Blizzard announced three new Overwatch 2 heroes at Blizzcon 2023’s opening ceremony, and while Mauga, the next tank hero, is playable in the game this weekend as part of a test period to everyone, the company also showed off two other heroes planned to launch in 2024.
It doesn’t feel like it’s been three months since Larian Studios freed Baldur’s Gate 3 from its Early Access shackles and unleashed its huge Dungeons & Dragons epic on the world. In that time, it’s quickly become the highest-reviewed game on Metacritic this year, making it a likely shoo-in for Game of the Year…
Super Mario RPG, the remake of Square Enix’s 1996 2D pixel art classic, will be out on Nintendo Switch on November 17. The charming-looking turn-based game sees Mario and Peach join forces with the dastardly Bowser to stop a mechanical creature named Smithy from destroying the Mushroom Kingdom. Going off some early…
Sexting apps can be fun and low-risk if you do it right. Check out our list of the best sexting apps for intimate conversations and more explicit connections, updated for November 2023.
In a world where online dating and casual hookups have become the norm, dating can still feel exhausting. Sometimes, just the thought of putting on “real” clothes, coming up with witty conversation starters, and commuting to the actual meetup spot can be tiring. No matter what kind of encounter you plan, when it comes to dating, there’ll always be some sort of physical effort required.
The good news? There is one loophole: Sexting.
Sexting is the art of sending sexually explicit photos or messages to one or more consenting people via text. Like sex itself, sexting “is an opportunity for you to liberate yourself, explore what you want in bed, and get to know your partner better,” writes Mashable sex and relationships reporter Anna Iovine. “Sexting can benefit both you and your budding relationship (or hookup, or however you define it).”
Once viewed as taboo, sexting is now definitively mainstream. According to a 2023 survey of U.S. adults by the market research platform Statista, 77 percent of participants said they’ve sent at least one sext — that’s up from 45 percent in 2019 and just 14 percent about 10 years ago.
Sexting’s recent surge in popularity is due at least in part to the pandemic, which gave rise to a new era of digital dating. But it also helps that there are now a number of apps that make sexting easy and safer than standard SMS messages.
Not all apps for sexting are created equal, and some of the best ones aren’t even built for dating purposes.
To help you make the most of your sexting experience, we tested some of the top private chat apps. Based on our research and hands-on testing, we’ve narrowed our list to a few apps that prioritize privacy, safety, and user-friendliness for sexting. They’re also pretty affordable, with some even offering free options.
Here are the best sexting apps for all your NSFW exchanges.
How creator-led trips through Trova Trip work, and why YouTubers and their fans go on them.
A YouTube vlog shows a group of twentysomething women on a food tour of Mykonos, Greece. They eat sugar-coated kourabiedes cookies, take shots of ouzo, walk the narrow streets ducking into eateries, and share laughs over a charcuterie board. But this is not your average girls trip.
The women in the video paid to travel to Greece with their favorite YouTuber, Maddie Dragsbaek. Dragsbaek posted the video, titled “I traveled to Italy and Greece with 40 of my subscribers.” She’s one of a growing number of creators who have made traveling with their audiences into a lucrative endeavor of its own.
While you once might have enviously watched an influencer’s vlog or swiped through photos of her sponsored trip and then jealously planned your own (which would never quite compare), now you can pay for a trip together. The experience lives both on her feed and yours, and in your memories.
Dragsbaek’s trip is one of 500 creator-led trips operated by travel company Trova Trip this year — nearly 200 more than in 2022. Founded in 2017 by Lauren Schneider, Trova Trip is a three-sided marketplace that helps connect creators with travel operators in more than 40 countries. Creators, called hosts by Trova Trip, sell trips to their audiences through the platform for an average of $2,000 to $4,000, though the prices go up to $12,000 for an Antartica trip, airfare not included.
