Meriden The League Dating App
The league is a pretty good dating app when people decide they want to respond. It's an easy-to-use app, however the efficacy of it is strongly dependent on the likelihood of your matches to respond to you. In general, dating apps decrease the temptation of an office romance. The League goes a step further and eliminates the possibility. The media frames The League as elitist. It's a lazy narrative.
| Initial release | January 17, 2015; 6 years ago |
|---|---|
| Operating system | iOS, Android |
| Website | www.theleague.com |
Feb 08, 2021 But there’s one app, The League—known as the Harvard of dating apps—that I feel anything but neutral about. The League wants you to know that it’s A-okay to be picky about who you date. The League Dating App Requirements According to its founder Amanda Bradford, The League was designed specifically for successful people who value traits like ambition and intelligence above everything else. Or as one of The League’s ads puts it, people seeking drive, not double D’s. Using League Tickets, you can make Power Moves, see more potential matches, and give your own profile a boost! There’s more to the app than dating, too: you can engage in Groups with people who share your passions, and you can take it offline with local Events, both League Sponsored and existing events we’re able to source for you!
The League is a social and dating mobile application launched in 2015 and available in several cities all over the world on iOS and Android.
History[edit]
The League App was founded in 2014 by Amanda Bradford, who also serves as its CEO.[1][2] She conceived of the app after growing frustrated with her own online dating experience.[3]
Operation[edit]
Users connect their LinkedIn and Facebook profiles and then select their preferences for matches, with criteria including gender, age, height, distance, education, religion and ethnicity.[4][5] Each user is assigned a representative who can answer app-related questions. As with Tinder, users swipe right to indicate interest in a potential match, or swipe left to pass.[5] The League shows users only five potential matches per day.[2] In April 2016, the app released a second version, with members now able to organize events and create groups.[6] In June 2016, the app added a feature for women interested in freezing their eggs.[7][8]
Selection process[edit]
Each member receives one ticket to bring in a friend, allowing that friend to bypass the application process. Without a ticket, a potential user can sign up for the waiting list. The League scans an applicant's Facebook and LinkedIn profiles to analyze alma maters, degrees, professions, industries, social influence, neighborhood and age. Diversity of applicants is also considered.[2][9][10] Currently there are over 420,000 profiles waiting to be selected for inclusion. Paying to become a member increases the speed at which they review your profile for inclusion.
As of August 2016, the median age of the users was 28. They are 95% straight, and 99% have a college degree.[11] As of 2017, The League claimed it was accepting approximately 10-20% of users who sign up.[12] In May 2016, the app began allowing people older than 40 to sign up.[1]
Controversy[edit]
The League's exclusivity has been controversial,[3] with its application process leading Bloomberg Businessweek to criticize the concept as elitist.[13]
Allegations of racism were due to the requirement for the user to declare their ethnicity,[14] and the ability to filter non-white users.[15] However, Bradford said people wanted to know about a person's race, and the ethnicity data is meant to help the site be more inclusive by being diverse.[14]
According to founders of dating apps, including The League, this is because modern dating app algorithms downrank people when left-swiped (passed on), and uprank when right-swiped (approved).[16]
'We did a ton of testing on this screen and these preferences were the most highly requested,' she said ... while users can select a preference for the race of partners they'd like to meet, it's not a hard filter. The League shows each user five potential matches each day, and if a user has set his preferences too narrowly, he may be shown matches that don't conform to them, racially or otherwise. ... Bradford insists that the League's policies are meant to make the service more egalitarian, not less -- at least when it comes to race. 'The ethnicity data helps us maintain a diverse and balanced community that reflects that of the city (in our case, the San Francisco Bay Area),' she says.
See also[edit]
References[edit]
- ^ abGeorgia Wells, 'Dating Apps Court Older, Wealthier Users,'Wall Street Journal, October 12, 2016.
- ^ abcMatt Haber, 'The League, a Dating App for Would-Be Power Couples,'New York Times, January 23, 2015.
- ^ ab'Controversial New Dating App Is for Singles with High Standards,'ABC News, March 10, 2015.
- ^Meg Graham, 'The League brings invite-only dating app to Chicago,'Chicago Tribune, October 26, 2016.
- ^ abMaya Kosoff, 'We got inside the 'Tinder for elites' – here's what it's like to use,'Business Insider, September 15, 2015.
- ^Anthony Ha, 'The League launches a rebuilt, event-centric dating app,' TechCrunch, April 28, 2016.
- ^Erica Fink, Anastasia Anashkina and Maya Dangerfield, 'Why this dating app founder is freezing her eggs,'CNN, June 21, 2016.
