Match Group, the parent company of popular dating apps such as Tinder, OkCupid, and PlentyofFish, reported second quarter earnings of $421 million, exceeding industry analyst expectations.

The rise in profits was thanks to its star app Tinder, which gained an additional 300,000 subscribers in Q2 alone, and has seen a record 3.8 million subscribers to date. Match Group expects to earn $1.72 billion this year, with Tinder expected to exceed $800 million in revenue, according to Fortune Magazine. Match Group’s subscribers for all apps total about 7.7 million.

“Retention and conversion were a bit stronger than we thought they would be,” Chief Executive Mandy Ginsberg told website MarketWatch.

Are you more progressive or conservative? Turns out it makes a difference in your love life. OkCupid recently found that among its members, ACLU supporters, who are generally associated with more progressive political views, get more dates.

Talking politics on a date has historically been tricky, especially now with the U.S. so divided. Because politics is front and center in our lives today, online daters like to know where allegiances lie before they decide whether to like or pass on a person. Political beliefs do matter when it comes to dating, which is why OkCupid came up with a way for users to identify someone’s politics up front, offering badges to show what causes the user supports, like the ACLU.

Image: JaneManchunWong

Facebook dominated dating industry news in May when it announced plans to launch a dating product at the company’s annual F8 developer conference. Reactions ran the gamut from blase to snarky to supportive, but specifics about how the feature would look and function were scarce.

Now, after months of speculation, independent app researcher and reverse engineer Jane Manchun Wong reveals that the social media giant has taken major steps towards releasing the feature. Facebook is now testing its dating product internally with employees, and screenshots suggest what the feature may have in store for the public when it officially debuts.

Wong was able to access the signup screen for the new feature. The screen greets users with the message “For Facebook Employees” and goes on to explain that the product is currently for US Facebook employees who have opted-in to “dogfooding” - a tech industry term that refers to testing products internally on a company’s own employees - the upcoming dating feature.

Update 2020-01-23: It looks like by July 2019, Seeking reverted back to the original name Seeking Arrangement. The domain to access the dating service still remains Seeking.com

Seeking Arrangement (SeekingArrangement.com) in June of 2018 quietly changed their name to Seeking and started redirecting all traffic to Seeking.com. The Android app was also updated with the new name.

Nothing else has appeared to change for the dating service. In fact if you visit the website you will still find many mentions of the original name Seeking Arrangement including on the "About Us" page.

Chinese dating scammers are in hot water this summer. More than a thousand members of fraud rings have been arrested in the country over the last two months, potentially saving thousands of singles from falling victim to their deceit.

In June, police in the southern province of Guangdong cracked down on 13 gangs who posed as attractive women in order to con men into purchasing pricey products like tea and wine. Authorities apprehended a total of 1,310 suspects, each of whom could approach up to 1,500 victims per month.

“These scam gangs [succeed] because they capture the psychology of many men: When facing beautiful women, men lose their judgement, and feel too shy to refuse,” a Guangdong police officer said at a briefing about the arrests.

Chinese Tinder clone Tantan is embracing the future with open arms.

Like several of its colleagues in the United States -- including Match, Happn, and Hinge -- Tantan is experimenting with artificial intelligence as a tool for modern matchmaking. Chief Executive Yu Wang announced earlier this month at RISE Hong Kong that AI is a primary focus for the company in the second half of 2018, and that he hopes it will be a key driver of growth going forward.

The technology will be used to improve the accuracy of user acquisition and advertising, as well as to boost growth in user numbers and revenues more generally.