Features

Bumble Boost with BeeLine, Rematch, and BusyBee.

Female-focused dating app Bumble has been available for free to its users, but now the company is offering a premium paid service for those who want to use its brand new features.

The paid version of the app includes three important features aimed at competing with other popular “tiered” dating apps like Tinder, which also offers optional paid features to help provide a premium matching experience.

Bumble’s first feature, named “Beeline,” will offer its members a line-up of users who have already “liked” them, so they can skip swiping and match with their likes by choosing “yes,” with the intention of making the process more efficient.

If there’s one thing every online dater can agree on, it’s this: they all want more matches. More matches mean more dates, more dates mean more chances of meeting someone special, and more special someones means eventually finding the someone who takes you off the market for good.

As an online dater, you have an effect on how many matches you get. You boost your odds by choosing the right photos, writing an attractive profile, and crafting intriguing messages. But as carefully as you try to present yourself well, you know it’s not entirely in your hands. Working hard in the background of every dating site or app is an algorithm that also has a say in how many matches you receive.

Tinder took the online dating world by storm a few years ago when it launched, changing the way people connected for dates. Instead of crafting elaborate profiles, Tinder’s appeal was its ease and visual component, its mobile interface – you like a photo, and you swipe.

But now, other apps who have tried to copy its example, creating swipe-like features of their own, have found that this is not the best way to stay competitive in the dating app space. So instead of making as many profiles available as quickly as possible, other apps are looking to curate their offerings and make it a more selective process, specifically for female users.

Badoo Selfie Feature

Popular online dating service Badoo has announced the release of its latest feature “Selfie Request,” which aims to provide more security for female daters using the service.

The new selfie feature allows women to request a photo from a male user after they have received an initial message, so that they can confirm their potential match is genuine and using a real photo. From there, a male user can either send the requested selfie or decline. (The selfie is taken on the spot to confirm the match is genuine.)

Selfie Request is positioned to help the ongoing problem of catfishing in online dating, where users hide their identity behind fake profiles and photos in order to exploit other users. According to Pew Research Center, 54 percent of online daters have felt that someone misrepresented themselves on their profile. This new feature update from Badoo is intended to help avoid this recurring problem by addressing the online safety of females, who are largely the targets of catfishing as well as the main recipients of unwanted and harassing messages.

While Tinder is expanding its market share in the dating industry, Whitney Wolfe, one of Tinder’s ex co-Founders and now CEO of dating app Bumble, wants to take her app in a new direction outside of dating: business networking.

Bumble began as a dating app where women make the first move. Guys aren’t allowed to message or see a woman’s profile unless she allows it first, putting her in control of the interaction. Her app has gotten some buzz (excuse the pun), and has in the past year expanded its search and connection capabilities for friendships as well as romantic hook-ups with its feature BumbleBFF.

And according to recent articles in Gizmodo and The Verge, it seems the app wants to help you in another aspect of your life: your career.

EliteSingles is an online dating service aimed at professionals who take their love lives as seriously as their time at the office. The site's intelligent matching algorithm prioritizes long-term happiness and compatibility using a thorough personality questionnaire and profile, helping marriage-minded singles escape the casual nature of most modern dating.

The formula has proved to be a winning one. EliteSingles has seen significant user growth, particularly in the UK where it reported year-on-year growth figures of 37% in Q1 2016. Overall, the company is currently growing at a rate of 25-30% each year.

The latest figures from the UK come hot on the heels of a rebrand in March. EliteSingles’ global makeover includes graphical and user experience improvements to the website and app, as well as significant improvements to the "Wildcard" function, which enables users to enjoy more potential matches every day. The UK, the United States, France, Ireland, New Zealand, Canada, and South Africa have all been updated with the fresh functionality, logo, and colour scheme.

Two years of solid growth inspired the rebrand. The site receives an average of 215,000 new member sign-ups per month across all its English speaking EliteSingles platforms, with 100,000 from the US, a further 40,000 from the UK, and 20,000 monthly sign-ups in Australia.

EliteSingles has become a premier online dating destination for professional singles looking for long-term relationships since its launch in 2013. The site’s average user is aged between 30 and 45, and the majority (85%) are university educated to at least a Bachelor degree level. All profiles on the site are manually verified and, using a sophisticated algorithm, matched based on a combination of education, profession, and personality.

New users complete an extensive questionnaire upon sign-up that analyzes unique personality traits. After completing the questionnaire, users fill out an in-depth profile that covers passions, hobbies, desires, dealbreakers, strengths, and more. From there the site takes over, presenting users with 3-7 matches each day that meet their personality and search criteria. The system is a perk for busy professionals who have little spare time to dedicate to dating.

Jeronimo Folgueira, CEO of EliteSingles, says “As our business rapidly grows, we want our brand to better reflect our positioning and to stick with our target audience. By adopting a more modern, friendlier, green logo we hope to increase our appeal among our core demographic of university-educated professionals as well as emphasise our commitment to delivering the best premium online-dating experience on the market.”

“Together with the redesign of our mobile app,” he continues, “we want our new more-recognisable brand aesthetic to embody the combination of assurance and excitement our users feel when they join EliteSingles.”

For more on this dating service you can read our review of Elite Singles.