms. Take dating app Dreamcliq, launched a couple of years ago to little fanfare, which allows you to create a “vision board” of your interests to attract potential dates - matching according to photo-based profiles. The company marketed the app as being inspired by Pinterest.

There are some challenges with Glimpse. First, if your Instagram is full of selfies, it might be a turn-off for your dates. There are only so many duck faces potential mates can handle. Same thing if you like taking pictures of your food, or your puppy, or even your hiking landscapes – a few artful photographs are great, but sometimes it's too much. Also, what does an extensive photo collection tell you about the person taking the photo, other than they like their dogs, hikes, or crème brulee?

Unlike apps like Tinder, Glimpse doesn’t match based on location, but rather through your hashtags, events, locations and other similarities on Instagram. So, let’s say you include #sunsets or #foodporn tags in a few photos – you’ll be matched with singles in your area who used the same trending phrases. Or, you could be matched with someone you met last month at a party during your work conference. In other words, there seems to be a little more flexibility as well as common interests than a typical dating app. Plus, it gives you a starting point for conversation – something that is missing with Tinder.

Another advantage of Glimpse is that you can advertise yourself through visuals – but instead of worrying about how great your hair looks or whether or not you look big in a certain dress, the app lets you tell a story of who you are through your photos.

Glimpse launched in February and is available on iTunes, but by invitation only.

Are you excited about the new Tinder Plus service that has rolled out in the U.S.? Don't get too carried away – turns out, if you’re 30 or older, you’ll have to pay more than your younger single counterparts.

Tinder is charging users of its premium service only $9.99 if they are under 30, but those 30 and older have to pay $19.99 per month for the same service. In the U.K., the pay gap is even larger.

Tinder has been testing pricing and features of Tinder Plus in various markets prior to its U.S. roll out, which is expected to happen in late March. Reports have been mixed – while Tinder claims that its users have responded favorably to the premium service and its features (as well as pricing), the app’s ratings have declined in the U.K. app store thanks to several harsh reviews.

The success of the new service is important to Tinder, who has yet to capitalize on the sheer number of users of the free service. The company has struggled to come up with viable revenue streams that don’t take away from the user experience (they have tried to avoid in-app advertising), in order to maintain their growing user base. Offering a tiered premium service like Tinder Plus seems the best answer, adding some popular features based on users’ requests - such as the ability to go back and see rejected profiles, or to meet matches in different cities.

But along with these improvements, there are reports that Tinder is placing limits on the number of swipes any user can do per day for the free service (which sparked outrage in the U.K. app stores), prompting users to buy the premium service if they want to continue swiping.

And the latest controversy appears to be age discrimination. In a statement to defend its unusual pricing technique, Tinder said this to NPR: "Over the past few months, we've tested Tinder Plus extensively in several countries…Lots of products offer differentiated price tiers by age, like Spotify does for students, for example. Tinder is no different; during our testing we've learned, not surprisingly, that younger users are just as excited about Tinder Plus but are more budget constrained and need a lower price to pull the trigger." 

Not everyone is buying Tinder’s explanation. As website Engadget pointed out, this “sleazy” move by Tinder will likely cause more people to lie about their ages on Facebook.

The real test will has come now since Tinder Plus made its U.S. debut this month. Perhaps this is the move that will make room for other competitors in the crowded dating app market.

Remember how you thought filling out your online dating profile was a giant pain in the you-know-what? Now imagine creating an entire online dating site – just for yourself.

That's what one very dedicated dater from New York did. Meet Brandon Scott Wolf, the Brooklyn-based bartender and comedian behind DateBrandonScottWolf.com.

Visitors to the page are greeted by one of the best taglines you're likely to see anywhere: “The #1 Online Dating Site for Brandon Scott Wolf.” So he's funny and self-aware – two things women are definitely looking for in a date. Check them off the list.

Up next is a video in which BSW explains more about himself, what he's looking for, and the origins of the site. He's a college-educated, 25-yr-old bartender who was frustrated by the sheer enormity of the online dating world. With so many profiles on a single site, how could anyone possibly choose? His solution to the problem is ingenious.

Let's say you're intrigued by the prospect of dating Mr. Brandon Scott Wolf. What happens next?

He says he's looking for an easy-going, honest woman who can make him laugh. He's open to casual dating, according to his profile (aka, the only profile) on the site. However, he would “prefer to meet someone who wants to get into a more serious relationship” which, he notes, means “being able to lay on a couch together while wearing pajamas and watching Bob’s Burgers.”

If you fit the bill, submit a recent photo and take a free online personality test. Filling out your own profile is a predictably funny experience. Check out the options for age, gender, religion, and sexual preference. What's your favorite book? You're out of luck if it doesn't come from the Harry Potter series. Your favorite date? Hopefully you like pie. A favorite animal? It'd better be a bird or you're screwed.

