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Consumers aren't the only ones excited about iOS 8. Apple launched several new features with the operating system that expand the capabilities of third-party apps, and app developers are keen to take advantage of them.

Most excitingly, iOS 8 lets devs use the Touch ID fingerprint sensor included in the iPhone 5s and the new iPhone 6 models. This means apps that would ordinarily use the Passcode feature can now include the fingerprint sensor instead, bypassing the need for a traditional password once a user's account has been verified.

Developers have jumped on the new opportunity and, left and right, are updating their apps. Here's a round-up of some of the apps that have adopted Touch ID:

• LastPass: The popular password management app now uses Touch ID to secure a user's password vault.
• Amazon: Where would any of us be without Amazon.com making our lives 101% easier? And now that the Amazon iPhone app includes Touch ID, it's even easier than that.
• Mint: Users can now log in to this money management app with Touch ID rather than their password.
• Day One: An award-winning journaling app. Users can lock their journals with Touch ID instead of a passcode.
• Evernote: Evernote is a modern workspace that helps you be your most productive self. Now it makes your life even easier by allowing premium users to use Touch ID to secure their accounts.
• YPlan: What are you up to tonight? YPlan is an event discovery app designed to help you answer that question by discovering and booking the best events in your area. Touch ID is now used for purchase authorization.
• eHarmony: You didn't think I'd forget to include a dating app, did you? Say goodbye to the days of user logins... if eHarmony is your dating service of choice, you can now use Touch ID instead.

Let's here it for iOS 8. Logging in to many of your favorite accounts is now as easy as resting your finger on that shiny new Touch ID sensor. Not only does it make sign-ins easier and provide another layer of security, it does so in a way that keeps with the overall Apple aesthetic and ethos. If you use any of these mobile services, take advantage of the Touch ID improvements and update your apps ASAP.

Online dating sites like OkCupid and Plenty of Fish have had a free model for a long time, which has managed to expand their membership databases and make them tough contenders with paid sites such as Match.com and eHarmony. But now that free dating apps like Tinder have entered the picture and taken the dating world by storm, the paid dating sites have seen not only a decline in membership, but also in revenues.

Is online dating on its way out?

According to a recent article in The Economist, paid online dating sites have reason to worry. In the article, The Economist points out Cupid, who runs subscription-based dating websites such as Cupid.com, UniformDating.com, and LoveBeginsAt.com, announced a $4.9 million loss in the first 6 months of 2014, up 20% from last year. The number of members has dropped, too. At the end of 2012, Cupid’s sites had 113,000 paying members, but by June 2014, they had just 48,000.

While this is a disturbing trend for online dating sites like Cupid – which haven’t really taken off like other paid sites Match.com and eHarmony – it could weed out many contenders in the online dating market over the next couple of years. However in contrast to Cupid's earnings, eHarmony recently reported incredible subscriber growth and better earnings than they have seen in years, due to focusing on long-term relationships and technology that they market as extremely valuable for finding the “right” match.

But what about popular free dating apps and websites like Tinder and old-timer OkCupid? They have attracted users because of their easy set-up and accessibility. They have made online dating less intimidating, (although a little more sketchy according to some users). Are they responsible for the decline in companies like Cupid? 

Not necessarily. Even free apps and websites aren’t so free anymore.

There has been a shift for the free dating apps and online sites to offer “freemium” services – that is, additional features to the basic service but for a price. In the current online dating market, revenue growth needs to happen for investors to remain interested, and that means charging for services once the user base is built. Tinder recently announced that it will launch a premium paid service in early November, while the basic features of the app will still be free. OkCupid started with a freemium model a while ago, charging users who want to filter profiles according to user preferences, or to be able to review and see reviews of other members.

Still others like eHarmony are adding more personalized matchmaking services at a very high price – thousands per year – for those who want a relationship but would like someone else to do the heavy lifting. eHarmony has not reported numbers to see the success of this particular service.

