Features

Tinder, Bumble, and Coffee Meets Bagel may inspire most of the buzz in the mobile dating industry, but it’s Badoo that’s now celebrating a major milestone. The London-based company has just become the first ever dating app to reach 100 million downloads in the Google Play store.

“We’re really excited about today’s milestone,” said Alexandra Chong, President of Badoo, in a statement. “With 10 years of existence, Badoo has the industry’s deepest insights and experience, and knows how to use this wealth of information to create a fantastic user experience and sustain incredible growth and momentum.”

Other companies in the 100 million club on Android include Whatsapp, Snapchat, Spotify, and Twitter - but a surprising number of big names (from the aforementioned Tinder to Amazon, Uber, and Pinterest) haven’t yet cracked the nine-digit mark.

Along with that big news comes the launch of a timely new feature. Badoo is putting privacy and security at the forefront of the product by introducing a new photo verification system designed to combat catfishing. To get a picture verified, users must submit a selfie with a pose requested by Badoo. The gestures are not common, like a thumbs-up, but rather unique and specific.

Once the image has been submitted, Badoo’s team of over 5,000 moderators across the globe review it to ensure it follows the directions and matches the other photos on the profile. The entire process can reportedly be completed in less than one minute.

For an additional layer of safety, users can opt to be matched only with verified users. Chong says the selfie scheme was devised to make the verification process fun instead of tedious. After testing other possibilities, selfies were the clear winner. Moving forward, existing users will be encouraged to verify their account and 100% of new Badoo users worldwide will be required to go through the process.

Badoo hopes the new feature release will aid its push into the United States. The company has plans to open its first office in the US and will begin a marketing/PR campaign to announce its arrival. Chong says the company has also set its sights on solving other problems that plague the online and mobile dating worlds.

“We hear a lot of complaints about people chatting forever online and never meeting face-to-face,” she told Forbes. “So we developed a great, innovative feature to address that. It will be launching in the coming months, so stay tuned!”. For more on this dating app please read our Badoo review

How do you know if that cute guy you matched with on your dating app is really who he says he is? The hard truth is – you don’t, at least until you meet in person.

One consistent issue with online dating (and social media in general) has been users setting up fake profiles. Often, these fake profiles are used for catfishing – or targeting and scamming other users or members of the same service. Online dating site Badoo has decided to address the problem with its own newly-launched photo and profile verification system.

Many online daters in the U.S. have heard of OkCupid or Tinder, but they haven’t heard of Badoo. Despite this, it is a global giant in the online dating industry with 300 million registered users in over 190 countries, bigger than all of the popular U.S. dating services – even Tinder. Plus, the company has 400,000 signups every day, mostly in Europe and South America.

According to Badoo, the new verification system will hopefully eliminate catfishing from the service altogether. When a new user signs up, they are asked to verify their profile. Badoo then sends them a request for a photo – and the new user has to perform a specific gesture that Badoo assigns. (The company notes that it is a unique and specific gesture, not a common one like a “thumbs-up.”) Badoo will then make sure it's you by looking at the other photos on your profile along with the unique pose. You may even be asked to do another pose. The whole process takes less than a minute since the company has 5,000 moderators worldwide checking them out, so it’s pretty efficient.

If a user chooses not to verify a photo, they could be excluded from other users’ views who only want to connect with verified profiles.

The new verification system is another step in Badoo’s strategy to appeal to female online daters. With the verification system, Badoo intends for female daters to feel more secure in signing up and using the service, since they are often the ones who are targeted with fake profiles and messages.

This seems to be a strategic move. The company recently bought popular female-centric dating app Lulu, where women rate the men they date for other women, as a referral or warning system, depending on how you look at it. Badoo’s head Andrey Andreev hired Lulu’s founder Alexandra Chong as President of Badoo, and the company intends to set up a U.S. office to attract more of a presence in the States. According to TechCrunch Andreev also has invested in Bumble, another female-friendly dating app.

The new version of Badoo is available in the iTunes store, Google Play, and the Windows store.

Hinge doesn’t want to be another version of Tinder. Instead of focusing on the swiping game with attractive profiles, Hinge wants its users to engage, message and date – in other words, take the process of dating a bit more seriously.

Millennials are by far the biggest users of dating apps, and are less inclined to pay for a dating service. They also take dating less seriously than older daters. Tinder attracted the young market because the app was free, easy and accessible. But then apps like Hinge came along, who wanted to change the “hook-up” mentality many online daters have become accustomed to.

The majority of Hinge users are Tinder’s target market – Millennials. Hinge is betting on the fact that many young daters want to be more serious in their search, and not just use apps for that last-minute hook-up.

Hinge has done several things in trying to find its sweet spot, including launching a new feature this past November where users had to respond to a new match within 24 hours or they would disappear from their match list. Apparently, this didn’t go over well, because in February, the company announced that it was removing the feature.

In an email sent to its users, Hinge said: “You are busy, and 24 hours is sometimes not enough. At the end of the day, our job is about helping you find someone great, and timed matches didn’t do that. We want to make it right. So we’re turning off the clock. The 24 hour clock that is.”

Users still have to make contact with matches within a 14-day period, because the company maintains a time limit does increase communication and the likelihood of matches actually getting to the date.

And last month, Hinge launched a feature called Story Cards that helps users initiate conversation by letting them answer yes or no to “life experience” questions. According to website Global Dating Insights, the app’s CEO Justin McLeod revealed that during beta testing, Story Cards “generated a 20% increase in two-way messages between users, as well as more phone numbers exchanged.”  

