Lumenapp.com Review: Modern Dating for Older Couples
Overview
In today’s dating market, there is a demand for mobility as well as increased ease of use. Gone are the days where people have the time or the patience to sit at a desktop computer and pick away at potential matches on a dating website. Though said sites still exist, and still draw in quite a few customers, the trend these days is towards dating companies that can successfully migrate the age-old dating model to a mobile base. Dating sites such as Tinder have done this with relative success. But merely making the business model mobile is not enough in today’s world. Once the move towards mobile sites was made, the same battle dating sites had and continue to have on a desktop format are waged. This battle involves the different niches of dating sites, one of which Lumen competes in. In the case of Lumen, the niche is in regards to a mature audience.
Lumen is often described as an evolved Tinder. Evolved here merely means going a step forward into the niche markets. While Tinder generally handles matches of all ages, Lumen takes on the mature audience niche or people over the age of 50. Lumen handles this market exclusively. Older users seeking to match with younger users, or younger users seeking to match with older users need to go elsewhere. The only audience allowed is aged 50 or above.
Lumen acts like other dating sites. The only real difference is that it operates solely as an app, both for Android and IOS, downloaded simply from either the respective app store. It has a matching algorithm that forms the basis of its business, as do all other dating sites, and experiences are relatively similar to other dating sites as well. It acts very similar to Tinder in how it operates, given the particular restrictions the mobile format has, and the prospects touch screens have in working a site. This means the experience with the app is more modern than other sites serving the same niche but on desktop. It is fast-paced, and rather fitting to a world adapted to a mobile style.
Signing Up
Registration on the Lumen app is fairly simple. After downloading the app, the site offers two ways to register an account. The user can either link a Facebook account, in which case some information is auto-filled based on what information is taken from Facebook, or by a phone number. In the case of the phone number, the rest of the information like name, email, gender, and gender preferences need to be filled in manually. After this information, a user needs to submit two photos for identification, and a selfie to verify that the photos submitted are actually real. This may be a cumbersome process for an older audience, but it ensures that accounts are real, and the user is less likely to deal with fraud.
Once an account has been verified, a user can then set up their profile. The photos used to verify identity are used for the photos in the profile, along with three others if the user so chooses. The user can then choose to fill out as much information they want to fill out in the ‘About Me” and “I’m looking for” sections of the profile. There are also some questions for the user to answer regarding preferences.