To host a travel experience through Trova Trip, a creator first sends out a survey to their audience. They are eligible to host a trip if their community demonstrates interest — for Trova Trip, that means at least 50 responses from adults with budgets of over $2,000 for the experience. Currently, Trova Trip is the only company specializing in creator-led travel, although more traditional creator-led travel, like yoga retreats, have existed for a while, and some creators have planned one-off trips via other companies. “[Based on the survey results] our platform provides recommendations of itineraries that match their audience interests. We have a wide range of experiences, from backpacking in Patagonia to practicing yoga in Bali to eating food in Japan,” explained Schneider.
Once the creator picks an itinerary, their request must be approved by the local operator of the trip. Then Trova Trip provides the operating cost, and the creator sets the price and sells it to their audience.
The trips range in price depending on location, with the final price set by the creator. “We trust our creators to decide their earnings based on what they believe is best for them and their community,” Lauren Schneider, the founder of Trova Trip, explained to Mashable. “On average, they’re taking about 20 percent of the total trip price.” 60 percent goes to the trip operators, and Trova Trip takes the remaining cut.
According to Trova Trip, around 700 creators have hosted trips so far. Hosts have spanned from Love Is Blind‘s Kwame and Chelsea to Cassie and Danielle of the National Park After Dark podcast (they’re the ones going to Antarctica). Hosts have access to 150+ itineraries. And the hosts are just that; the trip operators provide tour guides and manage on-the-ground logistics.
When Trova Trip reached out to Dragsbaek to gauge her interest in hosting a trip for her 233,000 subscribers, saying yes was a no-brainer, Dragsbaek told Mashable. “It’s such a strange and unique opportunity that I had to do it,” she continued. “Not only was I getting to meet the people that support my content face to face, but I was able to meet them in a meaningful way by spending a good amount of time traveling together.”
Dragsbaek’s 7-day Greece trip cost a whopping $3,350. The price included a double room with another trip attendee, six breakfasts, two dinners, shuttle service to and from Athens airport, transport to and from Mykonos, and planned activities like a visit to the Parthenon. It did not include attendees’ air fare.
Despite the steep price, Dragsbaek’s fans were eager to attend.
In 2020, during a spell of quarantine-induced boredom, Amanda Layne Miller turned to YouTube. An outfit video from Dragsbaek popped up on her homepage and she clicked. “Literally the algorithm just fed it to me,” Miller told Mashable. “I started binging literally every single one of her videos. I felt like I had a lot in common with her.”
Miller found Dragsbaek authentic, conversational, and funny. “The way that she speaks is so personal that I got to know her through her opinions and what she loves,” she explained.
So when Miller caught wind that Dragsbaek was hosting a trip to Greece in June 2023 for up to 20 of her subscribers, Miller jumped at the opportunity. “I thought, I’ve always wanted to go to Greece. It’s with one of my favorite YouTubers. I think we’d get along, and I want to be friends with her. I can’t not do this,” she said.
Similarly, several years ago Cari Cakes, an American creator living in Seoul, was recommended on YouTube to Katie Giordano, a 25-year-old media worker in Hong Kong. Giordano became a fan of both Cakes’s travel content and book tube. “Her whole demeanor is so relaxing. I don’t know if that’s weird, but she’s just very calm and realistic,” Giordano explained to Mashable. This past May, Giordano went on Cakes’s trip to Tokyo. “Everybody was a little bit like Cari in a certain way,” she said. “They were all really nice, accepting, and eager and open-minded. Cari attracts niceness, because that is her own aura.”
These trips seem like a recipe for an Ingrid Goes West situation — a group of people all hoping to become friends with someone they feel like they already know from watching them online for years. But for Dragsbaek, the unique relationship broke down walls between attendees and her. “It’s hard to even describe when you’re talking to someone, and [they’re] a stranger, but you immediately feel understood by them. And it’s because they already know so much about you,” she explained.
While there is the possibility for immediate connection between creator and traveler, creators, who lead and profit from the trip with their followers, could easily act as though they are above the travelers. Followers, who have watched these creators often for years, may fall into overt fan-girling.
Morgan Yates, a 28-year-old lifestyle YouTuber in Los Angeles, California, who has hosted three trips — two through Trova Trip — dealt with overzealous travelers. One made it clear she knew basically every detail of Yates’s life. Others were “clingy.” “It becomes a difficult situation because I don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings by trying to get away from them, but at times I’ve felt a bit conflicted and frustrated when those people are only making an effort to spend time with me and not get to know everyone else,” she told Mashable.
