Closed

Do you have an iPhone or Android phone? Chances are, you didn’t purchase one or the other by chance: you had a definite preference.

Are You Interested, a dating app for singles, decided to test out its own user base and how their dating preferences correlated to the type of phone they used. We know that things like ethnicity, income, and height play a major role in how much success a dater has online. But could your phone have an influence too, considering how much time, money and effort we put into them? In some cases, yes.

AYI found that iOS users were contacted 17% more often than Android users. Turns out, those who prefer Apple products are more desirable dates. I looked into Cupidtino, the dating site dedicated to lovers of all products Apple, to see some profiles of the most desirable users, but found that it is now defunct. I guess more options are better, even for those dedicated to Apple lovers.

Android users seem to be the ones doing the pursuing, while Apple users tend to wait to be contacted. According to the study, Android users were 12% more likely than iOS users to contact someone on AYI.

The dating app company was able to examine 20 million interactions between their users, pulling from a portion of the 2.4 million mobile downloads of the app. Since other online daters can’t see what phone the other person has, AYI looked at what type of dater owned which type of phone. Interestingly, both groups skewed male, but Android users tend to be slightly older, with 42% between 45 and 60 compared to only 29% of iPhone users. Sixty-seven percent of iPhone users were under 45.

In addition, income seems to be a factor. Android users were 30% more likely to make under $60,000 than those with iPhones. Also, 83% of singles making over $150,000 owned an iOS device.

Marital status is another factor, with Android users being 20% more likely than iOS users to be divorced. Another interesting finding from the study: iOS users tend to drink 50% more often and take drugs twice as often as the Android users. On the flip side, they were also 18% more likely to work out every day compared to Android users.

In terms of education, iOS users were twice as likely to have a Master’s degree and 55% more likely to have a Bachelor’s degree. A whopping 72% of Android users had not completed college.

AYI studied profile information from 13,690 of its mobile app users in the United States for the study. For more information on this dating site please read our review of Are You Interested.

Dating apps are trying to step up their game and attract more users in order to compete with each other more effectively. After all, quantity means success in the online dating game, as we’ve seen first from established online dating sites like Match.com and now from popular apps like Tinder.

Because of the stiff competition, HowAboutWe is taking extra steps to distinguish itself in the online dating world – namely, by cultivating relationships instead of keeping more people in the dating game. This month, they launched a new standalone messaging app for couples that lets two partners share multiple types of content and create a story together.

The new app is You&Me, and it gives users a chance to have a little mobile fun with their relationship. It is an app that provides direct, exclusive communication between you and your partner.

With You&Me, you now have options for the types of messages you can send your love – photo, text and video messages – as well as the ability to send voice memos and a favorite song. “This made me think of you” is one response you can send, along with a picture or video, or “is there anything you need me to pick up at the store?” if you are looking for something more practical.

Plus, there are extra features like Photobooth, which offers a similar experience to the old-fashioned kind you used to do with friends at an amusement park or arcade, with a screenshot resembling a film strip of the different faces you made. Halfsie takes a Front-Back style photo of half of your face on top (nose up) and half of your partner’s (nose down) on the bottom. Secret sends a “steamed up” photo that the recipient must wipe clear to see. Sexy.

Interestingly, the app is responsive and knows when you are physically together in real life. The interface changes to reflect that. This makes me a little uncomfortable. Do I want my phone to be so aware of my movements with my partner?

HowAboutWe has ventured into new territory with online dating, first offering an online dating site that was driven by creativity – that is, a date idea – instead of based solely on profiles. They then extended the brand to include married couples in HowAboutWe for couples, providing date ideas and services to help you plan and execute the date. Plus, it offered discounts on unique local experiences to each city.

Recently, the company has acquired a series of media properties that discuss all things sex, love and dating, including Nerve.com.

The app is free and available only on iTunes, so you must both have iPhones to be able to use it.

For more on this dating service including the new couples app please read our review of How About We.

Aaron Schildkrout and his friend Brian Schechter founded HowAboutWe four years ago as an alternative to traditional online dating. In a recent article in The New York Observer, he said that the fundamental problem with online dating sites was that they needed to keep subscribers. The sites work best when people are looking for dates, not when they are in relationships and dropping out. Dating sites depend on a huge database of subscribers.

HowAboutWe’s focus is a bit different for an online dating site. For one, they have branched out from their online dating platform to creating a valuable resource for all people interested in dating and relationships.

The primary goal of their dating site is to help people meet offline (and get them there as quickly as possible), so they can move towards forming relationships. Instead of searching through profiles, members can create an idea for a first date, put it out to the network, and see who’s interested. Schildkrout says it’s a way for people to meet more organically.

Because of the site’s focus on date activities, it was a natural progression to create a site for couples who are looking to be inspired. Many couples are bored with the same old dates they do all the time, but don’t have the time to research or a lot of money to do something more unique. This is where HowAboutWe comes in – they curate dates particular to each city they service, and set the whole thing up for a discounted price.

It’s an appealing idea for couples. As Schildkrout says, “We make the booking process and the reservation process extremely easy — you never have to show a voucher, your name’s already on the list. We do all the work for you. We take care of all the details.”

