Features

Let’s face it – we all have a “type.” Whether he’s tall, dark-haired, and lanky or blond with ripped muscles, there is a physicality we are attracted to, and chances are, you might subconsciously think your ex resembles the dream guy of your future.

At least, dating website Match.com thinks so. Match has teamed up with Los Angeles-based matchmaking service Three Day Rule, a matchmaking service that uses facial recognition software to find matches for people.

Match.com members will be able to upgrade their current membership in the next few weeks to Three Day Rule’s premium service, which includes sending photos of your ex to show the “type” you find attractive.

But it’s not all about those dark-haired locks or muscles, at least according to Three Day Rule. Attraction is dependent on the shape of your ex’s face – and chances are, you’ve had more than one ex with the same face shape.

“It's not necessarily about height or race or hair color, but a lot of it is about face shape," Talia Goldstein, the founder of Three Day Rule, told Mashable. “I always ask my clients to send me photos of their exes. They say that they don't have a type, but when I see the photos, to me they look very similar. The ex's may be different ethnicities, or have different hair color, but their facial structures are the same."

The service isn’t cheap. In fact, at $5,000 for a six-month membership, it’s more expensive than eHarmony’s new personalized matchmaking service. The new upgrade will be marketed towards affluent singles who are interested in a more personalized touch, so in this respect, they are offering a bit more than just matches with similar bone structure to your ex. Premium members are assigned professional matchmakers, who coach the client, meet with them, get to know their preferences and engage in a “pre-date” with potential mates just to make sure they are what you’re looking for.

Along with the new service, Match.com’s database is growing too – with Three Day Rule clients becoming part of the mix, and even the matchmaker’s personal network.

Will matching members based on characteristics that remind them of their exes work? It seems there’s a reason you broke up with your ex. Would you really want to date him again?

Match.com seems to think so, and it’s a win-win for Three Day Rule who is only expanding their network. The major online dating sites are looking to cater to those who want a personal touch, who can afford more. But does this help or hurt online dating overall? Or do matchmaking services improve the experience for everyone? I guess we’ll have to wait and see.

To find our more about this dating service you can read our review of Match.com.

The mobile dating world hasn’t been the same since the launch of Tinder. As a kind of “hot or not” app for grown-ups, Tinder has become a staple among online daters because of its ease, popularity and its accessibility – helping people close by to meet for an impromptu drink or just to chat.

Now, the company wants to move in a more mainstream direction, away from its infamous dating app reputation and towards a wider audience of both singles and couples who want to expand their social networks. So recently, it has launched a feature called “Moments,” which is similar to Snapchat in that it allows users to post photos that also have a limited shelf life. Only instead of Snapshot’s seconds, “Moments” photos last 24 hours, during which Tinder matches can choose to swipe left or right depending on whether they like or don’t like the photo.

Enter a new slew of people judging their potential dates, just for a simple spur-of-the-moment photo.

According to website Tech Crunch, the new feature is a step in the right direction as far as consumers go, with investors clamoring to throw their money at Tinder (which has reportedly been valued at over $500 million in a recent stock transaction). Adding a visual (and ephemeral) feature a la Snapchat seems to be the direction other companies like Facebook are going, too. Tech Crunch argues that this will help people engage with each other a little more over the elusive app. “The photos serve as a way to share a moment and re-engage and conversation–and that could translate to more lasting relationships,” the author says.

The company claims that Tinder is a way for people to meet friends, too – not just dates. The Moments feature will allow them to strike up conversations about similar interests.

Website Gigaom.com disagrees. While they advocate that Tinder needs to move beyond its reputation as “that dating app,” the site maintains that adding a feature like Moments will only add to users’ frustration, especially since Tinder hasn’t fixed certain problems with its app. For instance, you can’t delete someone you’ve already been matched with on Tinder, you can only file them away, so you’re already going to be bombarded with images from people you might not care to engage with further.

But according to Tech Crunch, you are allowed to opt out of the Moments feature if it’s not your thing – but this means you won’t get ephemeral photos from any of your matches, not just the ones you don’t want anymore. You also have the option to “go dark” and not be available to new matches, but still maintain communication with your previous matches.

