Platform Dating is currently in the process of coding its first mobile dating app, in an effort to create a service that generates “more matches in less time”.
For the first time, the company – which operates brands Saucy Dates, d8mate and Datesforparents – will venture away from desktop dating, and into the world of mobile apps.
Platform Dating is solely run by its founder David Ronald Minns, who created each site using his self-taught coding skills, which he spoke about during a brilliant talk at our GDI Innovation Conference back in October.
And to create the brand’s first mobile app, Minns opted to use a number of app development tutorials so he could learn how to build the app himself, instead of hiring developers to do it for him.
In a recent blog post, the dating founder spoke in-depth about choosing the right way to build this new mobile platform:
“I have over a decade of experience in coding websites with tools such as PHP and MySQL and app development was totally new. I looked at Phone Gap, a technology that would allow a single development to be deployed on both iOS and Android. I also looked at native iOS development in Objective C and Swift. Phone Gap looked like an interesting technology but I felt it was a lot of loose parts held together with open source glue. I had concerns about speed, stability and security. That left coding a native iOS app with the choice of two languages.
“I opted for Swift which is the newest language provided by Apple. Objective C is well established and finding code examples online is very easy but the syntax had a lot of unnecessary complexities. Swift at the time of writing is on version 2.1.1 and very new, online code examples are less common and books are limited. However, Swift is a much cleaner language which swayed my decision. After a few weeks of watching Swift + Xcode tutorials on YouTube I had enough knowledge to start coding.
“No need for angel investors, funding rounds and £100,000+ development costs, which seems to be the normal way people launch a dating app. “I have over a decade of experience in coding websites with tools such as PHP and MySQL and app development was totally new.”
In terms of security, the app – which will have a free and paid version – will not ask for any unnecessary personal information that could be valuable to cyber criminals.
For example, the app will not ask for your date of birth, but will only ask your age.
This is part of Minns’ attempt to create a member database that has “no value to a cyber attacker”.
The dating entrepreneur said that if he pulls this off, he will “share my own account details publicly”.
Another focus for the forthcoming mobile app is to make the sign up process “ultra fast”, by ensuring that the only keyboard entries required will be an email address and first name, and facial recognition technology will be used to automatically crop profile pictures.
Everything else on the app will be inputted with buttons and sliders.
Minns said: “From starting at the home screen to having a completed user profile including matching preferences and profile picture can be done in less than 1 minute 20 seconds.
“This time also includes waiting for the confirmation email with your login password. The password system provides security with ease of use on a mobile keyboard, see this in action when the app is launched.”
He also revealed that the app will not adopt Tinder’s popular “swipe left, swipe right” matching system, an idea that has now been poached by most new dating apps.
Instead, Minns has opted for a different system, which he believes is faster than swiping through profiles, and will ultimately create more matches for its users – an innovative feature he says he would “love to say more about, but I cannot share at the moment”.
And according to Minns, the new app will be ready to launch between May and June 2016, launching first for iOS devices, followed by an Android version, but he will be releasing more details about the app closer to launch.
Read Minns’ full post here.