The company is also getting into media content, acquiring sites like The Date Report and Nerve.com and creating two additional new blogs related to dating and relationships. “We built out a world-class editorial team,” says Shildkrout, “and for the last three months, we’ve been working really hard to create a media wing focused on becoming the authoritative voice on all things love, and have grown traffic dramatically in that process.”

Popular apps like Tinder and the bigger or more traditional dating sites like OkCupid don’t seem to bother Shildkrout. He sees Tinder as more of a lightweight hook-up experience and OkCupid as an algorithm-matching experience which might not match you with someone outside your type. He is focused on his product, on connecting people in a real-world way. And he’s looking to build content that gets a conversation started. 

The incredible proliferation of niche dating sites is a popular topic these days. When we say there's something for everyone, we really mean there’s something for everyone. Whether you’re looking for a vampire, a farmer, or a sea captain (or maybe all three?), there’s a site looking to match you with your perfect partner.

By comparison, dating sites for foodies seem downright normal. Stefanie Tuder, culinary school graduate and online food writer for ABC News-“Good Morning America,” decided to take three foodie sites for a test drive (make that "a taste test") to survey the scene.

HowAboutWe

First on her list was HowAboutWe, which recently announced a partnership with Serious Eats. The sites are collaborating to get online daters offline, via activities like “tacos and a spin around the Bronx zoo" or "a crawl of the essential dumplings of Flushing." Other popular food-focused sites also have similar partnerships to connect like-minded singles. All members, regardless of which co-branded page they use to sign up, can interact with all other members in order to offer as wide a dating pool as possible.

For Tuder, that wasn’t ideal. “Rather than see other readers of Serious Eats, Eater, etc.,” she writes, “which is the reason I signed up and went to that branded landing page, I see everyone in my area on HowAboutWe. And not even only the ones who are particularly interested in food.” It’s possible to narrow down searches to people who suggest food and drink date ideas, but messaging someone requires at least an $8 monthly membership.

HiDine

HiDine stirred up some controversy when it hit the scene in November. Taking a staunchly traditional approach, only men can ask women out on a date on Hi Dine and by doing so they commit to picking up the tab. Tuder found that she received many more messages and date requests on HiDine than on the other sites she experimented with. Her two critiques include the messaging system, which she calls "pretty clunky," and the fact that women do not have the option of messaging men. All a woman can do to indicate her interest in a profile is "wink" at it.

SamePlate

“While SamePlate has the best of intentions,” Tuder writes, “it simply doesn't have enough members yet to be successful." SamePlate was founded in 2012 by a man who wanted to find a partner to eat Paleo with him. SamePlate covers the Paleo phenomenon as well as anything else a food lover could want. Members can use the free site to cross-reference search any mix of diet and food combinations, which is a pretty unbeatable feature if you consider yourself foodie.

Ultimately, Tuder concludes that foodie dating is “interesting,” but doesn’t have “strong enough of a pull to stay on full time."

It looks like yesterday morning Plenty of Fish and its sister site eVow was down for about 4 hours. POF.com went down sometime after 6am and was revived around 11:30am. Visitors at our forum and elsewhere on the internet reported receiving a "500 - Internal server error" when they visited the site. The dating app was also reported not working during this time period.

A 500 error code is a catch all error message that web servers reports when something has gone wrong and the server is not sure what it is. It is not a problem with the visitors browser or DNS but an issue with the web server where the web site is hosted.

POF has not reported why the outage has happened. From previous experiences we do not expect an answer.

The last major outage that spanned more than 2 hours in which we know of for Plenty of Fish was in Aug of 2010 (see Story). 2010 wasn't a very good year for POF.com in terms of uptime as they experienced 3 major outages.

According to a recent study aiming to find the most desirable single in 2014, you'll have the most luck if you're 25 years old and rich.

The study pooled information from about 81,000 singles between the ages of 25-35 on the dating website Plenty of Fish, along with about 1.8 million messages to see what traits were the most desirable in both men and women who are online dating.

For both sexes, men and women in their twenties received more messages than those in their thirties. Women who were between 25 and 26 years old received the most messages, with a sharp decline once they turned 33.

It seems that both men and women prefer singles who make money. Women who earned between $50,000-$75,000 and men who earned between $75,000-$150,000 attracted more prospective dates than those earning less. And men who have law degrees are also likely to be the most successful in garnering attention online, with 33% more messages than the average single guy.

While data like this paints a certain picture of online dating, it's good to keep in mind that this is information gathered from only one online dating site and from just one demographic. If we were to look at online dating as a whole, the fastest-growing segment is singles over 50. And many people prefer paid dating sites like Match.com or eHarmony because daters tend to be more serious if they buy a subscription.

Free dating sites have always skewed younger, because many young daters aren't interested in serious relationships and want a chance to meet a lot of people. Paid dating sites tend to attract users of all ages who are on different levels of the dating spectrum - from casual to marriage-minded.

Twenty-somethings are also gravitating towards dating apps rather than online dating sites. Apps like Tinder, Hinge, and Are You Interested have been on the rise, mostly because of the ease of creating a profile and meeting people immediately, whereas most online dating sites require a little more effort and time before you're meeting each other face-to-face.

So while the POF study might feed into the stereotypes that persist about online dating (that singles prefer if you're young, earn a lot of money, etc.) - there are in reality a wide variety of singles who are online dating. Don't be afraid to explore a number of dating sites and see which one works best for you. This is the best time of year to do it, since more people than ever are online dating!