There are some safety mechanisms in place to help keep overtly dangerous fans off trips. “Hosts have the ability to review or reject a traveler, they control how and who the trip is marketed to, so they could list it in the marketplace or they can only send it to vetted folks,” said Amy Dunn, communications lead at Trova Trip.
The first trip Yates hosted was through Contiki, a tour company she’d previously been a traveler with, and due to their privacy policy, Yates wasn’t allowed to access any info on the travelers on her trip ahead of time which made her “super nervous,” despite it ending up being a “great group.”
Despite going on these trips to meet their favorite creator, travelers are expected to behave as travelers might on any group trip. But this can be a challenge.
“It’s easier to develop a parasocial relationship with a YouTuber, because their art is literally just them,” said Miller. She acknowledged the potential for weird behavior and for travelers to overwhelm Dragsbaek because everyone wanted to develop a connection with her. “I was excited to get to know her as a person and actually have a relationship with her further than just audience and subject.”
You might imagine that as soon as Dragsbaek left the room, all the travelers would immediately begin discussing her and comparing her to her videos. But it wasn’t quite like that. The travelers all being huge fans of Dragsbaek was “the elephant in the room” until the middle of the week, said Miller. “Someone finally said, ‘I feel like, we all came here to like become friends with Maddie to a certain extent.”
When Giordano arrived in Tokyo and met Cakes, she felt like she was meeting a celebrity. “When I first met her, I said, ‘You look like a woodland fairy.’ She’s got the beautiful red hair. She’s literally so gorgeous,” said Giordano. “The first few days I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, she’s so cool.’ But it toned down throughout the trip.”
While Giordano was struck by Cakes’s real-life beauty — and by how slow Cakes talks, because Giordano watches YouTube at double speed — the person she met was exactly how she thought she would be. “I got a good idea of how she was as a person, because she’s very open and honest on her YouTube channel,” explained Giordano.
Travelers’ expectations aren’t just something they have to manage. The creators are hyper-aware of whether or not they are living up to the persona in their content. Jade Fox, a 32-year-old lifestyle creator YouTuber in Los Angeles, California, worried about her ability to meet expectations ahead of the trip she hosted to Bali with her best friend and fellow creator Arrows this summer. “I’m used to the process of capturing myself exactly the way I want to. People are used to seeing a very curated, edited version of me,” Fox told Mashable. “I was nervous about disappointing folks.”
Yates faces similar anxieties on her trips. “I almost have imposter syndrome going into these trips. I know I’m not any cooler or more special than anyone else there. My fear is always that I’m not living up to what people expected me to be like,” she explained.
All the hours of anecdotes Miller and Giordano watched led them to fly across the world to meet their favorite YouTubers, which can make for a lot of pressure. But creators have the capacity to create a community that reflects the content they’ve put out there, and that can lead to incredibly meaningful trips.
“I was nervous if that [connection between creator and audience] was going to exist in real life, as it does in the comment section. When we met in person it was almost as if we had all already known each other for years,” said Fox. “I’m a Black queer woman. Arrows is a transmasculine, nonbinary queer person, and our audience is just different iterations of that.”
The group’s shared identities provided a touch point for connection. “We are a giant pack of Black people; some of us are gender-fluid. And we’re going into a city where we don’t know how we’re going to be perceived, we don’t know what’s going to happen. A lot of us had never been out of the country before,” explained Fox. “That was another way that we were all able to protect each other, because we all know what violence looks like toward people who have experiences like ours.”
Fox described the trip as “spiritual,” “a fully immersive experience,” and “kismet.” By the end, travelers were getting tattoos to commemorate the experience and changing their flights home to spend more time with each other. The most magical moment for Fox came on their chill day by the pool when one of the travelers taught her how to swim. “It was this big Disney Channel moment. When I finished my first full lap, I lifted my head out of the water and everyone was just screaming and going crazy,” reminisced Fox.
