Matches, iOS Apps, and New Features Galore

Although it’s been about a quarter since our last formal (blogs are formal, aren’t they?) web development update, PHP and Swift 3 code has been being written basically around the clock since January 1.  And yes, you read that correctly – I did say Swift 3, as in Apple’s official iOS mobile app development language.  Translation for the non-geeks out there: the LFGdating iOS app is coming!  Oh, and there’s much, much more to report on – click below to read on!

announceIOSAppFTW();

So with the cat out of the bag (well, if you’ve paid attention to previous blog posts from Casey and I you’ll see we’ve dropped a few hints before), let’s start this off by pointing to our new blog category: LFG App Development.  We are no longer relegated to PHP, JS/Angular, and HTML5 (although I love all of them): LFGdating’s super sleek iOS app is already well underway, and can be expected in the very near future.  Please, please, please stay tuned to our blog, Twitter, and Facebook accounts to keep up with more details, screenshots, and timing, because they will be coming hot and heavy now that we’ve made this official with a new blog category and all. </lamejoke>

$matches::spillBeansOnNewExperiments($efficiency, $invisibility);

With LFGdating’s gamer dating community simply at absurd membership levels since our beta a few year’s ago, Casey and I decided to go back through our user suggestions from Day 1 and see how we could improve our overall ecosystem from a matches perspective. The first thing we decided to start testing is something that’s live as you read this: if you don’t have a profile picture, you’re probably not showing up in other user’s matches.

In an effort to truly add an awesome layer of efficiency, we decided to roll this out as a test to see how the community responds.  We have ample data from before the experiment to compare against, and this is something that not only our community has regularly suggested/asked for, but it’s also fairly common on the big box online dating sites that have been around since the days of 56k modems.  Will it stick around?  Maybe – we’ll let the data and our community make that call, but so far let’s just say the results have been very interesting.

What we’re also exploring from a development / new backend feature perspective is further systems for the LFGdating team to utilize and leverage to go further with auditing and approving new members.  To get more granular, we’re actually working on a new approval system that will begin to limit new users that don’t upload a profile picture, fully complete their profile, or don’t log in for an extended period of time simply in an effort to add more efficiency to our community.  While we also want to protect the new user who simply wants to browse the community first anonymously, we think the road we’re going down keeps both sides of the aisle happy.  Definitely more to follow on this as we get further in!

echo $otherNewFeaturesAndNews;

Ah, but like I promised above we have even more exciting development news to report.  Since I’ve touched on profile photos so much already, we recently began work on implementing a very slick API that handles photo/image manipulation really well, so if you’ve ever been frustrated why the profile pic you uploaded from your iPhone was sideways, this will be the fix for that.  Basically now you’ll be able to one-tap or click a left or right arrow after photo upload to rotate your image, and there are other cool features we can add as well like effects, transparency layers, and more.  If you want to learn more about the service we’re integrating you can check it out here: Glide HTTP Based Image Manipulations.

Last but certainly not least is something Casey and I have agreed to still be pretty cryptic on, but what we can tell you is that this feature will be “localized”, and from what we can tell you will not find on any other online dating site or app.  That translates to: we are freaking excited about this, so much more to follow on this as well!

As I mentioned above please stay tuned to the blog for more updates and timing on our upcoming iOS app and new features – we are insanely excited for an even better LFGdating in 2017, and you should be too!  Thanks for stopping by, and if you haven’t created a profile yet click here to get started!