Just when you think you've got this dating thing figured out, you enter a new stage of life and everything gets flipped on its head.

Life in your early 20s was very different from life in your late 20s. Both still have some sense of freedom and finding yourself, but things change as you approach 30. You're more comfortable with who you are and have a better idea of where you're going. You're older (duh) but also wiser, and that means a shift in who and how you date.

Dating in your late 20s/early 30s is a different game with a whole new set of rules. Like:

Expand your reach. When you were younger, you probably looked for dates in the same few places. College parties. Your classes. Local bars. But now that you're older, you have starting looking elsewhere – including places you never thought you'd look. Put yourself out there in ways you never thought you would, whether that means taking a tango class or joining an online dating site.

Be direct with your dates. If casual dating is your thing, keep with it. But if you're in the market for something more serious, you have to put in the work to find it. The sooner you can separate the good ones from the horror stories you'll tell your friends later, the better. You have to be upfront with your dates. Don't think of it as “coming on too strong” - you're being honest about what you want (and what your dates want) so you know right away if you're not compatible and no one's time is wasted.

Stand firm with friends and family. This is usually the age when friends and family start peppering you with questions. So...are you seeing anyone? Do you plan to settle down? Don't you want children? Why are you still single? They mean well, but it will probably make you want to throw things at them. There's probably nothing you can do to stop the questions – even if you know you aren't ready for those steps or know that you never want them – but you can be prepared. Come armed with answers you've worked out ahead of time when you know those questions are likely on the way.

Don't compare yourself with others. Whether or not you get those questions, insecurities have a way of creeping up. Your life changes dramatically in your late 20s and early 30s, and so do the lives of everyone around you. Just look at your Facebook feed – engagement photos, wedding photos, baby photos. Wash, rinse, repeat. If you're there and your friends are still getting wasted on Friday nights, that's ok. If you're not there and everyone else seems to be getting hitched and buying houses, that's ok too. Trust that you are in the right place at the right time for your life.

For five years, Match.com has graced us with America’s most comprehensive study on singles. For this year's Singles In America study, Match surveyed over 5,600 singles of all ages, ethnicities, incomes and walks of life. Naturally, the impact of technology on our dating habits was a major topic of discussion this year.

60% of singles spend at least 1 hour a day on social media. 39% of singles’ daily conversations happen digitally. Now that we're more connected than ever, our online activity has a greater impact on our love lives than ever before. And that means some serious etiquette issues. Let's talk do's and don'ts.

Single men have the following advice for single ladies:

• DO: send photos, send sexy texts, use emoticons, check your spelling and grammar
• DON'T: text more than once before a reply, text during work hours, use netspeak (OMG, LOL, etc), use ALL CAPS

Single ladies have this advice for single men:

• DO: send photos, use emoticons, text netspeak, check your spelling and grammar
• DON'T: send sexy photos, text more than once before a reply, send sexy texts, ask too many personal questions

Unsurprisingly, selfies were huge this year. Women take slightly more, but not by much. Reasons for taking a selfie range from “to capture a moment” (65%), to “to show off where they're at/what they're doing (41%), to “to show off a good hair day or outfit (31%). A majority of people think the most attractive selfies are natural and unenhanced.

On Instagram, single women favor certain kinds of photos. Funny pictures and shots of traveling or landscapes rank highest, followed by pictures of a date's hobbies and pictures of animals. When it comes to those infamous filtered photos of food, men and women are divided. 25% of single women think food pics are a turn on, but only 19% of men agree.

On other social networks, men and women agree that liking a photo is one of the top ways to show interest (38% of men vs 39% of women). Commenting on a photo is also a strong indicator (34% of men vs 31% of women). What you absolutely shouldn't do, on the other hand, is air your emotional drama in posts, take excessive selfies, or ask a date to unfriend their exes.

And here's a fun fact: 54% of emoji-using singles had sex in 2014, compared to only 31% of non-emoji users. Food for thought.

For more information on this dating service you can read our Match.com review.