Miller also felt moved by the end of Dragsbaek’s trip. “The last night is when we’re all like, ‘We know each other really well’ and wishing it was the first day. It felt like summer camp,” said Miller. “I was like, ‘Whoa, like, I’m an adult. And I have not been in this type of environment since high school.'”
For creators with a smaller audience who might not be sought after for brand sponsorships, a Trova Trip venture can provide more money than a brand sponsorship. So, while Fox and Dragsbaek created meaningful connections with their audiences, there’s the potential from others to treat the travel game like a full-time hustle.
Lindsay Mukkadam, a 37-year-old based in Austin, Texas, who posts under the moniker “One Girl Wandering,” pivoted from being a solo travel creator to making her business about encouraging her audience to get out and travel by coming on one of her trips. Her Instagram bio labels her as “Your solo travel bff! Stop waiting for others and finally book the trip of your dreams,” and in this year alone, she’s hosted trips to Costa Rica, Iceland, Scotland, two to Japan, and two to the Amalfi Coast. By the end of the year she’ll host two trips to Egypt, and two to Christmas markets in Germany and Austria. A slew of her 2024 trips are already being promoted.
Others, like Danah Clipa, @danahbananaa on TikTok, refuse to, as they see it, take advantage of their followers by making them pay to join them on travel adventures. In a since-deleted video, Clipa explained that she canceled her Trova Trip because it would be free for her at the expense of her followers. “If I’m inviting someone to travel out of the country with me,” said Clipa, “I want them to feel on the same level as me, because we are — we are the exact fucking same.”
The dating site feels outdated, spammy, and confusing to navigate. Zoosk’s prices are competitive, but the features are not.
Dating sites and apps are a great way to meet people, but with so many out there these days, finding the site with the right features for you is pretty important if you’re not keen on wasting your time. There’s Tinder‘s famous easy swiping, Match‘s longer profiles for the more serious daters, Hinge’s prompts that help the conversation going — the list goes on.
So what about a dating site that can take you back in time?
To be clear, we’re not talking about actual time travel, so much as the immediate burst of Facebook-circa-2010 energy that Zoosk offers upon loading up its website or app. That’s courtesy of an interface and features that make it clear this dating site was one of the first Facebook apps back in December 2007.
While the other longstanding online dating players like Match, eharmony, and OkCupid have managed to (mostly) update to stay current and somewhat fresh, Zoosk’s initial draw of making international dating simple and a matching users with a unique algorithm feels more and more gimmicky and unrealistic as the years go by.
Allegedly, there are 40 million users on Zoosk across 80 different countries. If you’re not trying to see the same 10 profiles within a 20 mile radius, these are pretty appealing numbers.
The age range of users seems to vary widely, too — from my two weeks on the app, I saw profiles from 21 year olds to 51 year olds. Users as young as 18 can sign up, and my age filter maxed out at 51, though users up to age 98 can also make accounts — I’m unsure why I wasn’t able to adjust my age filters any higher. With that said, I’m not sure this app is great for older crowds. I’m in my mid-20s and I found Zoosk’s interface to be kind of confusing. There are definitely better dating apps for seniors out there.
When it comes to diversity of options for LGBTQ+ users, Zoosk could be doing a whole lot better. For starters, if you’re interested in more than one gender, you’ll have to take it up with Zoosk customer service, as there’s no built-in option to select that preference on your profile. They’ll then have to set you up with an additional profile. If you don’t want to go through that process, you’ll only get these four choices upon sign up:
I’d just like to take a moment to speak directly to Zoosk — baby, it’s 2022. I should not have to email your customer service team to a) change my preferences to switch my profile from seeing men to seeing women or b) ask you to pretty please allow me to see both — gasp — men and women at the same time. That should just be an integrated feature on your site, and there’s no reason to have a needless hoop for any bi- or pan-sexual users to jump through. Speaking of, might be cool to recognize nonbinary people exist, too!
Forty million users is an impressive user base. But that impressive user base needs to be taken with a grain of salt: Dead or fake profiles seem to make up a decent portion of that 40 million. Now, Zoosk does have a huge collection of success stories on its social media and blog (though the latter hasn’t been updated since 2020). If the person of your dreams doesn’t message you back, you can tell yourself it’s probably because they haven’t logged on in two years.
