So, if you have come to be as big a fan of Tagged as we are, you probably also are wanting to expand your repertoire to include some solid alternatives to Tagged so that you can kind of grow the potential pool of people available for you to meet online. No matter how much you like one website, the truth of the matter is always that if you join more similar sites, you are able to search across a wider array of new faces, and that in itself makes finding all those alternatives a must do for everyone. The Tagged website falls in what many call the “social encounters” niche, which actually has a pretty small number of players in it, so we decided to also include some free dating sites, which essentially allow you to do the same thing if you use them properly. Here’s our Tagged alternatives list:

1. Meetzur – See Review

This is a cool newer player in the “social encounters” niche. Meetzur really allows its users to kind of dictate how they want to go about making new friends, and it’s a very laid back environment. The community is derived from random chat site visitors, such that everyone there is there because they are comfortable meeting new people and because they WANT to meet new people – there is no confusion.

2. Badoo – See Review

This is one of the biggest social networks for finding new people on the web, and it is the most popular I know of in non-English speaking international countries such as Brazil.

3. OkCupid – See Review

This is a very popular free online dating site with its own in-house algorithm for determining how compatible you are with another user. This is given in percentages, and is a very interesting metric to look at while browsing.

4. POF – See Review

POF (Plenty of Fish) is probably the most popular free online dating site for any primarily English speaking country. Here you will find the biggest pool of potential mates!

5. DateHookup – See Review

This  is another free dating website, and it looks kind old when you visit it, but don’t be fooled, it has a large user base, especially in the USA.

 This free online dating site has been around for ages, and its look has been virtually unchanged as far back as I can remember. However, despite the lack of changes to its look, and very few if any to its functionality in the last few years, at least that I am aware of, the site has continued to grow in popularity. The main geography of it’s growth has seemed to be the USA, and as would be expected, the United States is also its current primary source of visitors. Simply being a viable alternative to the other major free online dating websites could really be about all that is necessary to be successful. Of course, this is easier said then done.

You see, for DateHookup to achieve the growth and success it has, it first has to get enough people using the site to make it worthwhile for more people to come along and also use it, and then keep using it. This is the typical chicken and egg problem associated with any social or dating website, and solving it is never easy. Luckily for this site, it has been around so long that it seems to have been able to acquire great search engine rankings, and a whole lot of visibility over its lifetime. It would be my guess that the combination of those two things have allowed it to prosper, because when you look at it, it really is just a bare bones dating site. It allows you to find people and contact them, but that’s about it. But then again, maybe all the other sites and their fancy algorithms never were necessary anyway, maybe dating really is just a function of meeting people and then deciding for yourself, after all. I’ll let you decide, by visiting this site at www.datehookup.com.

 OkCupid is one of the most popular free online dating websites, especially in the USA. In the United States it is second only to POF, but worldwide it may be a bit lower, depending on whether or not you include social networks that are focused on meeting people such as Badoo, among other types of similar sites. At any rate, it was founded in 2004 by a smart group of serial entrepreneurs, and then sold off to Match.com in 2011 for a nice chunk of change – let’s just say they did VERY well for themselves. Many people feared OkCupid would be ruined by the new owners, but it appears that it has been left essentially the same, as I have not witnessed any major changes.

One of the major sources of OkCupid’s success is quite possibly their proprietary matching algorithm. The site will ask you to answer a very long list of questions it deems to be important with regards to any relationship, and then it will issue you a % of compatibility when viewing other user profiles. However, there is no way to be sure that this is the reason they have done so well, because often times with dating sites all that really matters is marketing and getting enough people to start using a site, so rather than talk up this feature set as being amazing we will let you draw your own conclusions. Of course, in order to be able to draw your own conclusions, you will need to give them a visit at www.okcupid.com.

 POF, short for Plenty of Fish, is the most popular free online dating website in the world, at least to my knowledge. I suppose the one way I could be wrong about this off the top of my head is if you consider Badoo to be a dating site, but for now let’s pretend this is not the case. On second thought, another way I could be wrong is if there is some super popular Chinese or Indian dating site I’m unaware of, so let me just rephrase my initial statement. POF is the most popular English language based free online dating site in the world. THERE. Anyway, the point is, POF is VERY popular, it’s a dating website, and it’s totally free, woohoo! If that’s not enough to get you to check it out, keep reading.

Founded by a Canadian back when there were only paid subscription style dating sites, Plenty of Fish has always been and continues to remain 100% free. However, you can still pay for credits which can be used to buy gifts for people and access other premium features you cannot otherwise access for free. BUT, everything you need in order to search for, contact, and set up meetings with people is completely available. The simplicity of the site is part of what makes it so great, and the founder has mentioned how he is very concerned about making changes that could either annoy users or hurt his ad revenue, so when you combine those two issues I kind of doubt we’ll be seeing any sort of drastic changes like what you see with Facebook. You see, the way things are currently, the site works and sets up people with millions of dates a year, so when you have that kind of success and constant growth, I’m not sure why any changes would be needed. If this sounds good, visit the site at www.pof.com.