If you like the idea of browsing for potential lovers, girlfriends, or even a wife on your phone—but aren’t so keen on the crass nature of Tinder—check out these five new dating apps.
Depending on what you’re looking for, you can download an app that’ll geo-locate women who cross paths with your daily wanderings, even women you’re compatible with based on humor.
The status of your relationship is in your hands. Quite literally the palms of your hands. Read and use these seven science-backed tricks for getting swiped right, then take a look at these new dating apps and download the one that’s best for you.
1. Sweatt
Stop trying to pick women up at the gym and download Sweatt instead. The new app, exclusive to New York City, is geared toward the fitness community (as you can infer from the name). It allows users to answer questions about their fitness regimen, then matches them with men or women who have similar lifestyle, fitness, and wellness preferences.
Sweatt was created because of the influx of Tinder-esque dating apps popping up in the marketplace (and the reduction of quality matches), founder Dan Ilani told amNew York.
“What I realized was missing from the experience that I was having was not just finding people with shared interests, but really people with a shared mindset,” Ilani said. “That’s an interesting filter that is harder to come by these days. In the last decade or so, fitness has gone from becoming fit to a culture and a lifestyle.”
He says the app works like any other dating app, only the visual experience looks more like Instagram. “Some of the questions we ask you are your favorite time of day to work out and your average frequency of workouts per week, and behind the scenes we use those calculations to make some guesses about your overall lifestyle and offer good quality options.”
Obviously attraction and compatability don’t work like an equation, so people who work out four times a week shouldn’t match with others solely based on the fact they also work out four times a week. You’ll also display your favorite type of workout (running, CrossFit, yoga, etc.) as an indicator of your interests, too.
2. The Grade
One of the biggest complaints about dating apps is women don’t always respond to men. The Grade is the free, “female-friendly” response to this problem.
This app was designed “for the most desirable singles and aims to create a community of desirable, responsive, and articulate singles by expelling ‘failing’ users.”
The Grade uses an “objective” algorithm to expel low-quality members they deem hostile, offensive, and undesirable. Your behavior is graded on profile popularity (based on if you have compelling content, interesting photos, and how often your profile is “liked”), responsiveness (how often you respond and get a response back), and message quality (spelling mistakes, use of slang, inappropriate words); together these cumulative assigned letter grades are slapped on your profile, so women can see if you’re an A+ or less than. Don’t worry, just like college, you can do extra credit to improve your grades, and you’ll even get a warning if you start to slip below a C. This may seem a bit demoralizing for you, but if you’re really looking to use an app to meet a potential partner, The Grade is worth a shot.
3. Bumble
Bumble is like Tinder—only it’s designed to navigate around the common harassment-like annoyances and silences that plague popular dating app. The whole point is to make connections and meet new people, after all. So, once two people swipe right, and mutually opt to initiate a connection, they’re added to each other’s “hive” of connections.
But—here’s the catch—the woman has to say something within the first 24 hours or the connection disappears. All the power is in her hands. There are some loop holes, though. You can extend the connection for an additional 24 hours.
Score goes beyond the shallowness of photos and half-assed bios. On this dating app, you create a unique personality-based profile, including a screen name, and a few quirky or important things about yourself using your Facebook.
Score automatically pulls your Facebook profile picture from your page, which you can keep or swap for another, and prompts you to select three more—all of which are kept blurred, or hidden. Once you “Score” with someone, your profile picture will be unlocked; the more you score, the more your profile will open up to your pursuer. But let’s backtrack: To score, you can choose a specific category and start answering questions with someone whose profile you scrolled through.
Score will show you how you scored with one another, which clues you in on whether you’re compatible. The more you score with someone, the more “score history” you build, which you can then use to break the ice and use as conversation topics.
5. Happn
Happn takes a different route than the usual dating app (literally and figuratively) by helping you connect with women you’ve crossed paths with before. They do this by keeping track of where you are (in real time). When another user passes a spot you’ve been to before, their profile will pop up on your feed.
Like Tinder, you can only talk to each other if you’ve mutually “liked” each other’s profiles. And if you’re connected, and you’re really trying to get noticed, you can send a “charm” to her inbox, which lets her know you’re interested. You don’t have to answer any questions, or connect with someone who lives across the country; you’re matched with women who mostly work or live near you and frequent a lot of the same restaurants, bars, gym, etc. which is a huge plus.
Don’t be that creepy guy lurking on street corners, though. Be that guy who missed his initial chance to chat up a girl at a coffee shop, but didn’t miss his second.
