Match

Things we were into in 2013: Nelson Mandela, the iPhone 5s, bingewatching, twerking, Bitcoin, Bat-Kid, Breaking Bad, the royal baby, Grumpy Cat, and screaming goats.

Earlier this month Google released its annual Zeitgeist List, a collection of the top Google searches for the last 365 days that reveal what defined the year in pop culture, politics, technology, and more. "Every day, around the world, we search," Amit Singhal, senior vice president and Google Fellow, wrote in a Dec. 17 blog post. "We want to find out more about our heroes, explore far-away destinations or settle a dinner-table dispute between friends."

Because of that compulsive urge to search anything and everything online, Google is given unprecedented access to what captures the public imagination. The year-end Zeitgeist list uses Google Trends and other internal data tools to tap into the top trending searches of 2013 from 72 countries, and create a snapshot of the biggest people, places, moments, companies, and gadgets of the year.

Online dating plays an increasingly large role in the way we meet and choose our partners, so naturally Google included the year's most popular online dating services on the list. According to Google Zeitgeist, 2013's top ten dating services are:

1. Match.com
2. Chemistry.com
3. PlentyOfFish.com
4. Zoosk.com
5. eHarmony.com
6. FriendFinder.com
7. Tinder
8. Hinge
9. OurTime.com
10. OkCupid

Many of last year's entries are back again, though none retained the same positions. Match moved up a spot from #2 to #1, while PlentyOfFish dropped from the first place to third. OkCupid took a major hit in 2013, falling to #10 from #3 in 2012. Zoosk climbed a couple of spots to the forth position, and eHarmony fell slightly to fifth.

DateHookup, ChristianMingle, AdultFriendFinder, JDate, and SinglesNet all ranked last year but failed to make it on the 2013 Zeitgeist list. Instead, FriendFinder, OurTime, Chemistry, Tinder, and Hinge came from behind to take their place.

The most interesting additions to the list are, without a doubt, those last two. Tinder uses Facebook profiles to match members who respond with a simple left or right swipe to say "Yes" or "No." Hinge appears similar at first glance, but uses a "romance graph" to pair you with friends of friends that best suit your style - in other words, Tinder might get you a great hookup, but Hinge will find you a great relationship. Mobile dating took off in a big way this year, and shows no sign of stopping, so expect to see even more mobile services on the 2014 Zeitgeist report.

Every year, Julie Spira and the team behind Cyber-Dating Expert release a list of the best and newest mobile dating application available. This year's 4th annual list couldn't have come at a better time. A recent Pew report on online dating and relationships examined the impact of mobile dating to find that it is rapidly stealing the spotlight from web-based dating services.

Pew found that 7% of mobile phone owners report using a dating application on their smartphone. There's just something about the convenience of dating with a tiny handheld device that's impossible to resist. And not only does it result in meeting more people, Spira says, it also speeds up the process from first communication to meeting in person.

When Aaron Schildkrout cofounded HowAboutWe.com, he had a vision for online dating, one that didn't rely on complex mathematical calculations to determine whether two people are compatible. He pictured a site where real-life dates were the focus, so users got straight to what really matters: meeting face-to-face.

"We branded ourselves as the offline dating site, as explicitly an alternative to these profile-heavy matching algorithm dating sites," he told The Washington Post. "It's about getting offline, going to the real world and getting chemistry."

It appears to be a smart approach at first glance, but since its founding in 2009, HowAboutWe has evolved to depend more on formulas, not less. As more and more users joined the site, the challenge was no longer to show them as many potential dates as possible, but to show them the right dates. In order to create an experience worth coming back for, HowAboutWe needed to get smarter.

HowAboutWe's two-person data science team created an algorithm that combines a user's profile information (like date ideas and demographics) with data gathered from that person's behavior on the site (e.g. what kind of profiles they looked at and how often).

In contrast to HowAboutWe's focus on casual dating, eHarmony believes its users are looking for long term relationships and its algorithm reflects that. eHarmony members are required to fill out a personality questionnaire with hundreds of parts developed from research of around 50,000 happily married couples. To determine compatibility, historical data is paired with analysis of users' behavior on the site and the constraints, like target age range, people place on their matches.

As expected, predicting love is no easy feat. Match.com president Amarnath Thombre says that what users claim they're looking for is often not the kind of profiles they actually view. How did Match cope with the mixed signals? "We said, 'We're going to base these things way more on actions you take. . . . If you start breaking your rules, we're going to start ignoring your rules,' " Thombre explained.

On AshleyMadison.com, the popular matchmaking site for affair-seekers, matching is driven almost entirely by an algorithm. "At least when it comes to the topic of infidelity, traditional research avenues have been kind of absent," said founder Noel Biderman. "There aren't a lot of universities out there that can give you wholesale data on how unfaithful this population or society is or what triggers this."

Can a mathematical formula ever fully replace the magic of serendipity? It seems unlikely, but if the two can work together, we stand a better chance of finding love than ever before.

For more about Aaron Schildkrout dating site you can read our review on How About We.

Four of the biggest names in the dating industry have released their 2013 third quarter financial info. And it's probably a surprise to no one actively involved in online dating that IAC, Meetic, Spark Networks, and MeetMe all saw growth.

