World’s most advanced mobile dating application for the iPhone hits the streets in Vancouver test market featuring voice and text chat, location-based discovery, and a host of female-friendly features.
VANCOUVER, BC February 9, 2011 – Vancouver-based mobile application developer AppSocial Media today announced the release of their flagship iPhone app, TINGLE. After 18 months under development, the AppSocial team has created a network and application designed to significantly advance the state-of-the art in online dating.
TINGLE, available at tingle.com or via the Canadian iTunes App Store, delivers a fully-mobilized online dating experience for busy city-dwelling singles. Among the service’s key features are location-based discovery (the ability to meet others based on proximity), real-time voice and text chat (which allows users to communicate easily without sharing their phone number) and in-app messaging (which means users don’t need to share their email addresses).
The result is that TINGLE is engaging, easy-to-use, and presents an enjoyable experience for men and women alike. The company, which is backed by Vancouver-based angel investors and has 11 employees and contractors, focuses on delivering a positive and enjoyable user experience that is decidedly female-friendly. Founders canvassed more than 350 women in-depth in designing the service.
In January, the Manhunt gay dating app for the iPhone signed up 175,000 users in its first month. “This signals that users are voting with their fingers, and that they prefer mobile devices running apps to desktop computers with web browsers for flirting and socializing,” said company founder Ian Andrew Bell, “We’re fortunate to be at the crest of what will be a massive behavioural change for online dating.”
In addition, the service adds a number of overt and covert mechanisms to inhibit spam, message blasting, and other abuses which afflict web-based dating networks and lead to high user churn. “Ninety-seven percent of message volume on most of the larger online dating networks flows to fewer than five percent of the users,” adds Bell, “It’s a discouraging aspect of the online dating experience that we knew we would have to remedy – particularly as we are a mobile app and don’t want to be constantly chirping and beeping in users’ pockets and purses.”
The company will test TINGLE in Vancouver for a number of weeks prior to broader launches in the US and Canada this spring, with availability in Europe, South America, and Asia to follow this fall.