“So, how did you guys meet?”
When you’re in a relationship, it’s almost certain you’ll get this question in one form or another. For many, the answer is through an app.
As we’ve been building our highly anticipated Vibe App over the past several months, we have also been doing in-depth research on the widespread adoption of dating sites and apps, and wanted to learn more on how people really feel about them. Here are a few of the things we found out from a survey through SurveyMonkey:
Nearly a quarter of people worldwide (270 million) are currently using online dating services. For young and middle aged adults (18-44 years old), this number even increases to a third!
Yet roughly 56% of adults view dating apps and services as either somewhat or very negative; their dislike persists across age groups and gender. For example, 59% of women and 55% of men have either a somewhat or very negative opinion on dating sites and apps.
Here are three possible explanations:
1) Confusion: many dating sites and apps act as platforms for casual hookups. Yet, adults are more likely to see them as a means to helping them develop short and long-term relationships. Even when the person on the other end is also interested in dating, they can easily misrepresent themselves. At Vibe we aim to tackle this issue by ensuring the person you match with actually “matches” you. Our system can automatically comb through profiles and pick & combine personal preferences to match you with a person with similar interests and values. Also, you get presented five different matches at each time, meaning you get to pick your preferred match who already “matches” your standard by algorithm.
2) The ability to evaluate character online can be hard. You miss out on things like body language, tone of voice, and other qualities that can help guide your instincts and protect yourself. A survey conducted by security software makers Symantec found that lying about everything from age, height, relationship status, and income are extremely common. At Vibe as soon as you choose your match and think you might have a great Vibe together, we encourage you to go on a public/safe date or nice activity in your area. This is the fastest and most efficient way to actually figure out if you truly do have a connection (and if that guy is really as tall as he says he is!), and if you don’t Vibe together you still did something fun!
3) Not all dating services screen people and check ID’s, which leads to distrust in profiles because many of them turn out to be fake or with wrong information! At Vibe you can be sure profiles are real and of people you can trust because we manually check and approve every subscriber and before they can go on a date they will be asked to verify their ID, giving you trust in the matches you make as you explore and let you date with confidence.