IAC

Revenue for Q3 2013 was $756.9 million, a growth of 6% from Q3 2012, the majority of which came from Search & Applications. Websites revenue increased primarily due to the contribution from About.com (acquired September 24, 2012) and CityGrid Media (moved from Local to Search & Applications in July 2013).

IAC also saw growth in Match revenue. Core, Meetic, and Developing revenues grew 7%, 11% and 58% to $118.8 million, $56.3 million and $26.0 million, respectively, thanks to increased subscribers and the contribution of the introduction service Twoo. As of September 30, 2013, IAC had $768.0 million in cash and cash equivalents and marketable securities as well as $580.0 million in long-term debt.

Meetic

At the end of Q3, Meetic, the European leader in online dating, had increased revenue over the first nine months of 2013 by 2.7% to €126.1 million. Meetic's subscribers for the same period of 2013 increased by 72,998 or 9.5% year over year to 840,801 as of September 30 , 2013. Meetic owes the majority of its growth to its online offerings, but mobile is playing an increasingly important role in the company's success.

Spark Networks

Total revenue for Spark Networks grew for the 11th consecutive quarter in Q3 2013. Divided, Christian Networks revenue grew for the 12th consecutive quarter and Jewish Networks revenue grew for the 2nd consecutive quarter. Q3 2013 revenue totaled $17.4 million, up from $15.9 million in Q3 2012. Most importantly for Spark Networks, revenue growth outpaced the growth of marketing expense, meaning company-wide contribution hit its highest level since the first half of 2012.

MeetMe

MeetMe's 10.1 million in quarterly revenue for Q3 2013 was primarily driven by its mobile segment. Mobile revenue reached another quarterly record of 2.9 million, up 65% year-over-year and 12% sequentially from the second quarter of 2013. The MeetMe team is now focused on driving engagement and bringing new audiences to the MeetMe application, with a significant update planned for the first quarter of 2014.

David Clark, Chief Financial Officer of MeetMe, added, "Third quarter results build on the improvement in top and bottom line financial performance achieved in the second quarter. Together with the launch of our new apps, we are encouraged by the start of what is traditionally our seasonally strongest quarter.

Are you concerned about your privacy when you use online dating sites? EFF is, and you should be too.

What is EFF? EFF is the Electronic Frontier Foundation, an organization dedicated to confronting cutting-edge issues defending free speech, privacy, innovation, and consumer rights in today's digital world. Of course, no discussion of today's digital world would be complete without a conversation about online dating sites. When EFF examined eight popular online dating sites to see how well they safeguard user privacy, they found that the majority of the sites tested did not take even basic security precautions.

We already took a look at how well the two most popular free dating sites, Plenty of Fish and OkCupid, performed on EFF's tests, and the results were less than stellar. Now the question is: does paying for a dating service guarantee better protection of your privacy? Let's take a look at how major dating sites eHarmony and Match stacked up against the freebies...

Neither Match nor eHarmony uses HTTPS, standard Web encryption, by default. By failing to use HTTPS, these sites expose their users to eavesdroppers when accessed from shared networks. All it takes is free software such as Wireshark for someone to access data that is transmitted in plaintext. This is potentially worrisome on any website, but it's particularly distressing on dating sites where information of a sensitive nature is routinely posted.

The next factor tested by EFF was whether or not the sites are free of mixed content. Mixed content is a problem that occurs when the site is primarily secured with HTTPS, but delivers part of its content over an insecure connection. Even if a page is encrypted over HTTPS, it may still be possible for an eavesdropper to access portions of the page if it displays mixed content. In some cases, EFF warns, a sophisticated attacker could even rewrite the entire page. Both eHarmony and Match contain mixed content.

EFF also tested whether the sites use secure cookies or HSTS. Failing to use secure cookies, which both eHarmony and Match are guilty of, can expose users to session hijacking. HSTS (HTTPS Strict Transport Security) can be used to request the use of HTTPS when communicating with a specific website. The user's browser will remember this request and automatically turn on HTTPS when connecting to the site in the future. Once again, both Match and eHarmony failed to employ HSTS.

Finally, EFF investigated the sites' policies on deleting data after the closure of a user's account. eHarmony's policy was deemed "vague," while on Match.com the fate of a user's information wasn't discussed at all.

So, where privacy is concerned, does it pay to pay? According to EFF, the answer is no. There is no significant difference between free dating sites and paid dating sites when it comes to privacy and security practices.

A few years ago, Match.com became a household name when it comes to online dating. Now that mobile apps like Tinder have gained popularity and people are looking to newer and niche online dating sites like JDate or How About We, people are starting to see what else is out there.

In fact, social media, and Facebook in particular, are becoming players in the game. While traditional sites rely on new sign-ups and static searches, social media-friendly dating sites and apps pull information from a vast pool of active Facebook profiles and introduce you to friends of friends in your network. This has become a big draw for people, because most singles feel more comfortable meeting someone new if they have a friend in common. This is especially true for women, who are sometimes skeptical of the safety of online dating.

According to an article in Wall Street Cheat Sheet, entrepreneurs are just beginning to understand the importance of utilizing social media in industries like online dating, which could mean big revenues in the future. LinkedIn has gained traction in the social media space because the platform focuses solely on job seekers and networkers looking for career opportunities. There is a sense of trust when someone comes recommended for a job by a mutual friend or co-worker, so companies are looking to the service to attract new employees. So why not apply the same principal to those looking for a date?