The matching process for Hinge gets better as you use the app. Also, you are asked to upgrade if you want to see certain preferences, like whether or not your matches are open to children, their education, politics, or drinking, smoking and drug habits. One drawback is that you have to manually go into preferences to change age ranges (my matches automatically ranged from one year younger to fifteen years older), maximum distance (the default was 100 miles), height, ethnicity, and religion. Users can also opt out of receiving notifications, though it does encourage you to opt-in to notifications as you go through the profile set-up process, so be prepared to answer this question more than once if you choose “no.” Hinge previously required certain information (like first and last name), but now you can opt out of adding your last name, religious and political preferences, and other information you might not want to share right away with potential matches. (Hinge used to block you from uploading photos yourself, and instead pulled them from Facebook.) However, while your Hinge account doesn’t appear in your Facebook profile, it does utilize your social network circles by connecting you with Facebook friends of friends, which can be awkward depending on your privacy needs. Logging in with Facebook definitely makes things easier, as you can upload information and photos automatically instead of manually entering everything. Users are no longer required to logon with Facebook, instead they can choose Facebook or their mobile numbers for verification.

There are a couple of ways to get started with Hinge (and verify your profile in the process). It’s a good way to get users to pay attention to their matches beyond some photos. Instead of swiping left or right on someone based on a couple of photos, users are asked to “like” particular parts of a match’s profile (which include both images and little notes about themselves) to encourage more consideration and help users strike up a conversation. Hinge some great features to help users get a better idea of their matches before liking or passing. Thanks to how this matchmaking works that Hinge provides, 3 out of every 4 of these dates, turns into a second date. Every week users on Hinge arrange over 200,000 dates (which works out to 1 every 3 seconds).

Users like what Hinge brings to online dating.

It's not designed for endless simple photo matching but for meeting people and falling in love, so you can get off of the dating app. The app is designed to give you information about people and match you as quickly as possible so you can go out on a date and connect in person. From its inception, Hinge has wanted to distinguish itself from Tinder and be “the relationship app”.

How to use the hinge dating app