Are all users listed real? (That is, not generated by Badoo?) It just feels kinda fake when looking through the list of accounts in my city (with a somewhat "small" population of ~50k, 814 Badoo accounts) that there is a lot of users. More than I anticipated for a service which I, as a person very interested in technology, did not even know about. Some of the pictures look very legit (with car-plates matching the country standard etc), as well as descriptions. Any thoughts?
No. Not all the users are real. Companies employ various methods to create the illusion of activity on their dating sites. You also have to account for spammers/scammers. If you want a more realistic gauge of activity, then take any user number (currently online, total, in your city, etc.) and divide it by 10. At any given time only one tenth of the user base is active and legitimate.
My source: I worked for an online dating company for 2 years.
I remember an article about a guy who lived in the middle of nowhere (small town, population 17) -- and some dating site claimed to have 16 singles in that town waiting to meet him.