Is the Moments feature going to launch Tinder into a new space in the mobile app world, or will it only confirm its reputation for being a hook-up app? We’ll wait and see.

To find out more information about this dating app for the iPhone and Android devices you can read our review of Tinder.

The perks of online dating are many, but spend enough time clicking through profiles and you’ll probably find yourself at least a little bit nostalgic for the old days. You can't beat the convenience of an online dating website, but there was something nice about being set up by your friends. It added an extra level of security. You felt comfortable in the knowledge that whoever you were meeting had already been vetted by someone you trust, and therefore probably wasn't a total jerk.

For a long time, that's been one of the biggest barriers online dating has faced. No matter what dating sites do to screen users, it never compares to the recommendation of a close friend.

Until now, that is. Enter MyCuteFriend, a new dating app that asks women to nominate their single guy friends as potential dates for other women. “Where every guy comes recommended” reads the app’s slogan, and that’s precisely what it offers: every guy who appears on MyCuteFriend has been vouched for by an actual, IRL human being.

Created by John Furneaux and Steve Chen, the app was designed specifically to make the online dating experience more pleasant for women – so you will see women nominating men, but never the other way around. After hearing constant complaints about online dating from their female friends, Furneaux and Chen realized that women needed a way to keep the creepy out. They enlisted a mostly female design team to create the functionality and user interface, and MyCuteFriend was born.

To use the app, women select a number of hashtags (which cover everything from body to brain) to describe their eligible friends. Photos are then pulled from the men’s Facebook profiles. Once a guy has been nominated, he receives a notification and must accept it and download the app before his profile becomes active. Women can nominate any man they are friends with on Facebook.

On the other side of things, women can browse the hashtags and photos, responding with a simple “Yes” or “No, thanks.” There are no long, boring questionnaires and no anonymous creepy stalkers. Women can only receive messages from guys they have said “Yes” to.

For even more customization, short video clips can be recorded and included in the profiles. Basically it's like the love child between Tinder and Vine, with a little bit of Facebook thrown in. So far the app has only launched in San Francisco, but will no doubt expand to other cities if it proves to be successful.

More online daters are using their phones to connect with each other rather than their laptops. Considering how many of us have smartphones and how often we check them, it only makes sense that this would be the best way to reach busy singles. So online dating sites have had to strengthen their mobile offerings to compete with popular apps like Tinder. Some have fallen behind with clunky, outdated features, but some are taking big steps forward in optimizing their technology.

The importance of optimizing users’ mobile experience isn’t lost on JDate, one of the most popular online dating sites for Jewish singles. The company has just launched a new version of the site that takes its most popular features and makes them even easier to access and use on mobile devices.

The widely-used Secret Admirer feature, a staple on the main JDate website, is now available on mobile. It’s been a key component of JDate’s technology, and according to JDate, other online dating sites have licensed the model due to its popularity. The Secret Admirer's "Yes-No-Maybe" functionality connects mutually interested users anonymously. Users like this because it eliminates some anxiety-provoking guess-work that shy online daters want to avoid.

JDate's new, mobile-optimized design also places key activities, such as profile views and messages, front and center on the site. Users are able to access quick, on-the-go status checks along with their email messages, IMs, Favorites and Flirts. Additionally, JDate mobile's 2.0 experience allows members to easily make changes and improvements to their profiles from their mobile devices. They can update directly from the site if they want to change photos or make edits to their descriptions.

"The new JDate mobile site enables JDaters to connect with one another and the community like never before," said Greg Liberman, CEO of Spark Networks, the company that owns and operates JDate. "Our goal has always been to provide JDate members with the tools to meet others who share their culture, values and interests, and our new, easy-to-navigate mobile site puts best-in-class tools, quite literally, right at our members' fingertips."

The question is, for JDate users – is it too little too late? The answer is unclear, because for the many people who download mobile dating apps like Tinder, there are still more online dating. The majority of singles use a mix of both online dating sites and mobile dating apps, especially if they want to keep options open. This means constantly improving technology to stay competitive.

JDate currently hosts more than 750,000 users. To find out more about this dating site please read our review of JDate.