Remember how you thought filling out your online dating profile was a giant pain in the you-know-what? Now imagine creating an entire online dating site – just for yourself.

That's what one very dedicated dater from New York did. Meet Brandon Scott Wolf, the Brooklyn-based bartender and comedian behind DateBrandonScottWolf.com.

Visitors to the page are greeted by one of the best taglines you're likely to see anywhere: “The #1 Online Dating Site for Brandon Scott Wolf.” So he's funny and self-aware – two things women are definitely looking for in a date. Check them off the list.

Up next is a video in which BSW explains more about himself, what he's looking for, and the origins of the site. He's a college-educated, 25-yr-old bartender who was frustrated by the sheer enormity of the online dating world. With so many profiles on a single site, how could anyone possibly choose? His solution to the problem is ingenious.

Let's say you're intrigued by the prospect of dating Mr. Brandon Scott Wolf. What happens next?

He says he's looking for an easy-going, honest woman who can make him laugh. He's open to casual dating, according to his profile (aka, the only profile) on the site. However, he would “prefer to meet someone who wants to get into a more serious relationship” which, he notes, means “being able to lay on a couch together while wearing pajamas and watching Bob’s Burgers.”

If you fit the bill, submit a recent photo and take a free online personality test. Filling out your own profile is a predictably funny experience. Check out the options for age, gender, religion, and sexual preference. What's your favorite book? You're out of luck if it doesn't come from the Harry Potter series. Your favorite date? Hopefully you like pie. A favorite animal? It'd better be a bird or you're screwed.

Assuming you meet all the criteria, what happens next? A date. Probably in a diner, over a slice of pie. And if the two of you click, BSW says to expect plenty of “hand holding, homemade pasta dinners, and having someone who actually listens.”

All of this begs one question: if Wolf is a comedian, is all of this a joke?

"People have asked me, 'Are you serious? Is this a joke?' And my only response is, 'I'm not even sure,'" he told Mashable. "There's a part of me that's hoping someone is going to get this 100%, and won't catfish me, and then I'll ask them out on a date."

There’s been an uproar lately with the launch of dating app Tinder’s new premium service, Tinder Plus. The problem? The company is charging users in their twenties $9.99 in the U.S., compared to those 30 and older, who will have to pay $19.99 (and even more in the U.K.).

This has notably sparked some outrage from product reviewers and bloggers, who note the enduring problem of age discrimination when it comes to online dating – especially towards women. According to studies released by sites like OkCupid, young women are more sought-after by men, no matter how old the guy is. According to dating site Plenty of Fish, the ideal age of a single woman is 25 for most of their male daters. And according to OkCupid, that number skews even younger – with the ideal age being 21 or 22, even if the men wanting to date them are in their forties. Once female online daters hit the magic age of 30, they are blocked out from opportunities – some reports pointing to as much as an 80% decrease in messages and matches - as the majority of men prefer to meet women in their twenties.

This isn’t new. And it does explain why many people post old photos and lie about their ages (much to the frustration of the online daters who meet them). So what will these daters 30 and above do with Tinder – will they opt in and pay for Tinder Plus, or will we see more of a dating revolt?

According to Tinder, the company’s move to differentiate pricing based on age really comes down to economics. The company has tested pricing, and discovered that older singles are willing to pay more because they have more income. (The company likens it to services like Spotify which offer discounted rates to “students.”)

The problem with this “economic” view, as some reviewers have pointed out, is that older online daters already have a shrunken dating pool to choose from. (And online dating is a bit different than streaming music – with streaming, you have access to everything offered in exchange for your payment; with online dating, you only have access to those who haven’t filtered you out of their searches, which means fewer options for more money.)

As the Washington Post says: “The [age] problem is so urgent, and so severe, that several sites have spoken out against ageism in online dating in recent years. In 2010, OkCupid’s Christian Rudder wrote an entire blog post dedicated to convincing men that the 30-somethings on his site were just as cool and attractive as recent college grads. On JDate — a paid dating site for Jewish singles — the site’s official relationship blogger, Tamar Caspi, went on a full-blown rant over age.”