- ^'Should I Freeze My Eggs?'The Doctors, April 16, 2016.
- ^Georgia Wells, 'The League' Dating App's Velvet Rope – and How to Get Past It,'Wall Street Journal, February 18, 2015.
- ^Mariya Manzhos, 'To use The League, a new dating app, you'll need an invitation,'Boston Globe, October 17, 2016.
- ^Katie Sola, 'Dating App Data Reveals What Successful Men And Women Really Want,'Forbes, August 24, 2016.
- ^Anthony Ha, 'The League brings its picky dating app to Android,' TechCrunch, January 26, 2017.
- ^Natalie Kitroeff, 'This Stanford MBA Thinks Elitists Need Their Own Tinder,'Bloomberg Businessweek, September 8, 2014.
- ^ ab'New elite dating app is racist'. January 27, 2015. Retrieved August 16, 2017.
- ^'Dating app CEO: I'm not an elitist, just an asshole'. October 21, 2015. Retrieved August 16, 2017.
- ^'New Dating App for 'Elites' Is Far From Race Blind'. Retrieved May 4, 2018.
By Brianna HoltSpecial Projects Deputy Editor
Since the launch of Tinder in 2012, a range of apps have promised to make online dating even easier, less time-consuming, or a more pleasant experience. Bumble requires women to send the first message and allows men just 24 hours to respond, weeding out men who might project their insecurities on women. Hinge, the app that was designed to be deleted, limits how many people you can choose per day and requires users to answer three ice breakers on their profile upon setting up.
Raya charges approved members $7.99 a month to date and network with people mostly working in the entertainment industry, including artists, musicians, and models, in an exclusive and private setting (screenshotting on the app is forbidden and can lead to removal of your account). Another exclusive app, The League, puts an emphasis on its members’ professionalism, hence its requirement of a LinkedIn account for membership approval.
Although all of these popular dating apps have features that set them apart, each relies on conversations over text for would-be couples to arrange their first meetings. The League plans to change that. This month, it launched League Live, allowing members to speed-date through live video before matching.
Members of the app can choose three back-to-back live video dates, at two minutes each, every Sunday at 9pm local time. The feature solves many of the problems associated with online dating, like misrepresentative photos, catfishing, and delayed responses.
Amanda Bradford, founder and CEO of The League, says that the idea of a “first date,” as we know it, is seeing its final days. “In-person first dates will definitely be replaced by digital dates, as the stakes are lower and with video chatting you can figure out whether or not you click within the first few minutes,” she says. “It saves you time and energy to focus on dates that you are excited about.” According to The League’s website, versus the rest of the app’s users, people who match on League Live are three and a half times more likely to exchange phone numbers and meet offline.
Bradford predicts the genre will get more sophisticated with the arrival of virtual- and augmented-reality features, such as the use of 3D avatars that resemble and sound exactly like users in real life. And she envisions integrations with local bars and restaurants to form curated pools of potential daters both digitally and physically in a matter of minutes. “What we would like to build is the ability to organize meet-ups more automatically based on where people already are, versus trying to organize something in advance,” Bradford says. “This will ensure serendipity can still be achieved in the mobile dating app era and that ‘meet-cutes’ don’t die, they simply grow in number as they become better enabled with smart technology.”
Meriden The League Dating App Login
Video as an initial interaction hasn’t always gone smoothly. Chatroulette, a website that pairs random users to chat via webcam, was popular for unsolicited exposure of male genitalia after it launched in 2009. But the chances of receiving unsolicited images might decrease as an app’s selectiveness increases. This is where The League’s history of controversy, as an app labeled as “elitist,” might actually have some benefits.
Not just anyone can get on the app, and there’s allegedly a waitlist of hundreds of people hoping to get approved, creating a more monitored and limited dating pool that might weed out people looking to use the video feature for the wrong reasons.
Bradford, who feels the feature emulates meeting randomly in real life, notes that a protected environment with verified users makes the exchanges authentic and safe, and says The League takes additional steps to vet who is allowed to use the video feature. “We only select users who have been on the platform long enough to have a valid ‘League Score’ data—this score reflects their behavior on the app and when talking to matches,” Bradford says. “Anyone who has been flagged or blocked by a match is not selected for entrance.”
Meriden The League Dating App Review
Additionally, users have the ability to flag a user while in the chat, in which case the call is instantly ended and the offending user is banned from future League Live sessions. Depending on the reason for the flag, the user could be removed from the community, permanently.
Meriden The League Dating App
The League provides users the option to record the video chats if both users opt-in for this safety feature. According to Bradford, no one has requested the recording feature yet, nor has any bad behavior been reported, but if it happened, the app would likely make monitoring required rather than optional, she said.