WASHINGTON POST - Apr 13 - The average unmarried American spent $1,596 on their dating life in 2016, according to a Match survey of 5,500 singles around the country. In Washington, it was $1,788; in New York, $2,069. This average includes bar tabs and dating site memberships, but also haircuts, manicures and new date outfits; entrance fees to dating events and money spent on matchmakers. Men spent more ($1,855 on average) than women ($1,423).
117 posts categorized "Outlets - Washington Post"
How Much People Spend On Their Dating Life
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Why Using Tinder Is So Satisfying
WASHINGTON POST - Feb 14 - According to app analytics website AppAnnie, Tinder has been the most downloaded lifestyle app in America for two years. Tinder's approach to romance is straightforward, yet brutally effective. Matches are made using sparse criteria: Looks, availability and location. Tinder's interface is perfectly constructed to encourage rapid swiping. Since users don't know which swipe will bring the "reward" of a match, Tinder uses a variable ratio reward schedule, which means that potential matches will be randomly dispersed. It's the same reward system used in slot machines. In a study on the brains of drug addicts, researchers found that the expectation of the drug caused more release of the feel-good neurotransmitter dopamine than the actual drug itself. Similarly, for those who may be expecting the next swipe on Tinder to lead to reward, serial swiping can start to look and feel a lot like addiction. So in 2015 Tinder began to limit the amount of daily right swipes to 100 for users who don't buy into their premium service.
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What Is It Like To Date While Blind?
WASHINGTON POST - Jan 9 - Jolliff, 29, has been blind since birth due to what's known as Leber Congenital Amaurosis. She can distinguish lights from darks, and her seeing-eye dog helps her navigate the world. Yet her dog can't help her swipe right or left on Tinder. So she seeks romance elsewhere. Last fall, Jolliff signed up for eHarmony and OkCupid. "I want the 'deeper' connection. I like being able to see how much effort a guy is willing to put into crafting his profile." Both Tinder and Coffee Meets Bagel, two popular dating apps, have done little to accommodate the blind or visually impaired community. Tinder's VP of global communications branding, Rosette Pambakian, declined to comment, saying she didn't think it "makes sense" to include Tinder in a story about visually impaired daters. Dawoon Kang, COO of Coffee Meets Bagel, said she hadn't given blind or visual impairments much consideration. But she's open to it.
by Alexandra E. Petri
See full article at Washington Post
Mark Brooks: This Washington Post reporter appears to have not appreciated Tinder's refusal to comment. Granted, its not the easiest question to handle. This is where the help of a trusted intermediary can come in handy. When I handle press calls for my clients I act as an analyst, and am quoted as such. The press trust me to guide them to the right spokespeople, and to guide them on the 'fit' of their subject matter. Please see CourtlandBrooks.com.
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Dating Apps Will Get More Selective
WASHINGTON POST - Jan 6 - Dating experts are calling 2016 a bad year for dating trends. Having constant access to a pool of potential matches at their fingertips is making people more impatient, causing unrealistic expectations for first dates and a general decline in effort. There are so many dating apps, the market is getting saturated and daters are feeling overwhelmed. So online dating is trending toward niche apps. Julie Spira, founder of CyberDatingExpert.com, believes that 2017 will see more of a push for people to meet in real life. She predicts a rise in apps like Whim, which skips the pre-date conversation and immediately matches people for meetups.
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Hinge Not Ready For A Serious Relationship
WASHINGTON POST - Nov 8 - Distancing itself from casual hookups, Hinge now identifies as the go-to "relationship app," targeting "people who are looking for meaningful connections." New Hinge profiles include photos, basic information, and tidbits about users' personalities and interests. Rather than swiping, users interact by "liking" or commenting on photos, or answering icebreaker questions. One major flaw stood out though: Not one of Hinge's icebreaker prompts or questions encourages users to directly explain what they seek in a partner — romantically, sexually or personally. More important, Hinge's sample answers are nearly all indirect, if not trite. If Hinge's goal is to build meaningful connections and committed relationships, then why are their icebreakers so trivial? Comparatively, "older" sites such as OkCupid use direct questions about users' romantic and sexual preferences to build matches based on direct indicators of compatibility.
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Hinge Is Bashing Swipe Apps
WASHINGTON POST - Oct 3 - On Hinge's Dating Apocalypse site, visitors can click through stats about swipe apps like Hinge and Tinder. For example: "81% of Hinge users have never found a long-term relationship on any swiping app"; "only 1 in 500 swipes on Hinge turn into phone numbers exchanged"; and "4 out of 5 Hinge users can't recall the first name of their last right swipe." An FAQ on Hinge's website says "we realized the world of mindless swiping was ruining romance." That's pretty strong language for an app that has been part of the swipe machine since its early days. Hinge's new version for more relationship-minded is set to debut Oct 11th.