If you’re looking for more accurate numbers on how many users are actually using Zoosk, there aren’t many out there. However, on The Date Mix, a blog owned by Zoosk, an article updated in 2021 mentioned that Zoosk has 3 million active users. During my two weeks, I saw a couple of repeat profiles pop up, leading me to believe the lower number is likely the more truthful one.
If you are wary of accidentally flirting with a bot, Zoosk does offer several profile verifications, including photo, Facebook, Twitter, and phone number verification. It’s not uncommon to come across profiles that have none of these, but I would say about half of the users I came across were at least photo verified. Still, the chances that you’ll get messages from clearly fake profiles aren’t slim. Before I’d put in any pictures or my name on my profile, I had 34 people who were into me. While I’d like to believe my charm is just that potent, likely, it was bots.
It makes sense that there are a lot of fake profiles because making an account on Zoosk is easy and takes at most five minutes.
Here’s how it works: When you first log on, you can decide if you want to create an account from an email, Google, or Facebook account. Unlike more involved websites like eharmony or EliteSingles, you won’t have to slog through a long questionnaire. Instead, you’ll be prompted to fill out information that’s pretty standard dating app fare: your location, preferences, education, ethnicity, religion, and so on. You’ll also be prompted to pick a username, and if you can’t think of any, Zoosk provides some creative options.
You also have the option to fill out a short bio (“My Story”), and some ice breakers about your ideal first date, and who you imagine your perfect match to be. Those prompts were a bit too on the nose for my taste — I don’t know exactly what I’m supposed to glean about potential compatibility from someone who imagines our first date to be “enjoying a meal together” or whose perfect match is “happy.” Other apps like Bumble, Hinge, and OkCupid have mastered the art of the more specific prompts that actually might reveal something about someone’s personality, but I guess Zoosk’s are good jumping off points for someone very new to the online dating game.
Finally, you have the option to fill out your interests when signing up, which was maybe the most early-Facebook the app ever felt, mostly due to the fact you chose your interests from the classic Facebook group pages. Again, knowing that you and a potential partner both have an interest in basketball, Rihanna, or FarmVille (the Facebook JUMPED out here), might be nice, but something about this feature doesn’t give the sense it’s inspiring a ton of robust conversation. If anything, it seems like Zoosk is holding on to the remnants of what used to be a winning formula, and aging itself in the process.
At this point, you can also choose to verify your profile and let other users know you’re a real person. As mentioned above, you have a few choices about how to do this, with the most extensive being the photo verification. First, you need to have a picture uploaded onto your page.
Then, you have to hold your smartphone at arm’s length and press record when prompted. It’s not as effortless as taking a selfie, but Zoosk wants to know if you’re an actual person holding a phone and not just placing a photo in front of its camera. The site will then ask you to turn your head to the right and then left, as if you’re taking a mugshot. Your photo is then sent to administrators, who will make sure that your “video” lines up with the one on your profile. Although it takes some time, you can now rest easy knowing your matches are real (or at least verified) when you see that green check mark on their photo.
For all the issues I’ve had with Zoosk feeling out of touch, I will say that the website does better than the app. You know when you open an old app you downloaded in like 2013, and the font is huge and doesn’t fill out your whole phone screen? The Zoosk app doesn’t do that, but it somehow still captures that energy. I don’t know if it’s the overly simple color-blocked header on pages or the basic font that looks like it was pulled straight from Microsoft Word, but this app feels old.
And despite the simplicity, it’s difficult to navigate — I say this as a person who has never found a single other dating app that difficult to get around after a day or two of using it. Between the Connections, Online Now, Carousel, Views, Smart Pick, and (inexplicably) the Live stream pages, I felt overwhelmed and confused every time I wanted to look at people’s profiles.
The website, though in some need of an update, looks much cleaner and more of this time. Something about the way buttons are highlighted, the spaces between page titles, and the way user profiles look makes it feel like this website has actually been updated post-2012.