So what does the future look like for online dating? One thing is for sure: free models likely won’t last forever.

It's one thing to speculate about what's going on with eHarmony these days, but it's quite another to hear it straight from the horse's mouth.

Ok, not a horse – Dr. Neil Clark Warren, CEO of eHarmony and instantly-recognizable white-haired man from the eHarmony commercials. On August 22nd, 2014, the 14th anniversary of eHarmony's founding, Warren sent an internal memo with an insider's look at the company he believes could become “one of the most important companies in the history of the world.”

Read the full thing www.onlinepersonalswatch.com/news/2014/10/eharmony-internal-memo.html and check out some of the highlights below:

• After nearly losing the company in 2012, eHarmony is back on track with a five-year turnaround plan.
• It wasn't easy. Board members were asked to step down, employees were fired, vendor contracts were terminated, and an all-new executive management team was put in place.
• Even some of eHarmony's top leadership changed. Grant Langston and Dan Erickson were appointed to the Management Team, and Armen Avedissian was hired as the new COO.
• Just two years in, the company is showing signs of a major comeback. “Instead of losing 100,000 end of period subscribers each year,” writes Warren, “suffering EBITDA losses of 50% every single year, our EBITDA for 2014 will literally be dramatic and the cash in the bank increasing substantially each month.” eHarmony's end of period paying subscriber count has hit an all-time high.
• A major move is in the works. eHarmony's offices will be relocating to prestigious digs on Wilshire Boulevard in Los Angeles.
• The current business plan includes building ten separate relationship businesses with ten separate revenue streams.
• eHarmony intends to scale up by increasing its international reach. The company now employs 190 staff members in North America, the UK, and Australia, but hopes to reach other countries in the future – first in English, then in their native languages.
• Selling the company is definitely not part of the plan. “We do not ever again wish to expose the ownership and management of our business to persons who know almost nothing about relationships,” says Warren, “and have even less commitment to the sacredness of the relationships we are attempting to assist.”

Warren is feeling confident about the future of eHarmony. Maybe even a little over-confident, actually. Case in point:

“Bottom line, as a company, we want to bring about a world in which literally everyone has peace, love, joy, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Then, we will know that we have reached our loftiest and most idealistic goals.”

Whew. “Idealistic” is right. But all the best to them, and if they get even halfway there, eHarmony will be a rousing success. For more on this dating site you can check out our eHarmony review.

For the second month in a row eHarmony has sent out a coupon code for our visitors. This one is even better since it gives you 60% off a 6 month membership. it is also available not only in the United States but Canada as well. The code is only valid for 4 days which starts today (Oct 30) and ends at the end of the day on November 2nd, 2014.

The coupon code is: EHSALE60

To use this code you need to create a free profile at eHarmony. This involves giving information about yourself like your age and gender. Once completed you will then need to take the personality questionnaire. This is where the matching magic happens so it is important you take your time and answer the questions the best you can. Depending on if you are filling the questionnaire out on the website or through the eHarmony dating app it should take you from 20 minutes to 40 minutes to complete.

After your profile is finished you will then receive your first batch of matches. At this point you can go ahead and take a look at your matches but communication with them will be limited. If you find any matches you like you can then go ahead and purchase a membership. Just make sure at checkout to enter the code above to receive your 60% off. At this price a eHarmony membership will cost about $25 a month.

To find out more about this online dating site please take a look at our detailed review of eHarmony.

Steve Harvey has been dishing out dating advice to women quite successfully over the years, because he knows what it was like to be a man playing around without really wanting to commit. His book Act Like a Lady, Think Like a Man, was a best-seller among the hundreds of dating advice books to hit the market. Now, he’s teamed up with Match.com to create a dating site called “Delightful” that competes directly with marriage-minded sites like eHarmony.

"Women want to date with the goal that it turns into a relationship," Harvey told The Chicago Tribune in a recent article. "It kind of breaks my heart when I have women on my show who've been on 50, 100 dates. Something's not right if you have to go out with 100 people."

