A new "Dating Services in Canada Market Research Report" has been released in January 2015 by IBSWorld. The report requires payment to read the entire thing (no less than $725 US) but they did release a few interesting statistics for promotion that are worth mentioning.

According to IBSWorld the dating industry in Canada grew 6% from 2010 to 2015. They feel this rate is low due to the recent recession but the rate of growth is expected to increase in the next 5 years.

In Canada there are 255 businesses in the dating industry that employee 523 people. On average this means every dating business employees 2 people. In my experience the case more likely is that most of the businesses employee 1 person (the owner), a few probably employ 2 to 5 employees, and the very few employ 5 or more. The reason for such a low number of employees and high number of businesses is the relative ease and extreme low cost required to get into the dating industry. Free dating site software can be found online and web hosting can be found as cheap as $5 a month.

The report also mentions that revenue generated by the dating industry for the year in Canada is $153 million. This seems rather good especially with 255 businesses which would suggest that on average each generated $600,000 in revenue. This is not the case either. Most of these dating businesses probably either make virtually no money or only generate a few thousand a year in ad revenue. A few probably generate 10's of thousands, and even less generate hundreds of thousands or even a few million. I believe the majority of this revenue is made up of one dating site, Plenty of Fish. POF is located in the province of British Columbia, Canada. All of the other popular dating services are based in the United States. POF is a private company and no revenue numbers have ever been officially released. That being said they are one of the most successful dating sites in the world so I am sure their revenue for a year is probably 10's of millions of dollars. For comparison just take a look at the Match.com dating site. They are a public company owned by IAC and they reported the Match Group earned in the fourth quarter of 2014, $241.5 million US. That is only for 3 months so in a year they generate around 1 billion dollars. Now the Match Group is made up mostly of paid dating sites while POF is a free service which generates revenue from ads as well as paid upgraded memberships. I don’t expect POF to earn hundreds of millions every year but as I said, with their traffic I do see them earning 10’s of millions.

Is this latest IBSWorld report worth getting? It definitely would be an interesting read but the thing with the dating industry is that it is global. If you are opening a dating service you usually don’t just target one country. You would target continents as a whole like North America or Europe. If you are considering purchasing the document I would probably hold off and wait for the US version to come. The US is 10 times the size in population of Canada which is a much bigger customer base.

Let's talk about the Tinder problem.

On one hand, Tinder has been great for mobile dating. Tons of people are on the app, meaning no one is judging you for using it and your pool of potential dates is huge. On the other hand, there are so many people using it that it's difficult to find the needles in the undateable haystack. It's easy to dismiss the entire app as useless once you've swiped left on enough losers.

A new app called The League is hoping to solve that problem – by admitting only the most successful and ambitious users, and keeping everyone else out. Basically, it's Tinder for elitists, although founder Amanda Bradford prefers to say The League “curates members.”

"The best universities curate students. Employers curate their employees. Work and school are the top places where 20-somethings meet each other. So it makes sense for a dating community," she told Business Insider.

The target user is interesting and motivated, passionate and working towards achieving a dream, a young professional who is looking for something more than a hookup. So far the app skews slightly female. Users tend to be in their late 20s and have advanced degrees. All have successfully passed through The League's are-you-cool-enough algorithm, which Bradford says relies more on LinkedIn than Facebook.

If accepted, users are shown a handful of matches each day. At 5pm, a new batch of matches is available. The League ensures you aren't shown first connections or current co-workers, to minimize the potential for awkward encounters.

Accepted users also receive a “ticket” to give to another single friend. Others are put on a waitlist until they’re deemed worthy of entrance into The League. Admittance doesn't guarantee you a spot forever – if you fail to measure up to The League's exacting standards (by responding poorly and earning a bad “flakiness score,” for example), you will be deemed a “low-quality member” and ousted.

Bradford was initially hoping to raise $750,000 from investors, but interest in the app was so high that it's now raised $2.1 million in seed funding. For now, The League is limited to 4,500 beta users in San Francisco. Since November, the app has been responsible for pairing 20,000 people and 19 successful couples. Bradford is focused on growing her small team and expanding to New York City, where there is already a sizeable wait list.

Following NYC, Bradford hopes to conquer London and work her way through more of the world's most interesting cities. The League currently has no plans to come to America's smaller towns, where it's unlikely to find its hyper motivated, career-focused target market.

Is it too late to be talking about 2014?

We're already into February so the answer is probably yes, but I hope you'll forgive me. Especially if I include selected stats for 2015 as a peace offering. Do we have a deal?

I'll take your silence as a yes.

Match.com knows pretty much all there is to know about online dating – seeing as it's one of the biggest online dating sites around – so when Match speaks, I listen. The site closed out 2014 with a short infographic on some of the highlights of the year (including its 6 most popular members!).

