Mobile

Looking for some new ideas to plan a date? Summer is here, which means there are a ton of activities going on in your neighborhood that you may or may not know about. If you don't know where to find them, then you should be making use of some cool apps out there that can help hook you up. So to speak.

Regardless of whether you're online dating or you already have a significant other, it can be stressful to plan dates. If you try something you've never done before, you never know what to expect. But that's part of the fun, right?

If you're sick of the same old same old but need a little inspiration, or if you want a choice of what to do (even at the last minute), there are apps available to help you out. Every city offers events or places that you might not know about. Check out some of the apps we found, and what they offer:

How About We. This app is available for both singles and couples. If you're a couple, How About We suggests date ideas (like an evening cruise, live concert, or good place for brunches with outdoor patios), and allows you to book in advance through their site. When you become a member, they also offer deals and freebies for future dates.

Sosh. If you live in the San Francisco or New York areas, you might want to check out this app for something non-traditional. Sosh's main focus is to find events or places that are cool and unique. In fact, if a particular event gets bookmarked by too many people, they stop promoting it to users. With over 500 activities, places, venues, and other out-of-the-way interests discovered each weekend, Sosh is a good place to look to try something off the beaten path. Its website claims the app is coming soon to L.A., Chicago, Boston and Seattle.

Goby. Looking for a real adventure? If you have some time set aside for your date, this app is a good resource to help you plan everything from vacations to small excursions to nearby places. Depending on the type of adventure you want to have (hiking a mountain vs. a gallery opening), you can find it. Goby provides a description of the event, where it is, and how close it is to you.

Happy dating!

According to Comscore tracking for November 2012 Plenty of Fish mobile visitors accounted for 50 percent of all mobile dating traffic. POF mobile visitors “Average Minutes per Visitor” is also a lot higher than other dating sites Comscore tracks. This means they make up 67.5 percent of the time ALL mobile visitors used when visiting dating sites. I believe the Comscore data of mobile traffic includes web browsing and dating apps for smartphones.

POF also reports that every day their members exchange up to 30 million messages. In the past year to help fix the technology problems this causes all servers (web and database) have been replaced along with their networking equipment to keep up with the demand. To help with their matching and Chemistry Predictor POF will also be building soon a monster CUDA cluster which will have 147,0000 GPU cores. Wow!

To find out more about these statistics you can read the Plenty of fish blog. Hmmm... Markus Frind's blog use to be called the Paradigm Shift ... I wonder when the name changed? You can also find out more about the dating service here and how it works and stacks up against other services.

We all know there's an app for just about anything and, wouldn't you know it, that includes dating. Online dating has been a popular way to find true love for many years, and plenty of singles have become couples as the result of using an online dating service. As technology progresses, it seems natural for the online dating experience to grow along with it. On-the-go, spur of the moment dating allows you to take advantage of opportunities as they present themselves, rather than having to wait until you get home. Use these apps to making dating easier and more fun for you as you endeavor to find true love.

• Zoosk. Find people who are nearby and interested in finding their soulmate with Zoosk. This free app makes it easy to connect with other members in your area. If proximity is important, Zoosk solves the problem of finding someone fantastic and then learning that they live hundreds of miles away.
• MatchMobile. For years, Match.com has been helping single people meet their match. Now you can take this service with you by using the site's mobile app, MatchMobile. The app itself is free, but you must have a Match.com membership to use it.
• Tingle. Flirt, text and talk to someone you're interested in to see if you want to take it to the next level without giving away your phone number. Security in any dating situation is important, but especially so when you know nothing about the other person. This free app helps you meet and screen potential dates safely.
• Skout. Weed out people who live too far away or don't meet your dating preferences before you even get started with Skout. In addition to browsing others' profiles and viewing their pictures, you can also see who's been checking you out. Skout is free and can be used to find a partner or a friend.
• eHarmony. eHarmony takes online dating to a whole new level, and their mobile app lets you take your personal life with you. Their thorough screening and matching process must work because more than one million people have married someone they met through eHarmony.
• Cupid. Access every aspect of your online profile from your Cupid dating app. Update your profile, send messages, see who's checked you out and set up your first date. This app is not free, but does streamline your online dating...a feature that's great for busy people.
• SmartDate. SmartDate works in conjunction with Facebook to connect you to millions of other users. Access your online dating information easily, meet others in a safe environment, and decide if you want to meet people nearby or anywhere in the country.

