Grouvly Reviews: Badoo

First Impressions:

Badoo’s main page.

Badoo seems to be a cool dating app. It has interesting features such as locational awareness (as seen by a user’s ability to ‘bump’ into potential matches in their area) and web hosting.

Pros:

Badoo’s ‘bumps’ page.

• Greater flow of prospects to account: Given that the app has a multitude of avenues on it to show you possible dating prospects, we feel you can get far more dates than you usually would on other apps. Having a wider pool of dates does ensure you a higher chance of finding a longer-term partner after all.
• Video Streaming: The video streaming feature provides an avenue to differentiate yourself from the rest of the competition. We also feel it also provides a form of assurance that you are a real person behind your display photo and is a great way to earn credit to enjoy the paid features on the app without spending a dime.
• Profile Verification: This is another feature that serves its purpose as a security tool, we feel. When you’ve verified yourself by including a picture of yourself, it gives your presence on the app more credence.

Cons:

Badoo’s livestream page.

• Messier layout: We were not fans of the design of the app in some ways as it was hard to tell where the app began and ended regarding function. It gets hard to keep track of matches, i.e., which section of the app you saw them on.
• Higher levels of social comparison: Given that one of Badoo’s features allows you to size up your competition, it might encourage users to engage in dysfunctional social comparison. Social comparison tends to have adverse effects on a person’s self-esteem as it makes them see themselves as inferior when they don’t meet a particular ideal or standard. People can be affected by upward social comparison by internally comparing their looks to others on the app or downward social comparison by hearing negative comments about themselves (in terms of appearance or otherwise) from people who chat with them using the app.
• Security has to be manually adjusted: We were quite startled by how the app immediately detected our location and provided us with matches in lieu of our configuration. The app does not seem to ask you for permission to do this. We found that to minimize discoverability, we had to change said settings manually.

Final Verdict:

Badoo’s profile section.

Badoo is quite interesting but needs more refining. This would be handy in attracting members to its platform who prefer more minimalist layouts. However, the ability of the app to get the most number of matches in a specified time frame is undeniable given these various avenues.