Dating App Run Through

Tinder – probably got its fame by becoming notoriously known as the Hook Up App. No reason to spend time writing up a bio or putting up more than one picture, minimally effort required to Netflix and Chill. People also use Tinder as an ego boost, racking up as many matches as possible without ever messaging anyone. A game to pass the time, a swiping addiction that’s hard to stop even after you’ve found the one you want to exclusively date.

Bumble – Is like Tinder in the regard that there’s a short area for a bio and it’s the swiping game. The main different is that the girl has to be the one to make first contact. Some guys AND girls have issues with this because society says men should be making the first move and pursuing the woman. If your fragile ego is bothered by this then just stick to Tinder. The other difference from Tinder is the time limits. The girl has 24 hours to make initial contact and after that, the guy has an additional 24 hours to make that first response and establish a connection. I enjoy this because it forces acknowledgement. You don’t have to wonder if they’ll message you or if they even saw the message. The rule is simple, you snooze you lose. My one issue with Bumble is that I do wish it included ‘last active time’ because I know there are profiles that have not been touched in months and yet they still get in rotation. If you haven’t been on your active account in 2-3 months then it should be deactivated. Bumble also stands out because you can send picture messages which is not always the case with other dating apps.

OKCupid – I have given the nickname ‘Build-A-Boyfriend’ to OKC because it allows you to create criteria when searching for matches such as education level, body type, ethnicity, drinking/smoking preference, and ‘what you’re looking for’ (i.e. friends, long-term dating, casual). OKC is also very in-depth by asking prompt questions such as ‘self summary’, ‘what I’m doing with my life’, ‘favorite books, music, movies, food’ and survey type questions to help you match people with similar answers.. This allows you to really get to know a person and understand if you’re both looking for the same things. It also has a lot of added features that you can paid for with a monthly subscription. I also like that OKC has a website page as well as the app which both Tinder and Bumble do not.

Plenty Of Fish – has a lot of similarities to OKC like body type, ethnicity, and religion as well as creating a decent bio with an ‘about me’ and ‘activities’ section. POF also has a website but I strongly prefer OKC to POF and I believe it has to do with the landing page and the systems just seeming so out of date. I feel like my laptop should have a dial-up when I visit that site. I’ve heard plenty of relationship success stories through Tinder and OKC where as I’ve never even heard of anyone meeting up on POF but maybe it was more popular back when it started in 2003.

Match – is another old landing page. I know Match’s demographic leans older but the website could really use an update. The reasons I tried Match was in part because of those new commercials that seem to be targeting a younger demographic. I was curious to see if the marketing had worked and since you have to pay for Match I figured more people seriously looking for a relationship would gravitate there. The Marketing Campaign does not seem to be have much of an effect on the membership age so far since there is still a limited amount of 20 somethings aged profiles. Even if I was 20 years older, I would not be impressed by Match.

Coffee Meets Bagel- is unique because it severely limits the amount of profiles you can view in a day. They will either pick out a ‘bagel’ for you daily or allow you to browse 10 profiles and pick one for that day. This forces you to take each profile more seriously instead of mindlessly swiping for hours. Something CMB used to do but has since gotten rid of was getting feedback from you whenever you ‘passed’ on your potential match for that day. The other odd thing about CMB is that connections only stay open for a week and thereby the app forces you to forfeit the communication or move on to another messaging app. Although CMB is an app only dating space like Tinder and Bumble, it encourages more in-depth bios by including height, religion, self summary, likes and hobbies, and what you’re looking for in a date.

Hinge- is oddly exclusive as the app could only be downloaded if you have an iPhone until now with the launch of the app for Android users. Hinge has you log in via your Facebook so that they can access your friends network and start matching you with friends of friends. I think this paired with the fact that you’re only given 15 or so matches a day ups the chances of finding someone looking for an actual relationship. If you’re just looking for random hook ups you probably don’t want it to be someone you could run into later at a friend’s BBQ nor would you want to limit your ‘hey you up’ text to only 15 people. A downfall though has perhaps been the limit of users because with over 600 Facebook friends, I regularly pass the same profiles every week and began visiting the app less and less.