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One of the United Kingdom’s fastest growing dating services is Cupid plc. Two of their more popular dating sites includes Cupid.com and Flirt.

In February of this year they surpassed 100 million unique visitors. Last year during the same period they had only 15 million. The United States accounts for about a quarter of their traffic with the rest coming from Europe. Cupid reports average monthly global sales of around $9 million USD.

Cupid.com also just recently launched a HD iPad app. They already have native apps for both the iPhone and Android devices.

For more on the story you can read the press release and to find out about the dating site you can check out our Cupid.com review.

This Canada Day weekend eHarmony.ca is having a free communication event which will run from Friday June 29th, 2012 until Monday July 2nd, 2012 (Canadian site only).

Holiday weekends are always a busy time for dating sites. If you were thinking about trying out eHarmony, this 4 day event is a perfect opportunity for you. As always it is free to sign up and create a profile on eHarmony. You also are allowed for free to receive matches and check out their profiles. What free communication weekends allow you to do (as the name may suggest 😊) is communicate with those matches at no cost to you and with no credit card required. The only features not available are secure call, photos and skipping the guided communication process and going directly to email.

To find out more about how this dating site works and what features it offers when compared to other services, please read our review of eHarmony.

eHarmony in Canada is offering free communication this weekend. It starts today, Friday May 18th and runs straight until Monday May 21st, 2012. This weekend is also a long weekend for Canadians since Monday is the Victoria Day holiday. This is also the first holiday of the season which marks the beginning of summer for most Canadians.

As with other free communication weekends at eHarmony, all you need to do to participate is become a member. You can join for free and create a profile. Once this is complete you will receive your first matches and then be able to begin the communication process with your selections. No credit card is required. This promotion does not include viewing photos, Secure Call or Skip to Email.

For more about this popular North American dating service for singles looking to find a long-term relationship you can read our review of eHarmony.

An article from Canoe took a look at online dating statistics in Canada.

From a cross-Canada survey conducted by Leger Marketing, they concluded the following points:

• 25 percent of Canadians have tried online dating. The percentage rises to 36 percent if you look at people between the ages of 18 and 34 (much higher than in 2009)
• Still, the majority of people do not plan to try online dating as 69 percent of them said that it is not likely they could find love online
• 64 percent of singles using online dating say that common interests is the most important factor when looking for a match
• 49 percent of singles using online dating say that physical characteristics from photos and videos is the most important factor when choosing a match
• 39 percent of all the Canadians surveyed said that they actually read over all of the information provided in a dating profile

Online dating has seen a huge increase in popularity in the last few years in Canada and the rest of the world. According to the Canadian owned dating site Plenty Of Fish, they have seen a 40 percent increase in memberships over the last 2 years. Plenty Of Fish currently has 33 million registered users from around the world.

Match.com (Match.ca in Canada) is now powering online dating at Yahoo! Canada. Yahoo in the United States has been using Match.com since May of 2010 (see Story). Previously Lavalife had partnered with Yahoo! Canada to provide online dating to their visitors (see Story).

To find out more about this dating site you can check out our Match.com review.

China's leading dating site, Jiayuan.com has roughly a million users a month now who pay for the privilege to exchange messages with other members. The messages can be paid for by either the sender or the receiver. Their second quarter earnings this year almost doubled to $12.9 million when compared to the same quarter last year. Jiayuan listed on the Nasdaq back in May and since then their stock price has jumped 21 percent (as of last Friday). This is very good especially when you compare it to other Nasdaq listed Internet companies from China (most have fallen).

Jiayuan never relied heavily on advertising on their site as a source of income. In 2008 advertising made up only 15 percent of their revenue. Online advertising is a very competitive market with slim margins and for this reason at the start of this year Jiayuan decided to drop advertising from their dating site completely. Supporting a sales staff and the way it affected the user experience just did not make it profitable. Paid messaging now accounts for 80 percent of their revenue with the other 20 percent generated from in-person events and a premium service members can use to hire a human matchmaker.

For more on the story you can read the WSJ.