Match Group released first quarter 2016 financial results on May 3. The company went public last November, and in its first earnings announcement as a publicly-traded company, Match Group fell short of earnings estimates by 5.3%. This time around, things are looking up.

Match Group reported sharply higher sales and profits in Q1 2016. Last quarter, the company’s dating revenues rose 14%, driven by a 30% increase in paid members. With that momentum, Match Group continued to perform well. Highlights of the quarter include:

• Total revenue rose 21% year over year to $285 million
• Dating revenue grew 24%, led by strong contributions from Tinder and PlentyOfFish
• Adjusted EBITDA nearly doubled over the prior year to $64.6 million
• Average PMC (paid member count) grew 36% to 5.1 million
• Tinder surpassed 1 million PMC as of the end of the quarter and successfully launched its first à la carte paid feature
• Operating income was up 8%, reflecting the strong Adjusted EBITDA growth
• Adjusted Net Income increased 30% as a result of the increase in Adjusted EBITDA
• Cash Flow nearly doubled to $68.5 million, while operating cash flow increased 88% to $75.0 million

Leading the charge is Tinder. “Tinder is really killing it. The numbers are great,” said Chairman and CEO Greg Blatt in an earnings call. “We're spending a lot of time improving the core product experience, experimenting with new product experiences, and yet continuing to rollout modernization initiatives, each of which has basically exceeded our expectations at the time of rolling it out.”

Along with its successes, the quarter saw Match Group slip in a few areas. Average revenue per paying user (ARPPU) declined 10% to $0.54, mostly due to the growth of relatively low-cost services such as Tinder, as well as the continued shift to mobile platforms. Non-dating revenue was flat at $25 million as a result of lower SAT test preparation course volume at The Princeton Review.

Looking forward, Match Group management expects second quarter dating revenue to grow by between 4% and 5% compared to Q1, with EBITDA margin percentage in the low to mid-30s. For the full year, the company predicts total dating revenue between $1.1 billion and $1.14 billion and overall adjusted EBITDA between $410 million and $425 million.

"Match Group posted very strong revenue and adjusted EBITDA growth in the first quarter, driven by exceptional growth at Tinder, solid performance of Meetic and Match, and the PlentyOfFish acquisition," Blatt said in a press release. "We expect solid year over year performance throughout the balance of 2016."

The Match Group list of dating services which we have reviewed include Match, OkCupid, Tinder, and Plenty of Fish.

Many online daters don’t really think about the time or day they login to their accounts to see their new matches. Because we have our phones on us all the time, we tend to check whenever we have the chance.

But a new study has come out from dating website eHarmony, which found that 2:00pm on Tuesday afternoons seem to be the best time to find love online.

eHarmony studied more than 800,000 logins to identify the peak hours throughout the week for finding matches and scheduling dates. Not surprisingly, nine of the ten peak times happened on Monday and Tuesday, right after the weekend, and also around lunchtime. (Perhaps this is to help with that “back to work” melancholy we all feel from time to time.)

But at 2:00pm on Tuesdays, eHarmony found that three times as many people log in than any other time of the week. Perhaps after a quick lunch date gone wrong? On the other hand, they found that the fewest people are online Sundays from 8:00pm to 8:30pm, Monday nights from 6:30 to 7:00pm, and strangely, Tuesdays from 7:30pm to 8:00pm. (Maybe that’s because they are on the dates they set up earlier in the afternoon? Or maybe many people are bored at work during the day, but prefer to watch Netflix at night rather than asking people out.)

This study is only based on eHarmony users, however. A similar study was released earlier this year by Nielson, who studied the patterns of online daters in the UK using Tinder and OkCupid. They found that the most people log in to find dates around 9:00pm, in direct contradiction to eHarmony’s users. (This could be because eHarmony’s users aren’t looking for the last-minute hook-up like some Tinder users.)

Previous studies, like those from Match, have indicated the best time of year for online dating is typically between January 1st and Valentine’s Day. Specifically, the best day of the year to snag some online dates is the Sunday evening after New Year’s Eve, around 9:00pm.

Regardless, there is no “right” or “wrong” time to log in to your online dating account. The best strategy is to check in on a regular basis, preferably every day, because people move fast. If you aren’t active, your profile goes inactive, too. Send more messages and try to engage when you can, even when you’re waiting in line at the grocery store.

