Tinder, one of the world’s largest dating platforms, has been available to users as young as thirteen since the app launched almost four years ago. Tinder’s practice of letting teens use its app has been an anomaly in the industry, and one that hasn’t gotten as much attention as its reputation for quick hook-ups. But as of this month, the company has raised its minimum user age requirement up to eighteen.

This leaves many people asking: Tinder, what took you so long?

Online dating has been the subject of both opportunity and scorn in recent years. It's been a great way for people in different social circles to meet and expand their networks, but it has also posed a security risk, mostly due to a small percentage of users misleading other online daters by setting up fake profiles. Understandably, this has caused concern among parents whose teenagers have been using the popular dating app to find others to meet.

Tinder’s age verification is tied to Facebook, and the app has only let users who are younger than 18 see other users who are between the ages of 13-17. This would be fine in theory, but in practice it’s another story. This works only if the underage user has also set up a Facebook account with an accurate profile in which they reveal their real age. However, there is room for abuse if someone sets up a fake profile on Facebook, claiming to be eighteen or older, in order to continue using the app while underage.

Also understandably, this poses a problem for Tinder users who are reaching out to other users who they believe are age appropriate, only to find they are still teenagers. So while the restrictions are a move in a positive direction, it’s not a foolproof protection against fake profiles and catfishing.

All of the other popular online dating sites, including Match, eHarmony, and POF (Plenty of Fish) have had restrictions in place from the beginning when it comes to the ages of their users, and they all have a minimum requirement of eighteen. POF takes it one step further – if you are a female between 18-21, no guys over 30 years old can message or contact you over the service.

Tinder is attempting to make its platform a little more user-friendly, female-friendly, and age appropriate. It is also aiming to make daters of all sexual and gender identities feel more welcome. Recently, the company announced its plans to include transgender identification in profiles along with preferences.

So why did Tinder allow younger daters to use its app? Like all online dating services, it’s about the numbers. But since Tinder has a popular brand and large database of users now, it’s time they put the restrictions in place.

For more on this dating app, chck our our review of TInder.

Have you ever “touched up” one of your Tinder profile photos? Maybe you wanted to look more vibrant, or erase a double chin or receding hairline. If you have, you’re not alone.

Meitu, a popular photo retouching app, surveyed 250 online daters to find out their photo retouching practices, and to see how honestly people are presenting themselves to potential matches. Not surprisingly, they found a considerable portion of the respondents does retouch - 33% of women had retouched their photos and 20% of men had retouched theirs.

While it’s no secret that people optimize photos (look at all the filters on Instagram), it is interesting that this follows a trend in online dating where people have historically posted misleading images of themselves – either by using old photos from 10 years ago at a time when they were thinner or had more hair, or by Photoshopping  their “flaws,” like skin blemishes.

Along these lines, the survey found that 47 percent of men and 27 percent of women have encountered a first date who looked nothing like their profile image, feeding into the stereotype that many people lie about themselves to seem more attractive.

But what does it mean when someone admits to photo retouching? Is there a difference in perception between online daters who do a few touch-ups to enhance their features, compared to severely altering their images? Turns out, there is a difference.

Most survey respondents who admitted to photo retouching did only slight tweaks, such as blemish removal (44 percent of women and 28 percent of men), teeth whitening (18 percent women, 16 percent men), or lightening and darkening of skin tone (28 percent women, 20% men). For all categories, women seemed to do more tweaking in general than men. But the vast majority of both women and men said that some light retouching is fine with them (71 percent of women and 65 percent of men).

Most survey respondents agreed that more severe retouching, such as reshaping faces and body outlines is not okay. Ninety-eight percent of women and 91 percent of men don’t think it’s fine to retouch an image more than slightly.

In summary, avoid surprises on your first date by keeping photo edits simple and natural. Getting rid of that random pimple, adding a little color to your pre-summer skin, or brightening your smile is all good. But avoid anything that’s going to make you look like a different you!

Meitu surveyed men and women between the ages of 18-34 who had used online dating sites or mobile dating apps. 

According to Match’s Singles in America Study, most people are interested in long-term relationships, especially men. However, if you spend much time in the real world of online dating and dating apps, you see a different story unfold: most people are afraid to commit, less they lose their options for meeting other people.

It’s a double-edged sword: there are more options now thanks to apps like Tinder which have made meeting people online very easy, but there’s also the problem of choice as Aziz Ansari talks about in his book Modern Romance. When there are too many options, people tend to feel less satisfied with any one choice.

So what should daters do?

I read a Washington Post article recently penned by a single Mom, who used to find online dating a horrible, time-consuming experience. But since apps came into the picture and she’s able to swipe at any time, like say – between diaper changes or feedings, she finds it absolutely freeing. Dating apps have given her more confidence, because she knows that even when she has a bad date, she can always find someone else. At any time.

But for those of us who have experience looking for love for months or even years, you can start to feel a little bitter and exhausted from the process. After all, how many first dates can you go on before you feel like you’ve had the same conversations and met the same types over and over?

That’s why this summer I have a proposition: instead of looking for someone special, or jumping into a relationship too soon, or getting too excited about an online match before you’ve even met, try taking a step back. Swipe right on more profiles than you want. Try dating a range of people outside of a “type” you find most attractive.

And most importantly, date more than one person at a time. Really.

There’s no reason to continue with serial monogamy this summer, when you do have choices and you can explore your dating options a bit more than you have in the past. Instead of getting excited and let down, riding that roller coaster, try scheduling more dates and seeing all the people you can meet.

There’s no reason to fixate on one choice when you aren’t exclusive. Dating means exploring your options, testing the waters, and seeing who is out there. Plus, when you date outside your type, you are adding to your choices.

I’m not trying to stress out your already busy schedule, but why not take advantage of longer summer nights by keeping your options open? It can’t hurt. And you might have more fun when you don’t take things so seriously.

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.