What’s wrong with dating apps?
Dating apps are really popular. And every year their audience has only increased, which became especially noticeable in the pandemic and quarantine conditions. And there have been a lot of interesting innovations lately — new functions, convenient search tools, built-in video chat. All of that is great, but are such applications completely free of flaws?
Of course, there are plenty of disadvantages — many of them are quite serious and have been around for years. We decided to look at what’s wrong with modern dating applications and if there is any way to fix that situation.
Imperfect pair-matching algorithms and other user complaints
The most common reason for user complaints about dating apps and sites is the highly controversial pair matching algorithms. Yes, you have the opportunity to set dozens of search parameters — from gender and age to religious beliefs and hobbies. Yet still there’s no guarantee you’ll like a person who meets these criteria, and that a spark will ignite between you. So you spend a lot of time searching, and over and over again you meet people who are simply not suitable for you.
An even more dubious option is choosing a potential partner through photos and location, as is practiced on Tinder and some other applications. Here, the chances of meeting a really interesting and compatible match are minimal. And the system of swipes and likes has not proved to have long-term appeal — it’s interesting, but not very effective.
The Quora portal recently posted a list of the most common complaints from users of the Tinder, Bumble, MeetMe, Match, OkCupid and POF dating apps and sites.
Let’s take a look at what users are complaining about:
- Fake accounts. Fakes are found in almost all modern dating applications. These are advertising accounts, scammers or regular Internet trolls. Unfortunately, so far not a single dating site has been able to completely get rid of them.
- Spam. This paragraph is related to the previous one. There’s too much spam in many applications. Sometimes so much that it interferes with easy communication. The developers are wrestling with this problem, but so far it hasn’t been possible to eradicate it either.
- No restrictions on sending messages. Many users (especially girls) believe it’s necessary to limit the number of messages sent per day. This is because obsessive users can literally bombard another user with messages in huge quantities.
- Unfinished accounts. Blank profiles are common in dating apps. Few people want to start a serious acquaintance with a person about whom they know absolutely nothing.
- Location data is not always reliable. For example, a user indicates their place of residence as a location, but in fact spends a lot of time in another city or even a different country. This is confusing and can cause you to miss out on very interesting acquaintances.
- Lack of profile photos. The situation is the same as with the lack of account information. Yes, it’s wrong to judge a person only from a photograph, but the absence of even a couple of basic profile pictures is even worse.
- Strong variation in the number of active users by region. Dating apps and sites often boast huge audiences, but site members are distributed very unevenly. Users want to see how many people are actually in the application from their city, region, or at least country. Otherwise, all these numbers turn out to be completely useless and prevent accurate assessment of the real popularity of the site.
Fortunately, many developers understand that users need more than just to be able to specify the gender, age, and interests of a potential partner.
Alternatives worth trying
Today there are dating sites and applications that approach the issue of search more seriously and comprehensively:
- Eharmony — a popular dating site where users go through special surveys, the results of which the system uses to understand compatibility. The platform has already received numerous awards as the best option for finding stable and serious relationships.
- EliteSingles — a platform that uses a similar principle with questionnaires and compatibility matching. But EliteSingles is positioned as a service for serious dating. Here about 85% of users are people with higher education, and 90% are over 30 years old.
- Zoosk — a platform with a unique “behavioral matchmaking technology”. The system carefully analyzes profiles and even user behavior in order to select the ideal candidates for dating and communication. Zoosk does a pretty good job at this, but after a free trial, be ready to pay $29.99 per month.
There are many interesting options, but they still aren’t ideal if your goal is to get to know the other person as well as possible before the first offline date. Random video chat sites are much better at this task.
Online video chat — convenient dating without wasting time
Video chat sites offer a different communication format that’s as close as possible to live communication. You go to a website or application, start a chat, and in just a few seconds a random person appears on the screen. No long study of profiles, viewing photos, personality tests, and more. You just immediately start interacting, and after a couple of minutes you know whether this person is interesting to you or not.
The video chat format just saves a lot of time and effort, and it doesn’t make you depend on algorithms that don’t work perfectly. Sometimes it’s better to trust randomness than a bunch of obscure tools for finding the right match.
Decent video chat sites today offer just as much as regular dating sites and applications. Chatrandom is a web chat with gender and geographic filters, while OmeTV is a simple but convenient alternative with automatic translation of messages. There’s also CooMeet: Video Chat with Girls — a chat app for men who want to communicate only with girls, Emeraldchat, a site with a karma rating, or Chatspin, a minimalist and fast video chat. And this is not the whole list by a long way.
It’s worth mentioning that video chat sites often have more users online than online dating sites and apps. This number sometimes reaches tens of thousands, so you’ll definitely not have a shortage of people to talk to.
Open your mind to find the perfect dating app
The dating industry has been changing very rapidly over the past couple of years. Dating sites are actively expanding their functionality and implementing new algorithms, and the competition between them is growing rapidly every day. For the end user this is a plus, as for a long time, such platforms have evolved too slowly.
Today it’s no longer that hard to find a site or application that will completely (or near enough) meet your requirements. But we don’t recommend limiting yourself just to these when you could discover video chats. If you value your time and want to get to know your chat partners as quickly as possible, this is an ideal option.
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