It was (unsurprisingly) a busy year. 4.8 million pictures were added to the site, and 280 million photos were liked by users. Over 5 million (5.48, to be exact) dates were made, all around the country. Users in Albany logged in more than users in any other city, but Miami singles sent the most messages. Must have something to do with all the beaches and bikinis. The users who searched most outside of their city reside in Anchorage – which may, also, have to do with (Alaska's lack of) beaches and bikinis.

On the pop culture and technology fronts, hashtags continued to take over the Internet. The most used in one profile was a whopping 44! Selfies also continued to be a dominant force in the online sphere. 5,613 Match.com profiles contained the word “selfie” in 2014. Strangely, the only thing that came close to it was Disney's smash-hit kids' flick: 5,501 people said Frozen was their favorite movie of the year.

That's it for 2014, but Match.com has tirelessly turned out new stats for 2015 – even though we're only one month in. Following the holidays, singles feel an extra boost of motivation to join online dating sites. The busiest day of the year for Match.com tends to be January 4^th, with the best of the blitz occurring at 7:52pm CST. Certain cities feel an especially strong call to post-holiday online dating:

• Columbia, South Carolina
• Baton Rouge, Louisiana
• Jackson, Mississippi

Interestingly, all in the South. What's happening down there that makes everyone rush to romance after New Year's?

And just who, specifically, is joining up this year? According to Match, the average age of single men who join the site during the busy season is 35. Match also saw an uptick in certain groups signing up in 2015:

• Single Parents: up 45%
• Singles Who Work In Education: up 46%
• Single Bowlers: up 47%
• Curvy Single Women: up 50%
• Singles Quitting Smoking: up 45%
• Singles In The Fashion Industry: up 47%

So if you're into mid-thirties Southern fathers who teach for a living and bowl in their spare time, 2015 could be your year.

Here is the summary of the eighth annual Dating Sites Reviews Choice Awards. These awards honour the best dating services of 2014 in eleven different categories. These will be the sites worth joining in 2015.

Our top award is the Single's Choice Award and is decided by a public poll that all visitors can vote in. This poll ran from October 2014 until January 2015. The poll asks 2 questions, with the first asking you to recommend your choice for the top dating site from a selection of the seven leading dating services on the internet. The top three dating services who receives the most votes will be the recipient of a Gold, Silver, and Bronze award. The second question is similar in nature but it asks you to choose your selection from seven of the most popular free dating sites. With the separate free category there is only a gold award.

Single's Choice Award

We launched the 2014 Dating Sites Reviews Single's Choice Award poll in September of 2014 and we closed the poll to voting during the first week of January, 2015. After running for about 4 months we had 359 voters participate. The first question of the poll is about which dating service you believe deserves to win our top 2014 Dating Sites Reviews Single's Choice Award. The top spot for this award receives Gold, followed by Silver and then Bronze. For this question we listed the top 7 dating services you can cast one vote for.

The recipient of the Gold 2014 Single's Choice Award is Match.com. Match.com grew in popularity this year and received almost 5% more votes than last year. For 2014 Match received 24.3% of the vote which works out to 87 voters. The silver award winner received 5% less votes.

The recipient of the Silver 2014 Single's Choice Award is eHarmony. It was a huge year for eHarmony. After Dr. Neil Clarke Warren came back as CEO, eHarmony was able to grow their membership base by an astonishing 54%. This year eHarmony received 71 votes by our visitors which is 19.83% of the total votes cast.

The recipient of the Bronze 2014 Single's Choice Award is Zoosk. For 2014 Zoosk received 54 votes. This is 15.08% of all the votes. It was a tight race for Bronze as we saw the dating service Are You Interested receive 49 votes which is just 5 less than Zoosk.

Here are this year's standings for the Single's Choice award for all dating sites in the poll.

1. Match.com
2. eHarmony
3. Zoosk
4. Are You Interested
5. Christian Mingle
6. How About We
7. Badoo

We would like to thank everyone who cast a vote this year for our Single’s Choice Award. The results of this award help guide our visitors to choose the best dating service for them as each of the winning services receives an award badge for the year which designates them as a winner. All award winners are also added to the 2014 Award category.

Luckily, we live in the age of technology – so if you forgot to make plans for Valentine’s Day (and unfortunately it lands on a Saturday this year) – you might want to look to the app store for help.

If you are looking for a last-minute gift or card, here are some apps to try:

Red Stamp Cards - Need a thoughtful Valentine's Day card in a hurry? Snap a photo and you can quickly create a unique card for your Valentine with this free app. Cards can be tweeted, texted, emailed or posted to Instagram and Facebook.

BloomThat - If you forgot to order flowers and the local grocery store’s selection looks a little tired, this app can help you out of a last-minute problem. (And they can deliver their hand-crafted bouquets via bicycle in under 90 minutes, as opposed to florists where there is an 8-hour delivery window.) For iPhone users only.