Sean Rad, Co-founder of Tinder

Former and current Tinder employees slapped a lawsuit against parent company Match Group, claiming the popular dating app was purposefully devalued at the time Match Group was valuating stock options. The Tinder employees suing Match Group were placed on administrative leave, according to a report by MSN.

The ten former and current Tinder employees initiating the lawsuit include founder and ex-CEO Sean Rad along with co-founders Justin Mateen and Jonathan Badeen. Tinder’s VP of Communications Rosette Pambakian has also joined the lawsuit, and claims that IAC/ Match Group executive Greg Blatt sexually harassed her at a company party. (IAC changed its name to Match Group, but the company is still owned by media mogul Barry Diller.)

Pambakian wrote an email to Tinder employees explaining her decision, as reported by Fortune Magazine:

Online daters aim high when it comes to hooking up and finding love. According to a recent study published in Science Advances, both men and women aspire to date partners who are “out of their league.”

Researchers from the University of Michigan and the Santa Fe Institute analyzed heterosexual dating habits in four major U.S. cities – New York, Boston, Chicago and Seattle – using messaging data from a popular unnamed online dating service. The results of the study revealed that singles pursue partners who are, on average, 25% more desirable than themselves.

A person’s desirability was determined in part by the number of initial messages they received. The most popular individual in all four cities was a 30-year-old woman living in New York, who received 1504 messages during the period of observation, equivalent to one message every 30 minutes, day and night, for the full month of the study.

However, desirability is not just about the quantity of people contacting a user - the quality of people also matters. Those who receive messages from highly desirable people are presumably more desirable themselves. To account for this, the researchers looked at the aggregate desirability of those sending the initial messages using PageRank scores.

Is your partner a doctor? A Libertarian? Obsessed with tattoos? If so, a series of surveys from married dating site Ashley Madison says they may be more likely to cheat.

As the world’s foremost experts in affairs, with more than 39 million users in 53 countries, the folks at Ashley Madison know a thing or two about infidelity. Several studies conducted by the company this year reveal the secrets of America’s cheaters, including who’s most likely to be unfaithful, what they’re attracted to when they do it, and which partners are most likely to forgive an adulterous indiscretion.

One survey determined the professions that are most likely to stray. The most common jobs for cheating women are in the medical field (nurses/doctors). “A combination of long hours of potential stress mixed with a natural reaction to stress just might be the reason these women in the medical profession seek out an affair,” reports Ashley Madison.

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.