Features

Millionaire Match has been in business for over 14 years and since then they have had almost 2.5 million members sign up. You can access MillioniareMatch.com via their website and also on dating apps for iOS and Android mobile phones.

They recently launched a new feature on the dating site called "True Selfies". This is a badge for a woman's profile that shows that she has at least one profile photo that have been verified makeup-free. This is to showcase that she is a natural beauty.

While the True Selfies verification is only available to women their are a number of other member verified badges available for both genders. Member's can have verified photo's, age, education and occupation. Of course we shouldn't forget, members can also be verified as millionaires. All of these verifications require you to send certain documentation to MillionaireMatch.com so they can confirm the information in your profile.

To find out more about this sugar daddy type dating service please read our Millionaire Match review.

The most successful dating apps are based on visuals, and typically pull your photos from Facebook to create your dating “profile.” This allows potential dates to swipe left and right, rejecting or showing interest – depending almost entirely on the photos you have posted.

Now dating app Glimpse takes things one step further. Acknowledging the power of visuals, the new app uses your Instagram account to help you find matches. That is, Glimpse reveals photos you have taken on Instagram to potential matches, so they can get an idea of your interests, who you are, and what you like.

Instagram seems like a natural fit for online dating, but Glimpse is not the first to make a dating app using visual social media platforms. Take dating app Dreamcliq, launched a couple of years ago to little fanfare, which allows you to create a “vision board” of your interests to attract potential dates - matching according to photo-based profiles. The company marketed the app as being inspired by Pinterest.

There are some challenges with Glimpse. First, if your Instagram is full of selfies, it might be a turn-off for your dates. There are only so many duck faces potential mates can handle. Same thing if you like taking pictures of your food, or your puppy, or even your hiking landscapes – a few artful photographs are great, but sometimes it's too much. Also, what does an extensive photo collection tell you about the person taking the photo, other than they like their dogs, hikes, or crème brulee?

Unlike apps like Tinder, Glimpse doesn’t match based on location, but rather through your hashtags, events, locations and other similarities on Instagram. So, let’s say you include #sunsets or #foodporn tags in a few photos – you’ll be matched with singles in your area who used the same trending phrases. Or, you could be matched with someone you met last month at a party during your work conference. In other words, there seems to be a little more flexibility as well as common interests than a typical dating app. Plus, it gives you a starting point for conversation – something that is missing with Tinder.

Another advantage of Glimpse is that you can advertise yourself through visuals – but instead of worrying about how great your hair looks or whether or not you look big in a certain dress, the app lets you tell a story of who you are through your photos.

Glimpse launched in February and is available on iTunes, but by invitation only.

Are you excited about the new Tinder Plus service that has rolled out in the U.S.? Don't get too carried away – turns out, if you’re 30 or older, you’ll have to pay more than your younger single counterparts.

Tinder is charging users of its premium service only $9.99 if they are under 30, but those 30 and older have to pay $19.99 per month for the same service. In the U.K., the pay gap is even larger.

Tinder has been testing pricing and features of Tinder Plus in various markets prior to its U.S. roll out, which is expected to happen in late March. Reports have been mixed – while Tinder claims that its users have responded favorably to the premium service and its features (as well as pricing), the app’s ratings have declined in the U.K. app store thanks to several harsh reviews.

The success of the new service is important to Tinder, who has yet to capitalize on the sheer number of users of the free service. The company has struggled to come up with viable revenue streams that don’t take away from the user experience (they have tried to avoid in-app advertising), in order to maintain their growing user base. Offering a tiered premium service like Tinder Plus seems the best answer, adding some popular features based on users’ requests - such as the ability to go back and see rejected profiles, or to meet matches in different cities.

But along with these improvements, there are reports that Tinder is placing limits on the number of swipes any user can do per day for the free service (which sparked outrage in the U.K. app stores), prompting users to buy the premium service if they want to continue swiping.

And the latest controversy appears to be age discrimination. In a statement to defend its unusual pricing technique, Tinder said this to NPR: "Over the past few months, we've tested Tinder Plus extensively in several countries…Lots of products offer differentiated price tiers by age, like Spotify does for students, for example. Tinder is no different; during our testing we've learned, not surprisingly, that younger users are just as excited about Tinder Plus but are more budget constrained and need a lower price to pull the trigger." 

Not everyone is buying Tinder’s explanation. As website Engadget pointed out, this “sleazy” move by Tinder will likely cause more people to lie about their ages on Facebook.

The real test will has come now since Tinder Plus made its U.S. debut this month. Perhaps this is the move that will make room for other competitors in the crowded dating app market.

It was only a matter of time before Tinder started monetizing its service. And that time, apparently, is now.

Tinder Plus, the dating app’s first foray into the brave new world of freemium monetization, just launched for $9.99. The new update adds at least one highly requested feature alongside a few others designed to improve the experience.

“The most-requested feature we get is a button to go back and have a second chance with people that users swipe left on,” said co-founder Sean Rad told TechCrunch last year. “Everyone has wanted it from the beginning. It’s absolutely at the top of the list.”

Tinder Plus' new Rewind function lets users go back to the most recent person they swiped left on. If you decide you made the wrong choice, you can pay a little extra to bring them back and get a second chance. Your long-lost love may not be so lost, but only if you're willing to cough up the cash to meet them.

Also included is a Passport feature, which lets users search for matches anywhere in the world instead of being limited to their actual location.