News website Tech Crunch has suspicions that the next Hinge announcement will be a paid service, since Tinder is the only app that can really make money solely on advertising spend. 

In the article, writer Jordan Crook says: “Hinge is undergoing a huge makeover, ditching the swipe mechanic and adding a paid subscription layer to ensure folks who use it are there for the right reasons.”

Hinge also provided the following statement, causing more raised eyebrows:

“We are continually focused on helping our users find meaningful relationships. To that end, we’re always working with our users to test new concepts. However, at this point nothing is confirmed – everything from friend endorsements to concierge matchmaking has been on table. What we do know is that each global release continues to be the result of enormous amounts of work alongside our community in an effort to understand what sparks online connections that have the power to become lasting offline relationships.”

One thing seems clear: Hinge wants to focus on the sweet spot that is missing in popular dating apps – building real, lasting relationships. To find out more about this dating app you can read our review about Hinge.

Who amongst us can honestly say they have never agonized over an online dating photo? It's a rite of passage in 2016: take a photo, edit it, post it, rethink it, delete it, start again. Wash, rinse, repeat.

If you've ever struggled to determine which of your many (many) selfies belong on your dating profile, Coffee Meets Bagel now offers a solution. From now on, CMB users can A/B test photos by uploading two options and letting other users vote for the best one.

The new feature is called Photo Lab. When clicked, a screen that says “Put your best face forward” is shown. Hit the “+” button to add two photos from your profile, from Facebook, or from your smartphone’s photo gallery. When other users have had time to vote and your report is ready, you’ll receive a notification. The report is unlocked by using “beans,” Coffee Meets Bagel’s in-app currency.  

Of course, Photo Lab also allows you take the opposite role and give other users photo feedback. You'll see a familiar Hot Or Not-style interface and can vote by clicking on the photo you prefer. After you’ve voted, you’ll see a percentage that indicates how other users rated the same two pictures and will earn beans for your efforts.

It will come as a shock to no online dater that pictures are one of the most important parts of your profile. Coffee Meets Bagel polled singles and found that 54% pass on prospective dates for picture-related reasons. The most common offenses include blurry images and the so-called “Where’s Waldo” pics that feature so many people that the profile owner is unidentifiable.

“Surprisingly, a large percentage of online daters have a hard time when it comes to choosing which photo to use on their profile,” Dawoon Kang, co-founder of Coffee Meets Bagel, told TechCrunch. Yet they “get no feedback whatsoever on which profile photo actually works best.”  

This isn't the first time Coffee Meets Bagel has tried to give its users a leg up in the search for love. The site and mobile app already offer premium features to help singles determine whether their profile is working. CMB members with enough beans can find out how they rank on the site and get feedback on the reasons matches say yes.  

Coffee Meets Bagel hopes the new feature will further cement its reputation as a platform for serious dating. CMBl is for “singles looking for real relationships – not browsing, not entertainment, not hook ups,” said Kang.

Watch a quick video on Photo Lab here.

Tinder has released a new update for users to help improve the photo selection process and enhance messaging options.

The update is a result of one of Tinder’s most requested features: the ability to upload profile photos to the app directly from your camera roll. The old version of the app pulled photos from Facebook only, which didn’t give users much flexibility. Instead of being able to pull photos from their camera roll specifically for the dating app, they would have to post photos to their Facebook profile (and advertise their flirtatious Tinder selfies to all their friends), or try to get around the problem by creating a fake Facebook profile (not so easy to do), or adding “private” photo albums.

Now, users can pull photos directly from their camera rolls, bypassing Facebook. And to enhance this feature, Tinder has made cards and photos larger on the screen.

While this comes as a relief to many Tinder fans, another issue has been created. Tinder already has a challenge with some users creating fake profiles to scam other users, but the fact that every user has to tie their account to a real Facebook account made things a bit more secure. Now with the latest update, it’s much easier to post fake photos, so there might be a backlash with the current security measures.

Co-founder of Scamalytics Dan Winchester noted that this is good news for scammers, because it reduces the obstacle of having to create a fake Facebook profile. “Scammers almost universally rely on faking their identity in order to execute their scams. On a photo dating app like Tinder, clearly the photo is one of the key things they need to fake...adding direct from camera roll makes life even easier for scammers, and Tinder will want to balance the undoubted appeal of this feature with users against the increased security risk introduced into their platform.”

Another important feature in the new update concerns messaging. With a nod to Facebook features, Tinder is allowing you to “like” a message by tapping a green heart that appears next to a message you receive. iPhone 6 and 6 Plus users can also use 3D touch to preview links sent within messages. And yes, emojis will now be available in larger format – just to make things more fun.

Tinder has also teamed up with GIPHY to allow users to exchange GIFs with their matches. (And yes, there are millions of your favorite GIFS  - including one of a Kristin Wiig character from Saturday Night Live and numerous cute kittens, in case you were wondering about the options.) To use a GIF, you can select the blue “GIF” button found at the bottom left of the chat interface.

To find out more about this dating app, please read our review of Tinder.

Lulu, a dating app designed to help women rate and share information about the men they date, has become part of online dating giant Badoo.

Lulu has had an interesting history. Founded in 2011 by Alexandra Chong, the app was originally created to help women have a safer online dating experience by encouraging them to communicate with other women over the app about the men they dated. Users were given the ability to rate their dates according to looks, humor, ambition, and even sexual prowess. They could also add pre-made hashtags for more detailed examples describing a man, like #OneWomanMan, #WillActSilly or #EpicLaugh.