A fresh look at dating sites and video chats

Dating and chat on the Internet are hugely popular among people of all ages. When they launched these sorts of sites were mostly in demand among young people, but now people of all ages don’t hesitate to make friends and chat on the Internet.

This isn’t surprising as there are now huge numbers of websites where you can find new friends, have conversations with like-minded people, share experiences, and more. Social networks, forums, community sites — they all provide a lot of opportunities for communication. Especially now, when the coronavirus pandemic means people have mostly lost the opportunity to meet and chat live. 

During 2020-2021, the popularity of apps and sites for dating and video chat with strangers has grown significantly. And even those older sites that have long ceased to be in demand have revived like phoenixes.

Lacking opportunities to socialise, people began to invade the internet in their multitudes. Of course, scammers noticed this and couldn’t help but take advantage of it. Apps began to appear with similar names to those of popular resources. But instead of going to the authentic services, users could at best expect malicious links, as well as a huge amount of advertising and spam.

That's why it’s very important to remain vigilant and carefully research sites that interest you, look for reviews from real users, and so on. To make it easier for you, we’ve compiled a list of the most popular, relevant and safe resources for dating and communication.

Popular dating sites

Of course, you can also get to know each other on one of the regular social networks. However, it’s much easier to do this on a dedicated site. The following services are very popular among Americans and Europeans:

Match.com

Match is one of the oldest dating sites, dating back to 1995, and has a very large audience — about 30 million people. The site is very actively used in the United States, as well as in two dozen other countries around the world.

On Match.com, you could find both friends and a soulmate. The sign-up questionnaire has a field for entering interests, on the basis of which the service selects suitable candidates for dating. You can add photos and customize the criteria for finding a partner. 

The site is not free, but users can view profiles in free mode. To access all the features you need to pay for a subscription. But there’s something worth paying for — Match.com has a good reputation and is known as a site for people who are really interested in serious relationships. 

Tinder.com

Tinder is a popular dating app that launched in 2012. Today it is used by about 60 million people all over the world, its main audience being young people aged 20-30. The unique feature of Tinder is that the search for partners is carried out not using filters and interests, but by location. 

Users see photos of people around them. To get to chat with someone, both must like each other by swiping right on that person’s photo. The service is free, but it also has paid features, such as canceling your last like. 

OkCupid

Every day the app and site are used by around 10 million people around the world. The main age group is people 25-35 years old, but within that, the site is dominated by men. The search for chat partners is based on data from a test that users fill in during registration. OkCupid's algorithm analyzes the responses and forms a suitable list of partners.

Badoo

Another veteran among dating sites and apps. The site was established in 2006, and Badoo has 450 million registered members today, an impressive figure! The principle is similar to Tinder — to start a conversation, both people need to like the other’s photo.

The free version offers almost all of the features that Badoo has, including posting photos and videos to your profile. For a fee, you can place your profile at the very top of the search list so that as many users as possible can see it. Reviews of Badoo are extremely positive: the application is convenient, it can be used both on a computer and on a phone, plus there is a large and friendly audience and a good level of technical support.  

Video chats with strangers

Anonymous video chat sites are no less popular among fans of online communication. The first such chat service appeared in 2009, and it’s called Omegle. It was radically different from all other platforms when it launched: the user simply went to the site, and the system itself immediately connected them with a random chat partner. People liked this format so much that in just six months, Omegle's audience grew to two million users a day.

Six months after the release of Omegle, its first competitor appeared — the ChatRoulette website, created by a Moscow teenager. Like Omegle, ChatRoulette became super popular very quickly. But over time users began to leave these sites due to poor moderation. Because of the absence of need to register and the frankly poor work of the moderators, the sites were flooded with fakes, bots and very problematic users. 

Alternatives began to appear, including the following:

•  ChatRandom. In this video chat, you can specify your gender and location, as well as enter interests in a separate field, which greatly narrows down your search. Also, there are themed chat rooms where you can find friends with the same interests. There’s even a gay chat, while for an additional fee, you can access a separate chat with girls. 

•  Chathub. The developers of this site have focused on security and speed of connection with chat partners. The site does not offer any unique features, but as an alternative it is quite a worthwhile option. Chathub works equally well on both desktop and mobile devices.

•  Camsurf. The advantage of this resource is its safe search function, which filters out inappropriate content. As in other video chats, you can select your language and gender. According to users, the main disadvantage of Camsurf is the lack of a location filter. 

•  CooMeet. This site uses the most sophisticated gender filter of all the sites listed in the article. CooMeet is focused primarily towards men, and the system connects them only with girls. Each girl on registration must go through an identity verification procedure. This means you can be sure that there’s not a fake on the other side of the screen, but a real person interested in chatting to you. We highly recommend reading reviews about CooMeet and other video chats. 

To be sure you find the right person, we recommend trying out several applications and sites at once. 

How to protect yourself when chatting on the Internet

The primary rule is to install only trusted applications and download them from official sites. Also, we don’t recommend sharing a lot of information about yourself in your profile and in messages, or clicking on suspicious links from unfamiliar users. Unfortunately, scammers on dating sites are not uncommon, so you always need to be on the lookout. We hope that our overview will help you avoid any unpleasant experiences.

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