“We often hear that people want to be able to start swiping in a location before they’ve left to go on a trip or vacation, and that once they’ve actually made a meaningful connection with someone in a new location, their trip has come to an end,” said Rad. “We also hear people saying that they want to get recommendations for places to go and where to eat in a new city, and Tinder Plus can do better at that.”

Another interesting update, at least from a business standpoint, is the fact that Tinder Plus will remove ads from the network. You knew it had to happen eventually, right? Re/code reports that Tinder is working on a long-awaited ad product that Greg Blatt, chairman of IAC’s The Match Group, expects to be “a meaningful part of the mix” for the company's revenue.

Rad told the Evening Standard that he believes heavy Tinder users are willing to pay for enhanced service. "There are users that are just so active — they are just almost addicted to the platform," he said. However, he also acknowledges that Tinder Plus won't appeal to all users. "These features aren’t something that everyone is going to want to use, and we sort of don’t want everyone to use them."

Tinder has already rolled out its new premium paid service Tinder Plus in the U.S., and among the new features are some protections from spammers.

Tinder Plus includes a new feature called “Unlimited Likes,” which seems counter-intuitive since users of the free app already have the ability to swipe left and right without limits. Unfortunately, spammers have taken advantage of this feature by creating spam bots which swipe right on thousands of profiles simultaneously, increasing users’ match potential.

Tinder has dealt with increasing abuse of its service from spammers. Chances are if you’ve downloaded Tinder, you’ve also come across a fake profile or two that are actually staged to sell you something or obtain personal information, (violating Tinder’s terms and conditions), rather than to make an actual connection with a real person.

Tinder sees its paid service as a way to reduce spamming, as the rewards for this kind of power matching wouldn’t be worth the cost. Apps capitalizing on users’ penchant to say yes to all their potential matches have cropped up, too – like Tinderoid (now labeling itself as “Tools for Tinder”), which enables users to “like” en masse. 

The roll-out of Tinder Plus has already happened in a few other countries, and so far limiting the number of likes has not been received kindly by users who are used to unlimited swiping. According to reviews in the UK’s app store (which dropped the service to only one and a half stars in its rating), Tinder has prevented quite a few users from swiping endlessly unless they pay for the premium service, and they are not happy about it.

Tinder however, says that regular users of the service should not be affected (as opposed to the tiny fraction that swipe right on every single match they can as frequently as possible).

“That behavior happens with a very small percentage of our users, and they usually find that the experience isn’t very good and self-correct on their own,” Sean Rad, the company’s cofounder and CEO, told Tech Crunch.

The algorithm Tinder has set up to block spammers analyzes a few things before it is triggered: namely, the number of swipes, whether the user is only swiping right, velocity, time spent looking at a profile, etc. According to Tinder, a user can swipe through as many as 500 profiles and still not be blocked or prompted to upgrade to Tinder Plus, so long as the user spends a certain amount of time looking at each profile instead of mindlessly swiping.

Tinder launched Tinder Plus in the U.S. this month. For more information about this app, please read our Tinder review.

Once upon a time, we dated by meeting someone at a bar or through friends. Then we graduated to speed dating. Then online dating. Then mobile dating.

It's been a long, strange road – filled with stigma and scandals and, yes, success stories too – and it's about to get even stranger. Now that online dating is old news, and dating apps have been tried by pretty much everyone with a smartphone, we're ready to tackle a new frontier.

That new frontier is “wearables.” For those unfamiliar with the buzzword-y term, wearables are miniature electronic devices that are, as the name states, wearable. Think smartwatches and fitness trackers. These devices integrate with the user until they practically become a prosthetic, and can be used an extension of the wearer's mind and/or body.

Welcome to the future. It sounds like a gadget from a sci-fi flick, but it's happening now. Towards the end of last year, Match.com launched its first wearable app to be used with Android smartwatches. The app is designed to make it even easier for singles to date on the go by focusing on quick, easy to view features. The list includes:

• Messaging: Notifications for all winks and messages are sent straight to your Android wearable. To reply, simply swipe to read an incoming message and respond using the app's voice command feature.
• Daily Matches: Daily Matches appear first thing each morning. Swipe to view their full profile, then rate each match Yes or No.
• Location Functionality: Since mobility is the point, the app locates singles in the area to find matches nearby. When one appears, it's easy to tap, speak, and send a message.

Match.com isn't the only one exploring the brave new world of wearables. Lunar, a San Francisco-based design studio, created jewelry-like devices to help wearers overcome dating anxiety. One is a pendant that gathers information from your social networks, Netflix habits, iTunes playlists and more, then vibrates when there is a compatible partner in the vicinity.

And let's not forget about Google Glass. Similar wearables are bound to follow, and no doubt they too will change the way we go about meeting and mating.

Newsweek has speculated about what else we might have to look forward to on the wearables front, and it's a fascinating mix of cool and crazy. They predict a biological approach to dating, in which your body's signals are used to register responses to your dates.

“There will be contact lenses and ear inserts,” Newsweek writes, “all capable of measuring our pulses, our body temperature and other physiological reactions to determine whether or not we are attracted to someone. Those signals will be fed into the dating sites, with their databases and algorithms, all the better to help us find true love.”

And after that? Well, microchips, naturally, and the transition “from humans to cyborgs” will be complete.

For more information on the dating service please read our Match.com review.