How Do You Use Badoo?

You sign up, add your photos, and then vote on people one at a time in the Encounters tab. Tap the heart to like someone or the cross to pass. When two people like each other it is a match, and you can start chatting straight away in the Chats tab. The Discover tab is the second way in, where you browse people nearby.

You can sign up on the app or at badoo.com. Badoo accepts a phone number, an email address or a Google account. The app also takes Facebook, and on iOS you can use an Apple ID.

During sign-up you enter your name, your date of birth and your gender, and you say who you would like to see. You then upload the photos Badoo asks for. Choose the sign-up method you will remember, because that is the login you will need to get back into the account later.

Encounters shows one person at a time, with a photo, a name, an age and a few details. You tap the heart to like her or the cross to pass. That is the whole mechanic.

Speed is the temptation, and many men give in to it by tapping the heart on nearly every woman. a dating coach argues that this backfires on any dating app. His reasoning is that the app reads a man who likes everyone as less picky and less desirable, and then shows him fewer of the women he wants. Look at each photo for a couple of seconds before you vote, and let the heart mean something.

A match is two likes pointing at each other. Once it happens, the conversation lives in the Chats tab, and either of you can write first.

Do not let a match sit. It means she has already said yes to hearing from you, so the hard part is done. Send a short opening message that picks up one detail from her photos or her details, and ask one easy question. Then aim to suggest a plan within the first handful of messages, rather than chatting for a week and watching it cool.

The Discover tab lets you browse people near you. You can tap the heart to show interest, or tap the speech bubble to chat. Chatting from Discover needs verification and Credits, so it is a paid shortcut, not the free route.

Treat Discover as a way to find women Encounters did not show you. If you spend Credits, spend them on a woman you have already looked at carefully and already want to meet, not on whoever happens to be on the screen.

Badoo suggests relaxing your age and distance filters to get better results, and there is sense in that. A narrow filter can hide women who would be glad to hear from you.

Relaxing them does not mean removing them. coach likes first dates close to home, which is a good reason to keep the distance modest. Pick a distance you would genuinely cover for one drink on a weeknight, and stretch it only if your city is small.

Badoo's own advice for getting better matches is a complete page: recent photos, photo verification, a short description of yourself and your interests. Of those, the photos do the most work, and Badoo asks you to upload them at sign-up for a reason.

Use a clear, recent photo of your face as the first one she sees. Add photo verification so she knows the person in the pictures is you. Keep what you write about yourself short and in your own voice.

Day one is setup. Finish sign-up, add your best recent photos, verify your photo and fill in your interests. Do not start voting until that is done, so the first women who see you see a finished page.

For the rest of the week, vote in short, focused sessions rather than one long one. a dating coach favors a half hour a day over a weekend binge. Answer every conversation you have before you vote on anyone new, since a woman who has already matched with you is worth more than a stranger on the screen.

a dating coach's advice on every app is to test and adjust. Give your setup two weeks. Count how many women you liked, how many matches came, how many conversations started and how many dates you made. If matches are low, change the photos. If matches are fine but conversations die, change your opening message and how soon you suggest a plan.

One change at a time tells you what worked. Ten changes at once tells you nothing. Treat the first two weeks as a trial and let your own numbers tell you where to spend your effort.