In 2019, Badoo was listed as one of the TOP 5 most profitable app developers in Europe. And today, the project of a Russian native, Andrei Andreev, is second only to Tinder in popularity. We have prepared for you a comprehensive review of Badoo dating service, in which we will say a few words about the history, functions and some interesting features of this project.
What is Badoo
Badoo is a social media network for dating, developed by Andrey Andreev from the company’s headquarters in London. The project was funded in 2006, but “took off” only after 2010. But already in 2011, the Economist published an article in which it named the Badoo development team as one of the most successful IT companies in Europe.
Today, Badoo is popular almost all over the world, but particularly in South America, Spain, Italy, and France. Some interesting statistics as of today:
- About 300 thousand new users get registered in Badoo daily.
- Every day, about 10 million photos are uploaded, more than 350 million messages are sent, and more than 12 billion swipes are made.
- Badoo uses 3,000 servers located in three data centers: Miami, Hong Kong, and Prague.
- The total number of Badoo registered users are more than 460 million people from 190 countries.
By the way! At the end of 2019, the service was sold to the Blackstone Foundation for the vast amount of 3 billion US Dollars. To be more precise, they sold the whole MagicLab holding, which combines the services of Badoo and Bumble.
Site functionality
Badoo provides users with several options for finding interesting people to chat with. During registration (only above 18 years of age are allowed) you can specify your purpose: to chat, make new friends or find a mate. After registration, these main features can be accessed:
- “People nearby” is a function for searching other registered users who are located nearby.
- “Search” – a manual search option that allows you to find users anywhere in the world.
- “Meet” – the user is shown photos of other people, and they swipe to choose whether they like the person or not. If the user you like also swipes “positive”, you both receive a notification and can start chatting.
Badoo also lets you share your interests, add people to your friend’s list, see information about your friends’ subscriptions, and so on. Unlike many similar services, Badoo pays a lot of attention to security and combating fakes.
To do this, there is a “selfie request” function, through which you can ask your chat companion to send a selfie. This will enable you to make sure that the real photo matches the one displayed in the profile.
Badoo also has its own photo verification algorithm — users are required to upload photos with certain requirements. After sending it to the server, one of the 5,000 operators checks the photo. This check usually takes no more than a minute. This is a fairly simple but effective way to deal with fakes.
Free and paid features
The basic features of Badoo are available to users for free as soon as they finish registering on the site — rating photos of other users, messaging, viewing other people’s profiles, photos, and the “Dating” section. You can register via email or log in using your Facebook account. You can select the main search criteria:
- who are you looking for: men, girls, or all.
- what age group interests you (you can select a range).
- in what radius to search for users: within a range of 2 kilometers or more.
Advanced features are available when activating Badoo Premium. You can buy a subscription for a day, a week, a month, three months, six months, or indefinitely — forever. Payment can be made using a Bankcard, PayPal, or mobile account if your carrier supports this method of payment. By activating a premium account, the user gets access to additional features:
- chatting with popular users before anyone else;
- the ability to cancel the “no” during “Dating”;
- raising your messages to the TOP of other users;
- viewing other people’s profiles in invisible mode;
- chat with new users who have just signed up for Badoo.
By adding funds to your internal account and using credits, you can increase your popularity and rating, thereby increasing the number of messages, profile visits and likes.
All the main features of the resource are available on the official website — badoo.com, but for obvious reasons, users prefer mobile apps. They are available for both of the major mobile operating systems: iOS and Android.
The functionality of the app for different platforms is identical, as is the cost of premium access.
On the pros and cons of Badoo
Like any similar service, Badoo has its own undeniable benefits and obvious drawbacks that you need to know about. The benefits include:
- a really large number of active users;
- a convenient function “Who is nearby?”;
- live video broadcasting;
- a rigorous moderation and a minimum of fake accounts;
- fairly comprehensive profiles of most users;
- the ability to communicate in text messages without additional payment.
And these are the two main drawbacks:
- ads for paid services can be too excessive;
- with the free “Superpower” feature, the user can’t view the profile of the person who sent it.
In General, Badoo is a convenient “pocket” dating service with a well-designed application and a very active user base, which is growing every year. And the capability to find interesting people in your area, literally within a radius of a couple of kilometers makes Badoo a great option for those who are interested not only in online communication but also live dating. Therefore, Badoo can safely be recommended for those who are looking for new friends or even a life partner.
The article was prepared with support from the site.