Online Dating, Hooking Up And Flirting

Fighting Stereotypes

Many people are still skeptical about the utility of online dating services in finding a romantic partner or about the safety of trying up hook up sites. In an impressive TED talk called “How I hacked online dating”, Amy Web (founder and CEO at Future Today Institute) tears down such stereotypes by describing how she approached online dating systemically in order to understand the principles according to which certain user profiles were more popular, how she then applied these principles to her profile, which resulted in life-changing consequences.

The quality and safety of your experiences on such websites depends a lot on how comprehensive and trustworthy user data is. This, in turn, is dictated by the website’s policies (e.g. making it mandatory) to provide certain kinds of verifiable information (e.g. a valid phone number to verify the country). For a unifying list of a few extensively assessed/ tested hooking up platforms, this site can prove very helpful – picking a service from here ensures both safety and a good user experience.

Choosing The Desired Type Of Website

As different users are searching for different things, it is important to know what you are looking for and what is the choice online. Among the typical types of websites, you’ll find are the following:

• dating sites – these are normally intended for people that search long-term relationships, but users can often specify what is their purpose on the website (making friends, building a relationship, hooking up). Here, they can provide all the relevant information, starting with their habits and ending with their worldviews in order to create the first impression and to tell a bit about who they are. Some sites even have rules in place according to which you can only view those types of information that you have completed yourself, thus encouraging users to create very detailed profiles;
• hooking up (adult dating sites) – these websites are specifically focused on finding a partner for occasional intimacy. If this is what you are looking for, registering for such a website might be more efficient than for regular dating websites (provided these are popular enough in your region);
• adult webcam sites – here, cam models would perform erotic shows for financial bonuses provided by users or sometimes would simply flirt. Obviously, in this case, the user pool is irrelevant and all that is important is the interface and quality of the website (and video) as well as the choice of models;
• webcam flirting sites – these websites usually involve two-way video or text flirting. In the case of video flirting, please pay special attention to hiding your online identity and namely the IP address (you can do so using your VPN). This is because, even if a website is trustworthy, you can never know the intentions of the individual users (obtaining a compromising video followed by blackmailing is a very real possibility).

Fragmentation Of The User Pool And Solutions

The multitude of online dating and hook up services that appeared on the market resulted in a very significant fragmentation of the user pool, which is ultimately rather detrimental for users willing to connect. To better understand the situation, imagine that instead of Facebook, there are a hundred small social networks and each user has to pick on – connectivity would certainly suffer a lot in this scenario. 10 users from the same street might join 10 different services and never find about each other.

Fortunately, the situation with dating and hooking up sites is not that bad, given that there are a number of trusted platforms that managed to acquire a significant user base, allowing members to easily find each other in many regions of the world. With time, it can be expected that some of these would further gain momentum and certain giants would appear.

To conclude, there are several types of websites that offer very different types of experience for their users and knowing exactly what you are looking for and what the choice is can be very helpful. Despite the existing fragmentation, certain unifying platforms help you identify the ones offering the greatest experience and the vastest user pool.