Making time for online dating has become really easy and accessible, so take advantage.

Last year’s infamous Ashley Madison hack revealed a statistic that seemed to confirm what many already feared about online dating. The site’s database included over 31 million male users and just 5.5 million female users. Of those profiles, only a small percentage were real and active: around 20 million men and 2,500 women.

You don’t need to be a mathematician to know those numbers are bad.

The vast majority of Ashley Madison’s female users were inactive or, worse, not real to begin with. Since then, singles have become even more skeptical of the veracity of women’s profiles on dating sites. SurveyMonkey Intelligence recently put those suspicions to the test by studying which dating apps have the highest proportion of women.

The bottom of the bunch is no surprise: Grindr, an app geared towards gay and bisexual men. Some of the entries farther up on the list are equally unsurprising. Coffee Meets Bagel and Bumble, both female-friendly apps, scored relatively high. Tinder and PlentyOfFish found themselves in the middle of the pack, despite having more users than any of the other apps tested.

But the number one spot is where things get interesting. Topping the list, with a userbase that’s 58.6% female, is Christian Mingle. Christian Mingle, Coffee Meets Bagel, and eHarmony are the only apps that have a majority of female users. Who would have guessed that a niche, faith-focused dating app would rank so highly?

SurveyMonkey Intelligence also found that men and women use dating apps differently. Looking at what percentage of users engage with an app on a daily basis, the results are almost flipped. Grindr is the clear leader, with 70.3% of users engaged each day. Christian Mingle and eHarmony bring up the rear with 33.7% and 28.7%, respectively.

It could be that men are generally more engaged daters than women or, as SurveyMonkey Intelligence speculates, it could down to Grindr’s demographic. Because the app is geared towards a targeted market, Grindr users may stick to one app while other demographics spread their efforts among multiple services.

SurveyMonkey Intelligence tested a variety of other factors (read the full report here) and closed with a few tips. “Straight men may want to check out Coffee Meets Bagel, while straight women can confidently choose between a number of apps where the gender ratio is favorable,” the report advises.

It’s also important to take your dating style into account. If you’re the spontaneous type who wants dating to be part of your daily life, SurveyMonkey suggests trying your luck with the highly-engaged users of Happn. If, on the other hand, you take a more relaxed approach, the more infrequent users of Coffee Meets Bagel could be more your speed.

According to a recent article in Bloomberg News, Tinder expects its paid subscriber base will double by the end of the year.

The Tinder app is free to use, but about 1 million users are currently paying for its tiered service, which provides special features, such as the ability to “super-like” a profile. Super-like allows you to let the person know you think they are extra special, instead of just swiping right as usual. Other paid features include “Rewind” where users can return to a previous profile they swiped left on, or rejected, for the opportunity to choose differently.

Tinder announced recently that it will launch a new social feature to its app to connect groups of friends who share common interests. There is no news on whether that will be part of its free platform or a new paid feature, too.

Gary Swidler, chief financial officer of Tinder's parent company, Match Group Inc., described efforts to monetize the dating app as being "ahead of schedule."

Subscribers aren’t Tinder’s only source of income. The company originally started drawing revenue from ad sales.

Tinder’s huge database of more than 9 million daily users and its well-known brand, especially among the coveted Millennial age group, makes the app a great advertising vehicle for many companies looking to expand their brand awareness. Users of the service spend roughly 35 minutes per day on the app and swipe left or right 140 times, according to company executives. This means a captive audience, which is also appealing to marketers.

While Tinder will continue to sell advertising over its platform (one of the drawbacks of using the free app), they will also push forward with gaining more subscribers and developing more paid features. Tinder garnered criticism last year for charging more money to users over 30, but the company has not since changed its pricing policy.

Because of the growth in Tinder’s revenue, the management team told Bloomberg they feel confident in adding new features to the service and “taking some swings,” in terms of taking chances with the features. The company admitted it hasn’t made any significant changes to the app since adding the “Super-like” feature last November, though recently they were testing the social feature which links you through your Facebook friends to other friend groups and garnered criticism for its lack of privacy. (Users could see their Facebook friends’ Tinder profiles without their knowledge.)

Tinder is owned by Match Group, which also owns popular dating platforms Match, OkCupid, and Plenty of Fish.

