Badoo Review February 2024

To create an account on Badoo, you need to give out your first name, birthday, city, gender, and what you're looking for (friendship, dates, or chat). You also need to upload a photo of yourself, although you can skip this step on the Badoo sign-up process for later. You'll receive a link to verify your account.

Once your email has been verified, you can now start using Badoo. Unlike others, the registration doesn't require you to fill out a personality test to find matches. Instead, you are taken directly to your profile dashboard.

To fully enjoy the benefits of your Badoo account, you need to have it verified. The email verification you received upon signing up is just the first step in the process. You have to link Badoo to other social media accounts or use your phone to verify your identity. You can continue using Badoo under an unverified account, but your access will be limited. Verified members will have a blue checkmark at the bottom of their profile picture.

Because Badoo is a free service, everyone can view user profiles, and pictures are not blurred. Although you gain access to your dashboard after signing up, you can't perform specific tasks like boost your popularity, purchase coins, and play games if you haven't uploaded at least one picture.

There’s a strict photo verification process, and if you don’t pass it, you are locked out of Badoo.

The verification process may sound simple to most people. Badoo will give you a sample image of a male or female in certain poses. You have to take a picture of yourself with the same pose and submit it to the Badoo team.

Once they verify that you are indeed who you say you are, the temporary lock-down will be removed, and you can use Badoo freely. However, if you are a new user and you want to look around first without committing to anything, posting a picture may feel like a huge step already.

​​​​​​As a social media slash dating platform, Badoo has quite a lot of features you can enjoy:

• Badoo Encounters

Badoo Encounters is a game that lets you search for matches quickly. This feature shows you matches one by one, with each entry showing the user's picture plus necessary information such as their name, age, and how many interests you have in common.

Press the heart icon (or one on your keyboard) if you're interested, or the X icon (two on your keyboard) if you're not. Most of the members play this fast and easy way by breezing through the different options, similar to Tinder's swipe left or right function.

However, if you are meticulous, there are links in the upper right-hand corner of each entry where you can view and share the user's profile. You can also filter the game to show only guys or girls, or matches of a specific age range.

Free members have a limited number of swipes, but credits can be used to increase this number.

• People Nearby

Badoo's primary search function, People Nearby, allows you to find other members. You can filter the search to show only the new accounts or those that are currently online. Aside from that, there are several search filters that you can use to limit the results:

1. Gender
2. What they're looking for (friends, chat, date)
3. Age
4. Location
5. Distance away from you

Despite the name, People Nearby is not only about searching for people close to your location, you can even get results from members who intentionally put their positions in private. Plus, you can also filter your search to show members from another city or state.

• Featured Users

One the bottom right corner of your profile page, you will see several profile pictures. These are pictures from featured users. You can have your photo featured by paying credits. Click on a photo to view that user's profile. If you're interested, you can message him or her.

• Messaging Feature

Since Badoo dating is a free service, messaging others is possible, even without paying for premium services. The only thing you need to start a conversation is to upload a photo of yourself. Once you have a picture, you can network with other members or ask them out on dates.

However, members can only send up to two messages to members they haven't matched. Once you've used up your two messages, they need to reply to you first before you can send more. 

You can set it so that you can get email and browser notifications whenever you get a new message. If there's a user you're particularly interested, and you hit it off immediately, you can save them on your favorites list. On the other hand, if the user says something offensive or inappropriate, you can choose to block them so they can't contact you any further.

As for Badoo's messaging feature, we give it a 4 out of 5. With most limited messaging services, you can only message another user once, or worse, you can't message a person who hasn't liked your photo back. With Badoo dating, at least you get two tries to get the attention of the person you're trying to message, and if they reply, the limits on messaging are lifted. However, credits can raise the number of messages sent even before you receive a reply.

While this may feel unsafe and unregulated for some, messaging is one of the essential features of any dating platform. After all, if the goal is to match people, there's no reason why messaging should be made inconvenient.

• Badoo Live

"Badoo Live" enabled members to host a live video stream, which all Badoo members could watch and join. Badoo announced that the feature was removed from the site as they wanted their users to focus on connections rather than viewing streams. 

• Send Songs

Send a Song feature in the Badoo app allows Badoo members to send favorite tracks to each other via Apple Music to create meaningful connections through song-sharing. If you’re not a current Apple Music subscriber, you can still send and receive 30-second song previews with your matches or access a special offer for Badoo members of up to 2 months free of Apple Music within the app.

Profile information, as a whole, is severely lacking. Unlike others where you answer questions and take personality tests, Badoo only lets you choose your interests from a vast list. You can't see what other users' thoughts are about topics concerning religion, politics, etc.

To encourage its members to post their best pictures and fill out their profiles completely, they've devised a profile scoring system. The higher your score is, the higher your visibility to others. To start receiving ratings, you need to upload at least three photos of yourself. Other members who view your profile through Badoo Encounters can rate your profile. Members are also required to state their dating intentions as 'Here to date', 'Ready for a relationship', and 'Open to chat' to avoid mismatched partners. 

Although the profile scores are meant to determine the likeability of the members, they may be lacking, as they are purely based on appearance. 

Even with a verification process, fake profiles on Badoo come aplenty. There are several articles written about it on the web, and we experienced it firsthand while writing this review.

Only 2-3 minutes after creating a profile, we got four message notifications from different females who wanted to chat with us. This is highly suspicious, as the account has just been created, with no picture and no information on it whatsoever. Granted, Badoo has a feature where premium members can send messages to new users as soon as they sign up. However, we doubt that people who sincerely want to meet other people would be okay with just messaging everyone who signs up for the service.

According to demographics, the male to female ratio in Badoo dating back in 2009 was 70/30, with males taking the lead. Recently, there are more and more female profiles being created – and some users suspect that these are fake profiles to bring more people in. Remember that profiles can be set so that non-members can view it. Hence, there are several female decoy profiles on Badoo with the sole purpose of enticing males to join the website and meet these "female" members.

Badoo puts a considerable emphasis on photos and appearance while disregarding views and opinions. Yes, you can choose an interest, and there are several fields where you can freely type information about yourself. But users neglect most of these because they are not mandatory.

Badoo has an extensive verification system for photos, but nothing on what's written on your profile. A person looking for a long-term relationship or marriage is not given enough tools by which to tell who is compatible with them or not.

'Clips'

Members can show off their personalities and give honest opinions on a variety of topic prompts through the use of video. This 15-second clip is a fun icebreaker when other Badoo users visit your profile. Plus, it also enhances your credibility as a genuine member of the app. Badoo also rewards profiles containing 'Clips' in terms of visibility on the platform. When you publish 'Clips' on your profile, you will show up more frequently on other members' matchmaking lists.