One of the greatest benefits to using dating apps to find true love is that it's secure. As wonderful as a person sounds in print or on your smartphone screen, being able to get through the preliminary stage securely is important. Once you do that, the convenience of using dating apps streamlines the process, giving you more time to enjoy your social life and meet your potential mate.

POF launched eVow back in September of 2010. Within a few months the dating site went paid. Members needed to buy a subscription to correspond with their matches and to use the advanced search features. eVow did well for a while especially when a link to the service was displayed on the Plenty of Fish website. Since then the site has seen traffic drop by about half according to Alexa. To counteract this it looks like eVow has developed a strategy which is their new dating app.

The eVow online dating app was released in October of 2012 on both Google Android and Apple iOS. The app currently has a 3.9 rating on Google Play with most of the reviews being positive and only a few minor tweaks/annoyances being mentioned. What is interesting is that the eVow app is completely free to use. You do not need a paid subscription. The eVow app doesn’t have all of the features of the website but it does have most of them. This includes sending and receiving messages, viewing your matches, and searching.

So those of you interested in using eVow I would recommend creating a membership on the dating site and then downloaded the app to message your matches. This way you can use the site for free and not pay the regular subscription fee that runs from $19.99 to $39.99 per month depending on the length of the subscription term. I am not sure how long they plan to keep the communication part of the app free so I would try it out as soon as possible.

JDate.com is a popular Jewish dating site that has been in business since 1997. We have just finished updating our JDate review with the latest information about what the service offers to its members, and the features it provides which will make your online dating experience not only eventful but exciting. The last major update to this review happened just over 2 years ago. So what has changed since 2010 with JDate.com? Here is a list of the major changes we found:

• JDate now offers a mobile website and iPhone dating app
• For most subscription terms it is now much cheaper to use JDate
• No more audio or video chatting
• Kibitz Corner - Tell members more about yourself and catch someone’s eye with your witty or profound response
• Redesigned member dashboard that allows for easier navigation and searching
• Updated dating profile and color code personality test questions
• Revamped Likes & Interests
• JMag and JBlog are updated much more frequently. A lot more JDate Videos are now available

To find out more about this popular Jewish dating site and the changes please read our updated JDate.com review.

The social dating site Zoosk announced the other day that they have reached a number of mobile milestones. As part of their mobile strategy Zoosk has released a HTML5 version of the site that makes it much more easily accessible via a mobile phone when using the phone’s browser.

Zoosks daily mobile users now account for 15 percent of the site’s traffic. In the past 12 months mobile traffic on the Zoosk dating apps and HTML5 have increased 148 percent. Android phones make up 55 percent of app usage while the Apple iOS phones account for the other 45 percent. For mobile traffic as a whole from members, 61 percent comes from the apps themselves while 55 percent is done via the phones internet browser. This means that 16 percent of members use both the app and the mobile web. On Sundays and Mondays mobile traffic reaches its peak usually and is on average 10 percent higher. Thursday and Fridays are the low point in the week and mobile traffic can see a drop of 5 percent.

Zoosk also quotes a few mobile online dating statistics from a 2011 Juniper Research finding. They state that the mobile dating market is expected to grow from $1.3 billion in 2011 to $2.3 billion by 2016. User will jump from 650 million in 2011 to 1.3 billion by 2016 (fueled largely by China and then North America).

To find out more about this dating site please read our review of Zoosk.com.