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How To Spot An Online Dating Money Scam
WASHINGTON POST - Aug 25 -
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Why Do People Swipe Right On Each Other, But Then Never Connect
WASHINGTON POST - July 26 - A preliminary new study from researchers at Queen Mary University of London, Sapienza University of Rome, and the Royal Ottawa Health Care Group collected data on just how bad this phenomenon is. The researchers say that men seem to be much less discriminating. They're more likely to swipe right, but also much less likely to follow through with a message. Women tend to swipe right when they're serious about connecting. Men take dating apps less seriously. It's riskier for women to reach out. Women are less proactive on dating apps.
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Why Some People End Up With Partners Who Are More Attractive
WASHINGTON POST - May 3 - In general, couples tend to be more similar than two randomly selected people. Scientists call this "assortative mating". In a study published last year in the journal Psychological Science, researchers offered an explanation for when and where couples of mixed attractiveness are most likely to arise. The study found that heterosexual couples who were friends before they dated were more likely to be rated at different attractiveness levels. Those who met each other and started dating within a month had relatively similar levels of attractiveness.
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How April Fool's Dating App Burrit-oh! Took Off
WASHINGTON POST - Apr 22 - Almost four weeks after April Fool's day, Burrit-oh! - the dating site that pairs singles based on their taste in portable Mexican - has proven so unexpectedly successful that maker Zoosk is thinking of keeping it. To date, ~2K people have signed up for Burrit-oh!.
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How Online Dating Works Better Than Offline Dating
WASHINGTON POST - Mar 23 - "The fear that online dating is creating unhealthy habits is being driven more by paranoia than by actual facts, according to Michael Rosenfeld, a sociologist at Stanford who has been conducting a long-running study of online dating. "I don't see in my data any negative repercussions for people who meet partners online. People who meet their partners online are not more likely to break up", he says. Once you're in a relationship with somebody, it doesn't really matter how you met. There's always a fear that comes with a new technology. One of the things he has found out is that people who meet online progress to marriage faster than people who meet offline. Because people can be more selective and there tends to be extensive communication before the first date.
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Six Months Since Ashley Madison's Hack, Nothing Changed
WASHINGTON POST - Jan 15 - People forget and don't demand changes. A report from Pew Research found that people view hacks as part of modern life. Last month, Ashley Madison claimed that ~6.5M people had signed up since the hack. It seems somehow unjust that Ashley Madison should return to business as usual. The site's only visible casualties have been the resignation of CEO Noel Biderman and a handful of yet unresolved lawsuits.
by Caitlin Dewey
See full article at Gensee Country Express
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Man Who Founded Dating Site 'Where White People Meet' Says He Isn't A Racist
THE WASHINGTON POST - Jan 4 - Sam Russell suspected his dating startup, Where White People Meet, would ruffle a few Internet feathers. This is Russell's first foray into the online dating industry; he's spent most of his career in auto sales, as the president of Automatic Car Credit. "It's about equal opportunity," Russell explained. "The last thing in the world I am is racist." While an early version of the site has been online since August, the site officially launched last weekend when Russell unveiled a billboard southwest of Salt Lake City.
by Caitlin Dewey
See full article at The Columbus Dispatch
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Tinder's Claim About Creating More Meaningful Matches Is Bull
WASHINGTON POST - Nov 11 - Tinder released an updated version of its matching algorithm. CEO Sean Rad promised that it would revolutionize the quantity of matches. According to Northwestern University's psychologist Eli Finkel, relationship success depends on three things: individual characteristics, quality of interaction and surrounding circumstances. Matching algorithms tend to focus on personality alone. And large-scale studies of married couples have shown that the similarity of partners' personalities accounts for only 0.5% of how happy they are.
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Hookup Apps Result Of Gender Imbalance In Dating Market
WASHINGTON POST - Aug 27 - Today's college and post-college hookup culture is a byproduct, not of Tinder or Facebook, but of shifting demographics among the college-educated, as the widening gender gap in college enrollment has created lopsided numbers in the post-college dating pool. The dating pool for straight, millennial, college graduates now has four women for every three men. Dating and mating behavior is influenced by prevailing sex ratios, when there are plenty of marriageable men, dating culture emphasizes courtship and romance, but when gender ratios skew toward women the whole dating culture becomes more sexualized.
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