Active Audience | 66% |
Quality Matches | 90% |
Popular Age | 30-40 |
Profiles | 269 890 |
Reply Rate | 89% |
Ease of Use | 6.1 |
Popularity | 9.2 |
Fraud | Very Rarely |
Rating |
9.3
|
Registration | Free |
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If you want to expand your circle of friends, then Skout is the ideal place for doing just so! This site’s main motivation is creating a closely-knit community where members from all over the world can come and battle their feelings of loneliness. Even if you’re in your hometown and want to meet a new face, or are traveling in new and exciting places looking for a friend to share your experience with, Skout has got you covered! This app shares and lets all users see the approximate location of other members. While all types of relationships are encouraged and embraced here, it seems that most users are just looking for friendship and companionship. There are plenty of ways people can interact on Skout, such as chatting with users from the other side of the globe, checking out local customs, or just scrolling through photos of people in your area. Whichever kind of companionship you need, you are most likely to find it here!
When it first started in 2007, Skout was a social media site similar to others out there, such as the giant Facebook. Now, it reshaped itself as a social app that helps members find companionship of all kinds, from friends to dates and others. Available in over 100 countries, it’s obvious that it’s becoming more and more a global community that offers its users an opportunity to make connections all over the world.
MeetMe bought Skout in 2016 for approximately 29 million US dollars and spent another 55 million dollars on company shares.
Signing up Skout could not be any easier. If a newcomer wants to jump ahead a few steps, they can skip creating their account from scratch and just go ahead to get registered with Facebook or Gmail. This will take maybe even less than a minute. It is good to know that email addresses are not checked for authenticity, but since users only need to provide very basic personal information, no need to worry. Anyone can start looking for other members of this platform as soon as they have registered on it, and while their profiles are still incomplete.
There are a few aspects, though. For example, email addresses are not verified via a code, making fake profiles quite a strong possibility. Also, users aren’t even required to provide profile photos; there are no personality questions to be answered or further information about users to be given. So, all this makes it a good thing that Skout doesn’t focus on dates. It keeps things a little lighter. While users can still look for and probably even find matches or dates, keeping things on a more friendly level may be the way to go on this site.
Skout offers quite a few nice and useful features with its free membership. All messaging is totally free. What you need to do when you have received a message is choosing if you are interested in talking to that person. If you are, accept this message, and then you can start chatting. If you don’t want to be bothered by some users, reject this chat, and these users will be blocked. In case you think that you have made a mistake by blocking a certain user, go to the Blocked users section and unblock them to start chatting again. Also, like on many similar platforms, giving like and commenting on photos is free, as is the possibility of marking profiles as a Favorite.
Skouts provides its users with multiple options when it comes to searching, chatting, matching, and meeting. People can scroll through profiles of other users in their area, check out photos of those willing to meet, or literally shake their phone to match with random strangers who want to chat. The latter only works via the app, not the desktop version, for obvious reasons. As a matter of fact, this is one of Skout app’s key features, and yes, all a user needs to do is shake their phone and activate it! Then, you will be matched randomly with another user, and you can start chatting if you two are interested in each other.
Another fun feature is the Buzz, a news fed-like section where anyone can see profiles and statuses of other members close to their location. At the Meet section, one will find a gallery of photos of people nearby. Through Chat, you can connect with other users if you decide to accept their initial message, and if not, you can just block them. If you already have someone in mind and would like to connect with them, go to the toolbar and search them by their Skout ID.
If you think that Skout is not the place for you, just go to the toolbar, click on Settings, and then on the Deactivate Account option. You can still recover it if you decide to do so simply by logging in again.
Skout is not primarily a dating site, so it comes as no surprise that members are starting with the age of 13. This is a great app with a large community for those who just moved into a new city or country and are looking to make friends, whereas the fact that this platform provides an approximate location of other users comes in really handy!
Since it’s not necessarily a dating site, sexual preferences and orientation are not the main things that make users interact here. Still, the platform is very inclusive, so whatever your sexual identity, be it straight or from the LGBTQ+ spectrum, one shouldn’t be stopped from having fun and meeting new and exciting people on Skout!
One can imagine that by being available in over 100 countries all over the world, race and ethnicity only come to expand the diversity of the community that Skout has brought together. There is someone for everybody here: Caucasians, African Americans, Hispanics, Asians, and more!
As expected, there is no limit of beliefs and religious orientations here. Still, this is not the kind of site that targets beliefs or religion. All in all, it is possible to find Christians, Hindus, Jews, Buddhists, or Taos. Nothing should come in the way of finding some like-minded friends!
There are many additional features that users can enjoy with a paid membership, and if you decide to go for it, it is possible to use your credit card, Paypal account, or even mobile payment to get this paid membership.
The free membership offers enough features to make interacting on Skout fun and entertaining. Users get to create a profile, see those who have a look at it, give likes and comments, mark other members as favorites, also perhaps most importantly, they can send and receive unlimited messages. Not bad at all, considering that it’s all free. Also, free users can collect and win points, either by posting backstage photos that other members will have to pay for to view, or participating in contests that the site’s creators regularly post.