The latest move by Tinder might affect its user base, but the problem of ageism in dating still remains. If people are looking to meet someone special, then letting go of superficial restrictions like age only helps open the dating pool – and don’t we all want more choices?

It was only a matter of time before Tinder started monetizing its service. And that time, apparently, is now.

Tinder Plus, the dating app’s first foray into the brave new world of freemium monetization, just launched for $9.99. The new update adds at least one highly requested feature alongside a few others designed to improve the experience.

“The most-requested feature we get is a button to go back and have a second chance with people that users swipe left on,” said co-founder Sean Rad told TechCrunch last year. “Everyone has wanted it from the beginning. It’s absolutely at the top of the list.”

Tinder Plus' new Rewind function lets users go back to the most recent person they swiped left on. If you decide you made the wrong choice, you can pay a little extra to bring them back and get a second chance. Your long-lost love may not be so lost, but only if you're willing to cough up the cash to meet them.

Also included is a Passport feature, which lets users search for matches anywhere in the world instead of being limited to their actual location.

“We often hear that people want to be able to start swiping in a location before they’ve left to go on a trip or vacation, and that once they’ve actually made a meaningful connection with someone in a new location, their trip has come to an end,” said Rad. “We also hear people saying that they want to get recommendations for places to go and where to eat in a new city, and Tinder Plus can do better at that.”

Another interesting update, at least from a business standpoint, is the fact that Tinder Plus will remove ads from the network. You knew it had to happen eventually, right? Re/code reports that Tinder is working on a long-awaited ad product that Greg Blatt, chairman of IAC’s The Match Group, expects to be “a meaningful part of the mix” for the company's revenue.

Rad told the Evening Standard that he believes heavy Tinder users are willing to pay for enhanced service. "There are users that are just so active — they are just almost addicted to the platform," he said. However, he also acknowledges that Tinder Plus won't appeal to all users. "These features aren’t something that everyone is going to want to use, and we sort of don’t want everyone to use them."

Tinder has already rolled out its new premium paid service Tinder Plus in the U.S., and among the new features are some protections from spammers.

Tinder Plus includes a new feature called “Unlimited Likes,” which seems counter-intuitive since users of the free app already have the ability to swipe left and right without limits. Unfortunately, spammers have taken advantage of this feature by creating spam bots which swipe right on thousands of profiles simultaneously, increasing users’ match potential.

Tinder has dealt with increasing abuse of its service from spammers. Chances are if you’ve downloaded Tinder, you’ve also come across a fake profile or two that are actually staged to sell you something or obtain personal information, (violating Tinder’s terms and conditions), rather than to make an actual connection with a real person.

Tinder sees its paid service as a way to reduce spamming, as the rewards for this kind of power matching wouldn’t be worth the cost. Apps capitalizing on users’ penchant to say yes to all their potential matches have cropped up, too – like Tinderoid (now labeling itself as “Tools for Tinder”), which enables users to “like” en masse. 

The roll-out of Tinder Plus has already happened in a few other countries, and so far limiting the number of likes has not been received kindly by users who are used to unlimited swiping. According to reviews in the UK’s app store (which dropped the service to only one and a half stars in its rating), Tinder has prevented quite a few users from swiping endlessly unless they pay for the premium service, and they are not happy about it.

Tinder however, says that regular users of the service should not be affected (as opposed to the tiny fraction that swipe right on every single match they can as frequently as possible).

“That behavior happens with a very small percentage of our users, and they usually find that the experience isn’t very good and self-correct on their own,” Sean Rad, the company’s cofounder and CEO, told Tech Crunch.

The algorithm Tinder has set up to block spammers analyzes a few things before it is triggered: namely, the number of swipes, whether the user is only swiping right, velocity, time spent looking at a profile, etc. According to Tinder, a user can swipe through as many as 500 profiles and still not be blocked or prompted to upgrade to Tinder Plus, so long as the user spends a certain amount of time looking at each profile instead of mindlessly swiping.

Tinder launched Tinder Plus in the U.S. this month. For more information about this app, please read our Tinder review.