Online dating site Zoosk just announced the launch of its new limited release delivery service. The new service allows users to ship romantic (and real-life) gifts to other Zoosk members they want to pursue who live in most U.S. states.

So if your online love lives in New York and you’re in California? Zoosk has got you covered, at least in terms of sending gifts. The idea behind the delivery service is to provide members with an innovative, romantic, and creative way to interact with each other. Instead of going for winks and video chats to grab a potential love interest’s attention, the site opted for something a little more traditional – chocolates and flowers for instance.

If you’ve just met online, is sending someone a gift coming on a little bit strong? Not according to Zoosk. In fact, the company sees it as a strategic way of making a first impression in an online dating world filled with a lot of noise from all the digital outreach. Online dating gets overwhelming after a while, and you forget who is who unless someone really captures your attention. Sending a gift is definitely more memorable than an email. (Also, some people are better with witty online banter, and some would rather just buy a gift and hope that it piques some interest.)

To send a gift, Zoosk members visit an eligible member’s profile and select the “ship a gift” button. The gift recipient receives an email alert from Zoosk that a fellow Zoosk member would like to send him or her a gift, and can either accept the gift by providing a shipping address, or decline to provide an address.

“When we created Zoosk, we set out to provide a service that helps single adults make real-world connections and build lasting relationships,” said Shayan Zadeh, Co-Founder and CEO of Zoosk. “Testing new ideas is part of Zoosk’s DNA and this particular feature allows singles to catch the attention of someone they find special.”

The delivery service is limited to specific areas in the U.S. and is also limited in terms of what you can send. If you want to get really creative, you’ll have to wait until you’re familiar enough with your online date to meet in person. But in the meantime, you can send either chocolate, flowers or a teddy bear. (Personally, I’d go for the chocolate.)

With all of the latest mobile technology in regard to online dating, it’s refreshing to see something a little more “real world.” It’s also nice to see old-fashioned romance in the midst of last-minute drinks and mobile app hook-ups. For all its simplicity, maybe Zoosk is onto something clever.

For more information on this dating site your can read our Zoosk review.

By the looks of things, Mark Zuckerberg is pretty much determined to take over the entire Internet.

Facebook has dabbled in just about everything, from email to a digital newspaper. There's been talk before of Facebook entering the online dating market, but a new update makes that possibility look closer than ever.

In some ways, Facebook has always inadvertently been a dating site. From the very beginning, it’s been a place to stalk exes, reconnect with old flames, bond with semi-strangers, and confess to crushes. Some thought that the introduction of Facebook's Graph Search heralded a new era of the social network as a barely disguised dating site, but the idea never really came to fruition. Now Facebook is taking things a step further, with a new button that allows users to ask people without a declared relationship status if they're single.

The “Ask” button appears next to the Relationship Status section of the Facebook profile. Clicking it brings up a dialogue box with text that reads “Let [your friend] know why you're asking for [his/her] relationship status.” If you receive such a request and choose to reply, you can opt to share your answer with all your friends or just the asker. Ask buttons had already been introduced for other aspects of the Facebook profile, like hometown and phone number.

"This feature provides an easy way for friends to ask you for information that's not already on your profile," Facebook spokeswoman MoMo Zhou told CNN. "For example, a friend could ask where you work or for your hometown. If you choose to answer, this information is then added to your profile. By default, only you and your friend can see it, and you also have the option of sharing it with others, too."

That explanation pointedly steers clear of mentioning dating, but there's no doubt Facebook has the potential to be a disruptive force in the online dating industry. Facebook made nearly $8 billion in 2013 revenue, a massive jump on the comparatively small $2 billion in revenue made by the online dating market. On top of that, Facebook already has a large global customer base and next to no need to spend money on customer acquisition. And then there's the fact that Facebook is free, which gives it an enormous advantage over the many online dating sites that charge for membership.

Facebook doesn't appear to be in a hurry to explicitly make the transition to online dating service, but that is likely working in its favor. Under-the-radar Facebook could subtly siphon business away from traditional dating sites, providing the exact same services without the stigma associated with online dating.

To find out more about the best way to use this social network as a dating tool you can read our Facebook review.