Assuming you meet all the criteria, what happens next? A date. Probably in a diner, over a slice of pie. And if the two of you click, BSW says to expect plenty of “hand holding, homemade pasta dinners, and having someone who actually listens.”

All of this begs one question: if Wolf is a comedian, is all of this a joke?

"People have asked me, 'Are you serious? Is this a joke?' And my only response is, 'I'm not even sure,'" he told Mashable. "There's a part of me that's hoping someone is going to get this 100%, and won't catfish me, and then I'll ask them out on a date."

There’s been an uproar lately with the launch of dating app Tinder’s new premium service, Tinder Plus. The problem? The company is charging users in their twenties $9.99 in the U.S., compared to those 30 and older, who will have to pay $19.99 (and even more in the U.K.).

This has notably sparked some outrage from product reviewers and bloggers, who note the enduring problem of age discrimination when it comes to online dating – especially towards women. According to studies released by sites like OkCupid, young women are more sought-after by men, no matter how old the guy is. According to dating site Plenty of Fish, the ideal age of a single woman is 25 for most of their male daters. And according to OkCupid, that number skews even younger – with the ideal age being 21 or 22, even if the men wanting to date them are in their forties. Once female online daters hit the magic age of 30, they are blocked out from opportunities – some reports pointing to as much as an 80% decrease in messages and matches - as the majority of men prefer to meet women in their twenties.

This isn’t new. And it does explain why many people post old photos and lie about their ages (much to the frustration of the online daters who meet them). So what will these daters 30 and above do with Tinder – will they opt in and pay for Tinder Plus, or will we see more of a dating revolt?

According to Tinder, the company’s move to differentiate pricing based on age really comes down to economics. The company has tested pricing, and discovered that older singles are willing to pay more because they have more income. (The company likens it to services like Spotify which offer discounted rates to “students.”)

The problem with this “economic” view, as some reviewers have pointed out, is that older online daters already have a shrunken dating pool to choose from. (And online dating is a bit different than streaming music – with streaming, you have access to everything offered in exchange for your payment; with online dating, you only have access to those who haven’t filtered you out of their searches, which means fewer options for more money.)

As the Washington Post says: “The [age] problem is so urgent, and so severe, that several sites have spoken out against ageism in online dating in recent years. In 2010, OkCupid’s Christian Rudder wrote an entire blog post dedicated to convincing men that the 30-somethings on his site were just as cool and attractive as recent college grads. On JDate — a paid dating site for Jewish singles — the site’s official relationship blogger, Tamar Caspi, went on a full-blown rant over age.”

The latest move by Tinder might affect its user base, but the problem of ageism in dating still remains. If people are looking to meet someone special, then letting go of superficial restrictions like age only helps open the dating pool – and don’t we all want more choices?

Tinder has already rolled out its new premium paid service Tinder Plus in the U.S., and among the new features are some protections from spammers.

Tinder Plus includes a new feature called “Unlimited Likes,” which seems counter-intuitive since users of the free app already have the ability to swipe left and right without limits. Unfortunately, spammers have taken advantage of this feature by creating spam bots which swipe right on thousands of profiles simultaneously, increasing users’ match potential.

Tinder has dealt with increasing abuse of its service from spammers. Chances are if you’ve downloaded Tinder, you’ve also come across a fake profile or two that are actually staged to sell you something or obtain personal information, (violating Tinder’s terms and conditions), rather than to make an actual connection with a real person.

Tinder sees its paid service as a way to reduce spamming, as the rewards for this kind of power matching wouldn’t be worth the cost. Apps capitalizing on users’ penchant to say yes to all their potential matches have cropped up, too – like Tinderoid (now labeling itself as “Tools for Tinder”), which enables users to “like” en masse. 

The roll-out of Tinder Plus has already happened in a few other countries, and so far limiting the number of likes has not been received kindly by users who are used to unlimited swiping. According to reviews in the UK’s app store (which dropped the service to only one and a half stars in its rating), Tinder has prevented quite a few users from swiping endlessly unless they pay for the premium service, and they are not happy about it.

Tinder however, says that regular users of the service should not be affected (as opposed to the tiny fraction that swipe right on every single match they can as frequently as possible).

“That behavior happens with a very small percentage of our users, and they usually find that the experience isn’t very good and self-correct on their own,” Sean Rad, the company’s cofounder and CEO, told Tech Crunch.

The algorithm Tinder has set up to block spammers analyzes a few things before it is triggered: namely, the number of swipes, whether the user is only swiping right, velocity, time spent looking at a profile, etc. According to Tinder, a user can swipe through as many as 500 profiles and still not be blocked or prompted to upgrade to Tinder Plus, so long as the user spends a certain amount of time looking at each profile instead of mindlessly swiping.

Tinder launched Tinder Plus in the U.S. this month. For more information about this app, please read our Tinder review.