Features

Plenty of Fish is keeping things fresh with an updated look for its iOS and Android apps, and a brand new feature designed to help singles get the conversation started.

PoF is all about the chat right now. After releasing Conversation Nation, the largest study of singles and conversation ever conducted, the dating service is putting communication front and center.

Data from the study found that 74 percent of single Americans believe small talk is worthwhile because it helps break the ice and provides basic information about a potential date. The majority of singles also believe a great conversation is the top indicator of a successful date. However, 61 percent of singles believe the rise in technology usage has impacted our ability to have meaningful, face-to-face conversations, and 65 percent say conversation is a lost art.

Video is in. After the explosive success of Snapchat, competitor social networks scrambled to launch Stories features of their own. Instagram’s copycat proved so popular that Instagram Stories usage surpassed all Snapchat activity in April 2017.

Yet despite the success stories, online dating remains mysteriously absent from that race to innovate. On the surface, the search for love seems like an ideal candidate for video - if a picture on a profile is worth a thousand words, a video must be worth several times that - but few dating services have dared incorporate video into their features.

Hinge and Lively hope to be at the forefront of the eventual, seemingly inevitable, push to make video a regular part of the digital dating experience. Lively, a video-based social app, recently announced the release of augmented live video chat, while Hinge debuted a feature to add video clips to profiles.

Jdates New Look

Earlier this month Jdate.com new makeover was launched along with an updated logo design. The JDate dating apps for iOS and Android also was updated to version 3.0.0 supporting a new and improved interface and features. Not to be left out, the JDate online magazine Jlife also got a face lift as well. All of these updates are designed with JDate users in mind and are focused on making the online dating experience easier, more streamlined, and engaging.

One of the main changes includes profile browsing. It has been simplified offering 5 main options for sorting members including New, Online, Distance, Match %, and LookBook. Each of these views are based on what you are seeking (called Discovery Preferences) and include attributes like gender and age range. These can be easily changed on the browsing page (or on your profile) to refine your searching.

The new features of Tinder Gold!

Tinder introduced swiping to the dating app world and online dating has never been the same. Now, the company is striving to evolve beyond its image as a hookup app and deliver more value to its customers through its premium services and new features.

The latest offering is Tinder Gold – a premium service (as is Tinder Plus) that allows members to see who has swiped right on their profiles in advance. This allows users to eliminate the guesswork involved in whether or not their matches already “liked” them before they make a decision to “like” them back.

According to Tinder, it will also speed up the process of finding a match, because you aren’t waiting around to see if someone you’re interested in swipes right on you, which can be a big time suck in online dating.

Dating apps aren’t afraid to embrace trends. Love bacon? Or beards? Or Canadians? There’s an app for that. Dozens of niche services capitalize on the latest news and pop culture obsessions, yet there’s one trend online dating has strangely skipped over: video.

Though Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat put video front-and-center, the majority of big-name dating apps don’t allow users to share or upload videos. Attempts to integrate video, or launch new apps that are video-focused, have largely failed.

Does video dating belong to the ‘80s, when singles would record personal profiles on VHS in hopes of being distributed to a compatible match?

It’s been a whirlwind week in the online dating world.

First, Badoo launched a feature to help singles hook up with their celebrity crushes… well, almost. A new search feature uses facial recognition technology to match users with dates who look like their favourite celebs. Among the most searched-for famous faces so far are Kim Kardashian West, Justin Bieber, and Robert Pattinson.

“People are looking for quick, fast, easy ways to start connections,” said Badoo's Miles Norris to the BBC, “and if the way someone looks is a good onboarding to that, then we want to make it easy for them.”