Dating Girl: My ‘Coffee Meets Bagel’ Experience (Review)

The success of any online dating site is having members – it’s a numbers game. That’s why Match.com is so successful because it has the most members, which increases your possibilities of meeting a match. However, a lot of niche sites have emerged on the market with the idea of helping weed out those bad matches and only giving you specific types based on some common interests. Coffee Meets Bagel was created by three ladies in New York City.

 

I gave it a try when it first launched in 2012. There wasn’t a big pool of people for me so I quickly deleted my account. I decided to give it a try again to see if anything had changed. They did a good job branding the site. I like it visually, the logo and such, but there still seems to be a small pool of people. Here are 5 

1. It links up with your Facebook account. Which I’m not a fan of but unlike Tinder, it doesn’t pull up any information other than pictures. You still fill out a profile or the bare minimum of a profile: 3 interests, 3 descriptive words about you and 3 things you’re looking for in your match.
2. You earn beans. This is a new feature from when I first used it. The more you interact with the site, the more “beans” you earn. Having beans helps you unlock more features such as “rematching.” Or you can also buy beans, which seems like a random aspect of the site. Why not charge premium memberships that give people access to such things like OkCupid does? 
3. They send you daily emails. They email you every day at noon with a match. These “bagels” are only available 24 hours. The emails give you some fun facts about your match but don’t show any photos, so you have to click into the site. 
4. You only get access to one bagel a day. This is where I start to think the pool is very small. If you pass on a bagel, they don’t show you more options or say “sorry to hear, maybe these are better matches”. You just fill out a quick questionnaire as to why you passed but then that’s it.
5. I’m not completely sure how they are connecting you. They don’t say “oh you said you like this movie, here’s someone we think you’ll like.” Many of the bagels were random. Actual daily bagel email: “He is 34 years old, attended Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey Clown College…”. Uhm, no thank you.