There are quite a few added benefits that come with a paid membership, such as enjoying a no-ads experience. Also, there are different ways in which users can increase their popularity and message members directly to their inbox. Paying members can see those who marked them as favorite and gain insight regarding potential matches.
Skout Premium costs 9.99 USD for one month. Skout Points come in packages of 500 credits that cost 4.99 USD, of 1000 credits that go for 7.99 USD, of 1200 credits that cost 9.99 USD, of 2500 credits for 16.99 USD, of 8000 credits for 49.99 USD and 18000 credits for 99.99 USD.
While users cannot cancel their paid subscription while it’s still valid, they can stop it from being automatically renewed. Just go to the Subscriptions setting and click on the Sleep Cycle option.
There is a lot of moderation on Skout. If you understand that Skout members are as young as 13, you can also understand that safety is a very high priority on this platform. If you want to stay on the safe side of things and make sure you don’t violate any of the terms in place here, read their Terms of Use page. Unlike other similar sites, Skout is more PG-13 than NC-17, so teens and parents should be more careful than older users, for whom this platform is perfectly safe.
When you first start on Skout, there are a couple of things that you should keep in mind so as not to be disappointed. You are not required to upload a profile photo, but if you do, it will undergo an approval process. Also, since you can start using your account as soon as you sign up, you will run into quite a few unfinished profiles. Still, you can add more information about yourself later. You should also be aware that other members can leave comments and likes on your profile pic. While you can use your real name, you will find that most users will only show their first name or nickname!
Still, few verification procedures make Skout vulnerable to scammers. So, keep a clear head when chatting with strangers online and make sure you do not disclose any sensitive info about yourself or your travel plans.
Skout looks fresh and young by making nice use of colors, but this only applies to the site, not to the app. If you’re using the app, you will find out that it can get a little overwhelming to do so, but still, on the plus side, this alternative offers more features than other usual dating apps. Less fortunate aspects of the Skout app include plenty of ads for the free version, mostly advertising from the creator’s sister app, Meet Me.
Skout does a very good job of creating a safe and fun community, reuniting members worldwide. While it’s mainly focused on forging new friendships, it can still be used to find dates. However, the simple fact that there are users as young as 13 should completely disqualify Skout as a dating platform.
One really creative feature is the Shake, which is something like chat roulette that connects you to random users once you shake your phone. What’s innovative about this is how Skout lets its users interact and how entertaining this can become. But since members are not required to provide too much information about themselves, you never know who you’ll be matched with. Who knows, maybe you won’t even speak the same language!
The Buzz feature is basically a news feed that shows you profiles of various members, as long as their photo and status are updated. Since members come from all over the world, finding someone in your area is unlikely.
The most useful feature on the platform seems to be the Meet Me feature, which will display profile pictures of users within a 25-mile radius of your location. So, if you really want to meet someone in person, this might be your best bet.
There isn’t that much to say about the Chat feature since it is pretty self-explanatory. You might find yourself bombarded with chat requests from users that you have no idea about since a lot of profiles are incomplete. If you are traveling, you can use the Skout Travel feature to set your phone so that all features will be local to the city you’re visiting, for 24 hours. Then you can scroll through different profiles, clicking on X if you are not interested or on the green sign if you like the user. See if you get a match!
The Skout app is available for both iOS and Android users. However, you might run into profiles based on their sister app, Meet Me, and be pushed into downloading it through many, many, many ads. This is a little disappointing, of course, but let’s face it — if you want to communicate for free, you have to deal with the ads. An overall impression of this app is ok, even though not exactly top-notch.
There are plenty of alternatives to Skout, especially if you are more interested in dating and matching than on a plain friendship. You can take a look at platforms such as Match, Zoosk, Elite Singles, Plenty of Fish, Tinder, and OK Cupid. If you are looking for more adult-oriented websites, AdultFriendFinder has got you covered. When looking for international friendships and romance, there are dozens of specialized websites targeting particular areas. Or, it is always possible to go with something that’s not geo-restricted, like InternationalCupid. All in all, we suggest segmenting your communication goals, meaning that you should stick to social media for socializing and choose dating sites for dating.
Skout is quite unique when compared to other social media sites and dating platforms. It brings people together from all around the world and does a good job at creating a solid community, while clearly being more focused on friendship than on dating. It is free to download, along with its main features. You should keep in mind that there are lots of users under the age of 18, so if you’re solely interested in finding a date, this is not the place for you.
Being heavily moderated, you won’t be able to post your own content, except for a profile photo that needs to be approved, and for comments and likes. So, depending on what you are interested in, you may find the public space of Skout a little boring and lacking in excitement. This, however, is really not a bad thing to most users, especially if you’re using the platform for what it was intended, which is building friendships with people from all corners of the world.
So, the quality of your experience on Skout is entirely based on the interaction nature you’re interested in. Many people who like to travel have made new friends here. When visiting a new place, it’s always a good idea to check Skout, as you’re not unlikely to end up with a place to crash overnight. Whether this turns into a date or not, it’s only up to the connection you establish with another user.