Happn: Meet the most in-demand London women on the hottest new dating app

As smartphone romance gets serious, Joshi Herrmann meets the hottest women on Happn and hears their advice for men (don’t be a psycho, take selfies or own a cat)
In-demand ladies: Corey Angelo, Naomi Ball, Magdalena Sidor, Melissa Wyatt and Danielle Pyne (Picture: Matt Writtle)
Matt Writtle
Joshi Herrmann10 April 2015

“This one, maybe I’ll meet up with him, I don’t know, I think he’s going to be too English, he’s talking about rugby, he looks a little bit too much frat boy… I went on a date with this guy but he was Portuguese and way too keen – asked me for naked pictures like the day after our date, I was like, seriously?”

Getting a director’s commentary of the inbox of Corey Angelo — a 27-year-old New Yorker who is rated as one of the most in-demand women in London on the dating app Happn — is an eye-opener.

“This one potentially…Oxford, I don’t know, I feel like he could be smart...this one I actually met up with, we had a long Instagram relationship, then we finally met, but he’s like way too empathetic — he just doesn’t try at all,” she continues.

Her main pic is a holiday snap, in a strappy dress in front of a palm tree, looking a lot like St Andrews era Kate Middleton. The rest are mysterious Instagram shots which give almost nothing away other than a mildly adventurous vibe. Since she last opened the app, she has about 20 notifications of guys charming her, in the app’s sense of the word.

A “Charm” on Happn is the way of going one better than just “Liking” them and hoping they like you back (which is how Tinder works) by getting their attention whether they have clicked on you or not. I am in the photography studio with the five women who have received the most charms in London.

Happn's hottest ladies - in pictures

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Happn launched in the UK last summer and claims 250,000 Londoners have used it already, with a further 140,000 outside the capital — and there are more “crushes” (when you like someone and they like you back, or you charm them and they accept) made here than anywhere else in the world. Invented by three Frenchmen, it is taking on the might of Tinder, which has an estimated 1.2m London users, by matching people according to their location (it shows you a little map to show the rough area where your paths intersected). It also has a canny business model: once guys run out of charms, they have to pay to get more (women get them free). I paid £7.99 for 60 more charms, which I will be claiming on expenses.

Judging by their profiles, doing well on this app demands having a glossy look, displaying lots of pictures (Chelsea girl Danielle Pyne has nine) and moving around busy areas of London quite a lot. “I spend all day every day on the King’s Road because I work here, so I guess it could be that?” speculates Pyne when I ask how she has amassed so many charms. Her first picture shows her posing in denim shorts and a bandeau.

I also wonder whether part of these women’s appeal is that they look relatively unthreatening and friendly compared to the more here’s-me-at-my-last-photoshoot vibe others adopt.

Whatever it is, it’s working. “I turned my notifications off because I have like 1,200 charms at this point,” says Angelo. “I’ll just go into the app occasionally and look at the people who have charmed me, and I might click into their profile if that tiny thumbnail is enticing. I don’t really look on the newsfeed ever,” she says, referring to the main screen on Happn where users flick through potential dates and signal her interest. “Sometimes, when I’m bored.” So guys’ chances of chatting to her on Happn, are “slim, yeah”.

'A higher calibre than Tinder': Happn

“It’s a higher calibre than Tinder,” says Essex blonde Naomi Ball, 23, another on the most-demanded list. She says the most common chat-up line is a clever rearrangement of the letters of her name to make “I moan” — “That’s a popular one.” The last person she was seeing was from Happn, but she thinks he got back together with his ex-girlfriend — not a ringing endorsement of the psyche of the app’s male users. She sets her age range at 23-39, because “I might come across a really hot DILF [Dad I’d Like to ****].”

She says she rejects all blokes with selfies and likes group shots because they show someone is sociable. “At Happn we find that clear, friendly, face-on shots are much more attractive to potential suitors than pouting selfies or seductive pics,” says Marie Cosnard, communications manager at Happn.

Ball had her fingers burnt when she left her Instagram handle on her Happn profile (why not cross-fertilise?) and one guy followed her on the picture site, wrote on her Instagram “notepad” and “has since got really weird”.

Angelo says that compared to the blokes in New York, London men aren’t aggressive enough. “A lot of times I find people just chat, and I’m not interested in chatting with you. I’ll meet you and then I either like you or I don’t. I want a short chat, look at their Facebook or Instagram for further photo and community validation, and then I want to go on a quick date with them, and if I like them a long date.”

Consequently, her advice to men is: “Step one, have a good profile. Step two, be witty, have good chat, be intelligent and don’t be psycho. And then suggest somewhere cool to meet or give me your Whatsapp, so you can send me a picture or something. Then we meet, and if we can hang, we’ll go out.”

None of the women have found a long-term boyfriend on Happn, but they say there are side benefits. “One guy works for an events company and he’s in Tokyo now so we are planning to meet when we are travelling,” says Corey. One of Naomi’s best friends is now going out with the best friend of a guy she was chatting to on Happn — a real couple begotten by a virtual one.

MEET THE MOST IN-DEMAND WOMEN IN LONDON

Danielle Pyne, 23
Marketing, Chelsea

Charms: 1,148

Crushes: 43

Dates: 1

“I’m 5’9 so often after a bit of chat it turns out they are 5’7 and that’s the end of it. I make it clear that I’m tall early on — I don’t want to meet up and tower over them. That would be humiliating for them.”

Corey Angelo, 27
Marketing, London Fields

Charms: 1,200

Crushes: 60

Dates: 6

“I went on a date with him but he was Portuguese and way too keen — asked me for naked pictures like the day after our date, I was like, seriously?”

Naomi Ball, 23
Recruitment, Brick Lane

Charms: 2,500

Crushes: 80

Dates: 10

“Girls can do selfies but guys can’t. Even if he was really, really hot, if he had a selfie, I’d say no. I don’t like the idea of boys taking pictures of themselves.”

Magdalena Sidor, 25
Special needs teaching, Swiss Cottage

Charms: 1,011

Crushes: 68

Dates: 4

“I’m not looking for a boyfriend … but I’m open to one.”

Melissa Wyatt, 28
Advertising, Parsons Green

Charms: 1,075

Crushes: 377

Dates: 12

“One guy spent the whole date detailing his unemployment and name-dropping celebs that he’s ‘dated’. I met a lovely guy but he was super-obsessed with his cat so he had to go.”

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