There were moments when I saw clearly the how the site was superior. When clicking on the app message page, I would be hit with the words, “283 people are into you!” and there is actually no world where that’s not overwhelming.
On the desktop message page, however, I was notified that I had “69 messages and 176 greetings,” which was still a lot, but felt much more manageable (though the math didn’t add up between the app and the site, which was interesting). Still, if I wanted to, on the site I could decide to only pay attention to the people that had bothered to write something out instead of those who sent just a heart or smiley face. The specificity helped, and made the entire experience feel less spammy.
So if it’s confusing and outdated, why would anyone use Zoosk? Well, its “Behavioral Matchmaking” algorithm is supposed to be great. Basically, the more people you like and pass on, the more Zoosk learns about what kind of profiles you’re looking for. This used to be a novel idea, but these days, it seems that’s how most dating app algorithms work.
One place you can teach the app is the Carousel feature. It functions similarly to Tinder with swiping to send a like, pass, or say maybe, but you don’t get to see beyond one picture on the person’s profile when making your choice. I get this is supposed to be the more “rapid fire” section, but it felt restrictive for no real reason. If I wanted a barebones Tinder experience, I’d go on Tinder to swipe on people who didn’t bother to fill out their profile. I also had to sit through short video ads every few swipes, which again, made it feel less like a serious dating app and more like a cheap, old mobile game downloaded on an iPod Touch.
You can also inform the app through your daily “SmartPick” choices, which is where the algorithm is really supposed to kick in to high gear, combining profile preferences and how you interact with other user accounts to find your perfect matches. Limiting to 10 daily picks made this one of the most simple and effective ways to look for other users on the app. If I were a regular Zoosk user, I imagine I’d just bother checking this page to avoid sinking hours of my time.
With that said, I didn’t see any verification checks on the profiles presented to me through the SmartPicks. I don’t think it’s because they were all on unverified, but because the profiles themselves were laid out differently in this section, and the verification checks didn’t make it over, which is a huge oversight when a website has its share of fake profiles.
As I mentioned, there’s a million (seven) main pages to interact with on Zoosk, which means it’s beyond easy to rack up notifications. I am the type of person who can’t stand when I’m unable to make the little red bubble go away from any app I use, whether it be iMessage or my email. As a result, Zoosk became my personal hell.
Let’s start with the “Views” page. What I have learned is I have no interest in knowing who has viewed my profile, especially if they’ve not interacted with it, because it leads to so many unnecessary notifications. Some apps have the (usually paid) feature of showing you who has liked you, which feels like a much better version of seeing your views. Ultimately, I am not a YouTube video, I don’t care about my view count.
Next, the push notifications. I got a notification that someone was “curious” about me, and I still don’t know what the hell that means. I got notifications about profile views, when I had a connection, when my SmartPicks were ready, when people who I’d never exchanged a single message with wanted to meet me, and so on. There are two kinds of push notifications I want with a dating app: when someone matches with me, and when someone sends me a message. Simply put, it was way too much and made the entire process feel less engaging.
You don’t have to match with people on Zoosk to send and receive messages. Zoosk even offers some pre-written messages to help you get the ball rolling. However, you do have to have a subscription, and thus pay money, to message most users. You can respond to any premium messages you receive for free, but for most messages you’ll receive, you have to pay to see what was said and respond.
Obviously, that presents a problem for ever clearing out your notifications if you want to continue using this app for free.
One part of messaging that didn’t cost money (at least for the first and only time I tried it) was Super Send, which allows you to send a mass message to a bunch of users to get some conversations going. If you don’t think about too hard, this sounds like it could be nice for making a connection, and if you think about it a little more, it sounds awfully similar to a spam message.
Yes, it can take a lot of patience and effort to start talking to someone you really hit it off with. But that patience and effort is kind of essential for making an authentic connection. Sending a pre-written “Want to chat sometime?” selected from a bulleted list doesn’t go a long way when you’re trying to intentionally date and get to know people.
For most parts of the app, such as liking people that have viewed your profile, matching with your SmartPicks, and messaging users (as mentioned above), or use the integrated “Great Dates” video chatting, you have to be a paying member of Zoosk. So what exactly does that cost you?