There has been speculation that Match Group’s star performer in the online dating space – dating app Tinder – would cannibalize its other online dating companies. But so far, contrary to analysts’ reports, this hasn’t happened.

Tinder is by far the dating app industry giant, with over 25 million active users and about 1 million paid subscribers in its tiered program. Some analysts have feared that because of Tinder’s rapid growth and free platform, it would mean users would leave other popular online dating sites in Match Group (like Match, Plenty of Fish and OkCupid) to join Tinder, making them obsolete.

What they found instead was that Match Group’s overall earnings were up in the first quarter of 2016, thanks in part to the POF acquisition and Match Group’s strategy to grow and invest in Tinder’s rivals.

Overall revenue came in at $285 million in its first quarter, $3 million over expected revenues.

Greg Blatt, chairman and CEO of Match Group, said in the first quarter earnings release: "Match Group posted very strong revenue and Adjusted EBITDA growth in the first quarter, driven by exceptional growth at Tinder, solid performance of Meetic and Match, and the PlentyOfFish acquisition."

Bank of America Merrill Lynch explained that "even without Tinder, Match would have grown its core Dating subscribers by 6% (up from about 1% last quarter) and its Dating revenue by significantly more."

The POF acquisition is an important factor in the revenue numbers. The dating website grew tremendously itself over the years with 70 million registered users, and operated for many years on a shoestring budget with one employee, Markus Frind, who created the dating site and sold it to IAC (Match Group’s parent company) for $575 million in 2015.

Over time if Tinder’s popularity continues to grow, and the app itself makes improvements that resonate with its users, then there could be an impact to Match Group’s other businesses. For now, POF, Match, and OkCupid are still going strong.

One solution that has been floated in the media is for Tinder to advertise other Match Group properties on its app. (Tinder’s revenue comes mainly from paid advertising, rather than its tiered service.)

For the most part, online daters are not beholden to one site or app, preferring to join two or more at any given time. Because of Tinder’s growth, it has grown the entire online dating industry in just three short years, and made online dating a more acceptable practice. Numerous dating apps are launching every week, hoping to cash in on Tinder’s market share and success.

It seems to be a win-win for the online dating industry as a whole, even in a saturated market.

To coincide with LGBT Pride Month in the United States, China’s most popular gay social networking app announced last month a major milestone. Blued, founded in 2012, has completed its latest rounds of investor financing and now has a value of $300 million.

Blued claimed more than 27 million registered users globally as a February 2016, with overseas users accounting for more than 20 percent of the total. Not only does that make it China’s biggest gay dating app and bigger than Grindr, it also makes Blued one of the top social networking apps on the App Store.

Geng Le, CEO of Blued, said the company has seen significant revenue growth, particularly in the first half of 2016 when it started to make a profit. The app primarily makes money from advertising and live streaming, where audiences can tune into live-streaming video broadcasts and send virtual gifts to the broadcasters.

"With the funding, we plan to speed up our international expansion, and localize our products overseas,” Geng said. “We will promote the marketing and branding, and set up more offices overseas. We also plan to hire more competitive staff, and we will pay them a considerable salary."

Blued currently operates offices abroad in the United States and Thailand. The app has been translated into nine languages and its users hail from more than 190 countries and regions.

What has made Blued so explosively popular? As one of the earliest Chinese-language, geo-dating apps for gay singles in the region, Blued got an early foothold in the market. And given that China’s population is 1.3 billion - 1.7 million of which are estimated to fall on the LGBT spectrum - that market is potentially enormous.

“The gay business is a piece of virgin territory in China, and we hope to become a leader of this lucrative market,” Geng Le told China Daily this week. “The substantial spending ability of gays and the funding support we got indicate the strong power of the so-called pink economy.”

For comparison, consider Grindr. As the world’s other best-known gay dating app, Grindr was valued at $155 million earlier this year when it sought its most recent investment in China. Grindr has more than two million daily active users, according to a factsheet from June 2015. Blued has over three million.

The numbers bode well for Blued, which is preparing to shift its strategy in light of the good news. Last November, Geng Le said that Blued was aiming for a stock market flotation within five years. China Daily reports that the company now hopes to achieve it within the next one to two years, though the location of the listing is not yet known.