This comment made me wonder - has Steve Harvey actually tried online dating? Tinder? Most of us have been on at least 50 dates, if not more. I don’t think there’s something wrong with people dating in those numbers, because there are so many opportunities now to meet people.

But I do agree that most daters don’t really invest in getting to know the person sitting in front of them on any given date. There are too many options to be that committal, so they typically move fast. Steve Harvey’s comment rings true when we consider how much time we invest with such little return. I write about this in my book Date Expectations.

Website Delightful aims to change those statistics, with a little help from Harvey. Sam Yagan, CEO of the Match Group, said in a statement, "To take [Steve’s] power and his outlook on relationships and his views on love and combine that with the technology and algorithms that we know to work creates a powerful new category." In other words, the celebrity factor is key in the marketing of the new site.

Others have tried this before. Take the host of The Bachelor Chris Harrison, who last year launched a video-based dating app called At First Sight, hoping to capitalize on his celebrity. It hasn’t quite taken off like Tinder, despite its appealing premise of seeing a short video of potential dates, rather than just viewing photos.

Harvey and Match expect their approach to be different. After all, Harvey is a dating advice coach with his own TV show, and has helped many women find lasting relationships. He is an expert, not just a celebrity.

"We're going to help women get themselves out of the hunting game," Harvey said. "And we're going to make a concerted effort to get men on here who are looking more seriously for a relationship instead of just dating a lot of people."

As for how they will compete with successful marriage-minded sites like eHarmony, Yagan is a little unclear. Instead, he compares Delightful to OkCupid and Tinder, which are known more for their hook-up appeal, saying that at the end of the day when people want relationships, they will look to Delightful instead.

eHarmony was on the brink of disaster in 2012, ready to be sold to the highest bidder on the auction block, at least according to a recent article on Online Dating Insider. But the company was determined to turn things around.

According to eHarmony executives, “We took our hard won stash of capital and used $153.2M to buy out all the “Class B” shares, and we began the pursuit of our own company.  We asked five of our former and highly-esteemed board members to step aside and give us a chance to do more of what we needed to do to bring this company back.  We made tough decisions…let some people go, terminated vendor contracts. Moreover, we have cleaned up “our house” by appointing an all-new executive management team that is a more aligned team than we have ever had before.”

For those of us who did not know eHarmony was on the brink of financial ruin, this letter came as a surprise. In the time they were desperately struggling to tread water, Neil Clarke Warren, the company’s founder, came back on board as CEO and reminded the company of the reason they were successful in the first place – their focus on matching for long-term relationships.

While most dating sites and apps have gone in the opposite direction – focusing on quantity instead of quality of matches, and casual meetings instead of long-term relationship potential, eHamorny’s serious focus has paid off.

“Instead of losing 100,000 end of period subscribers each year, suffering...losses of 50% every single year, our EBITDA for 2014 will literally be dramatic and the cash in the bank increasing substantially each month. EBITDA is currently running $9.4M ahead of plan as we work with our forecasts. Our end of period paying subscriber count has hit its all-time high...”

eHarmony was not afraid to get rid of what wasn’t working. Trimming staff by over 30%, they went from about 300 employees to only 190 in all of the U.S., U.K. and Australia. They have also dropped vendors who weren’t contributing to the primary focus of the site – relationships. (That is, focusing on the long-term potential.)

eHarmony’s success rate speaks for itself. It claims to have made more than 600,000 marriages, and has only a 3.86% divorce rate (compared to the over 50% divorce rate of Americans in general).

The company plans to take its technology in other directions besides love. They are planning the launch of Elevated Careers by eHarmony, where they hope to make successful coupling between potential employees and employers by using the same psychologically-based matching system to help people find their dream jobs.

While the company didn’t offer exact figures, they did claim to have hundreds of thousands of users as well as 1.2 million matches. It looks like they have turned things around, though most of us didn’t even realize how much they were struggling.

To find out more about this dating service, you can read our eHarmony review.