One month membership: $14.99
Three month membership: $24.99
Six month membership: $74.99
Compared to other apps, Zoosk’s prices aren’t outrageous — in fact, they’re cheaper in many cases. One month of OkCupid will cost you $14.99 too, one month of Hinge $34.99, and one month of Match can run you close to $50. What’s more is Zoosk’s prices have gone down in the past couple of years. However, its subscription fees would be way more competitive, if it had the features and user base these other apps and sites have, to back up what it’s trying to sell.
OkCupid and Hinge both have fully functional free versions, and Match has a user base that knows it’s looking for something serious. Zoosk feels confused in comparison, with its swiping feature and quick sign up that make it seem casual, along with its space for a full profile and marketing about finding love that make it seem serious. Having users pay to experience most of the app also lends an air that this is not the place for hookups or uncommitted dating.
But it’s not clear if that is 100 percent the case, and there are way more bot profiles than on the other websites. When there’s no straightforward messaging as to what you’re even supposed to be paying for, it makes you wonder why you would pay in the first place.
It used to be that much of the app was free, and you could use Zoosk coins to pay and access special features. Now, you have to subscribe to use many features, and you can pay extra for coins.
With coins, you can “buy” matches virtual gifts, browse anonymously, and see read receipts (though you do need a subscription on top of using coins to do this last item.)
You can also use coins if you’re feeling impatient — the “Boost” feature puts your profile front and center for all users in your area to spike your views (and hopefully your matches), but each boost costs 100 Zoosk Coins.
Here’s what that means in real money:
180 coins = $19.95
480 coins = $39.95
1800 coins = $99.95
To Zoosk’s credit, coin prices haven’t gone up in the past few years, and the same can’t be said for other sites and apps prices in the same time frame. However, the very existence of coins to access features on top of a paid subscription does feel like a rip off in and of itself.
Outside of the app experience, it’s important to note that Zoosk has run into some legal trouble. In 2020, they faced a negligence suit after a leak of 30 million users’ private data. Spark Networks, the company that owns Zoosk, had sent emails to those affected by the leak, but some users feel it was not within a reasonable time frame. It’s been reported that the original notice sent to affected users stated that Zoosk was unaware of the breach until it was publicly reported.
Zoosk’s pricing structure is on par with other dating sites, but not competitive enough considering all of its flaws, especially when it comes to its subscriptions and coins system. While paying for upgrades makes sense for “freemium” games like Clash Royale, Pocket Frogs, and The Simpsons: Tapped Out, it just doesn’t always make sense for a dating site — especially one that’s essentially making users pay to weed through tons of seemingly dubious profiles.
To add insult to injury, this app doesn’t have the active user bases of other options out there. To be fair, every dating app has its share of problems with bogus and inactive users — it just seems like they’re more prevalent here.
It also never felt entirely clear who this app was for, which seems to make it a subpar time for everyone. In my experience, the best apps are the ones that know they’re for casual dating or serious dating or even something in between, and fully lean in to that identity with features that cater to those experiences.
Zoosk, on the other hand, wants to be the best of all worlds, but ended up feeling like the mediocre option for most. Sure, there seem to be some people who’ve genuinely found love on the app, but it’s still hard to name it a top choice for anyone. All I can really imagine is if you’re opposed to the idea of being on a Match Group-owned app, Zoosk is technically there. Just don’t expect it to wow you.
Stability AI, the startup behind the text-to-image AI model Stable Diffusion, thinks 3D model creation tools could be the next big thing in generative AI. At least, that’s […]
Kaiber, the generative AI creative studio behind the music videos of popular artists Kid Cudi and Linkin Park, announced today the launch of its new mobile app to […]
Larian has dropped another colossal patch for its hugely successful Dungeons & Dragons role-playing game, Baldur’s Gate 3, and it brings over 1000 individual fixes and tweaks to the game just as we head into its three-month anniversary.
Dashtoon wants to make anyone with a story to tell into a comics artist, even if they can’t draw. It provides aspiring comics creator with a suite of […]
