First off, we love Badoo and think it is an awesome site. However, with that being said, we still think it is important to constantly be on the prowl for other alternatives to Badoo of a similar nature. A couple reasons for this is that you never know when a new better site is going to pop up or sort of go viral, and you never know if Badoo may suddenly lose traction and kind of die (a la MySpace). Or, even if neither of those two things happen, you tend to find different people on different sites because they don’t know about more than one such “social encounters” type social network for meeting new people. Thus, you can effectively expand the pool to include new potential friends. At any rate, check out our list of Badoo alternatives below:

1. Meetzur – Read Full Review

Meetzur is new cool Badoo alternative with a lot of spunk. It states right on the homepage that its goal is to “connect you with strangers” and it definitely does. Because there is such a concentration on getting you to meet new people, the community itself has taken on a different vibe from most such sites, and the vibe in my opinion is much more laid back, making the entire expected motive behind using the site for any user seem much less strict, and thus making the site environment in general much more comfortable than average.

2. Tagged – Read Full Review

This site describes itself as a social network for “meeting new people”, and that’s exactly what it is! Features include games that essentially function as icebreakers, and the ability to share interests.

3. POF – Read Full Review

POF (Plenty of Fish) is the most popular free online dating site for English-speaking countries in the world. That about covers it.

4. Okcupid – Read Full Review

This is another popular free online dating site that includes a proprietary matching algorithm – be sure to give it a try!

5. DateHookup – Read Full Review

Although this free dating site is less popular than the 2 previously mentioned, it still has a large pool of people available and is definitely worth a glance, especially for US users.

 Meetzur is a new fast-growing social network  in the “social encounters” niche. Similar sites include Badoo and Tagged, but Meetzur is unique in its own way. Some people describe sites in Meetzur’s industry to be more along the lines of free online dating sites, but the problem with that is that these sites are first social networks, and then can be used by the users however they choose, such as for dating purposes, for making friends, or whatever. In the case of this site, you have a social network which is very casual and has no strict guidelines as to why you have to use it. Lots of users meet new people and make new friends on Meetzur every day, and this is allowing it to grow at an ever-increasing rate.

In terms of functionality, you have a lot of the basics as you would expect with any social network such as Facebook. You can add friends, post comments, send messages, etc. However, the way it is all put together is unique and is made in such a way that it promotes the meeting of new people as much as possible. This is, of course, very important, since that is the purpose of the website. The community itself is derived from people who specifically make it their goal to meet strangers, because the site is advertised on stranger random chat type sites such as its affiliate iMeetzu. Advertising to the exact kind of people that want to constantly meet new people has helped to make the Meetzur community super friendly, and, quite frankly, super awesome! So what are you waiting for? Check them out today at www.meetzur.com!

 This is a social network that actually is doing quite well, despite the rise of Facebook. At first, that may not make any sense, but when you think about what it is that this site, Tagged, provides, the pieces begin to come together. What they offer is a way for you to meet new people, plain and simple. Facebook does not really work well for doing this, because it is more about staying in touch with people you already know. Tagged allows you to concentrate on finding new people to add to your real life social circle or just to be friends with online, the choice is yours. They allow this to occur while providing a pretty familiar feeling social environment.

One way this website encourages its users to branch out is by providing games. These games function essentially as icebreakers, which I think is a great concept, and which looks to have been pretty successful for them. Besides games, they have your usual social networking functionality such as profiles, etc. and thus you can run searches by location and what not to see if you can find anyone cool nearby. They are probably only second to Badoo in this “social encounters” category. Anyway, I like the pretty laid back feel of the site in general, so it’s definitely worth giving a try! Visit them at www.tagged.com.

 Badoo is a pretty cool site that you may quite possibly have never heard of if you’re from the USA, despite it’s insane popularity! How popular do you ask? Oh, I don’t know, only over 166 MILLION registered users! Crazy huh? You see, Badoo just isn’t as big in the USA as it is in a lot of other foreign countries, like, for example, Brazil – it’s HUGE there. Anyway, I suppose I should give you more details then just saying it’s a site with a lot of users. Badoo provides a sort of social network with a dating focus, if that makes any sense.

Many people have coined the term “social encounters” or something similar that to describe sites in this niche, because there are others. I guess the best way to think of it is sort of as a cross between Facebook and a dating site, although I think Badoo in particular leans more towards being a dating site than a social network, where as other sites in the niche lean more towards being a social network than a dating site, but to each their own. In any case, the site has some great location-utilizing features that work quite well with your mobile phone. You can see anyone who happens to be nearby you and is also using the app in real time, so that is pretty cool. If more people started using it you could maybe see exactly who happens to be in a bar nearby and make an effort to go there and meet them for real, if you catch my drift. I’m not sure whether people like that concept or not, I can see both positives and negatives to it – of course you can always just close the application if you get too many random people coming up to you and saying “hey, I saw you on Badoo!” But yea, if you want to check the site out head over to www.badoo.com.