Coffee Meets Bagel, the service that could win the title of “simplest dating app of all time,” has launched on Android.

Like most dating services, CMB swears it's all about introducing high-quality singles who are on the hunt for meaningful relationships. So far, so good, so blah.

What makes Coffee Meets Bagel stand out is its approach to doing it. CMB operates on three guiding principles:

1. Unless you want to tell others, your dating life should remain private
2. Your friends are the best conduits for your dates
3. Meeting quality people doesn't have to be so awkward or complicated

Those principles became a stripped-down take on the dating app. Users sign in through Facebook, and are matched with one person (their “Bagel”) every day at noon. All they have to do is LIKE or PASS on their Bagel, then kick back and wait patiently until the next noon rolls around.

“We wanted our service to be something that people look forward to everyday, something that can spice up their lunch break,” explains CMB on the About Us page. “Most of our members are busy young professionals, and we know that one thing everyone looks forward to daily is coffee breaks. That led us to choose coffee. There are many things that go well with coffee but we chose Bagels because we launched in New York City!”

If you and your Bagel mutually indicate interest in each other, you're immediately connected by a text message sent from a private company phone line. CMB will also hook you up with free stuff from popular local spots for your first date. How's that for a sweet deal?

If, on the other hand, your Bagel doesn't look like something you want to sink your teeth into, you must wait another 24 hours for your next potential match. It may not be the best app for the impatient, but it's an ideal setup for a busy professional who barely has time to eat lunch, much less surf through hundreds and hundreds of online dating profiles.

Coffee Meets Bagel launched on iOS in August of last year and has since seen double-digit growth and solid engagement from users, TechCrunch reports. Although the mobile market is far from sparse these days, CMB's fresh launch on Android should only boost its already-promising numbers.

Download the app for Android on Google Play and for iOS on the iTunes Store.

Recipient
Match.com

The 2014 recipient of the Editor's Top Pick - Dating App Award is Match.com (or as they like to be referred to now as just “Match”).

2014 was the year mobile phones took over the dating market. 50% of all communication on Match.com in the United States is now from a smart phone. To keep their members coming back Match.com has invested heavily in their dating apps (available on iOS and Android devices). Version 3.0 of the Match.com app was launched at the beginning of summer for the iPhone which contains a brand new interface that works very well on not only the phones, but tablets. The app also received a number of new features including threaded messaging, easier photo uploading, and new ways of communicating (Mixer and Stream).

Match.com was also one of the first dating sites to support the new smart watches like Android wearables. This means you can quickly be notified of any singles close to you, view your daily matches, and check your messages.

Read our review of Match.com for more information about this online dating service or visit Match directly.

This Year's Runner Up for this award is: Are You Interested?

By now, most people have heard of Tinder, whether or not they have used the dating app or understand what it does. Tinder has become a brand synonymous with modern online dating. But since its launch in 2012, the company has been struggling with taking advantage of its explosive popularity and translating it into revenue. After all, the dating app itself is free – a major draw in the online dating world for people who just want to try it out, and one of the factors contributing to its success. But offering a free service doesn’t help the company build its business.

In the last few months Tinder launched a premium service called Tinder Plus, charging users for special features like searching for matches in another city, a pretty typical revenue path for online dating apps looking first for an audience and then for ways to generate revenue. But since Tinder has garnered brand recognition, the company has decided to use this to its advantage by partnering with other well-known brands. With product placement for TV shows and advertising campaigns featuring young single daters swiping left and right, Tinder is charging companies to be seen with its brand – specifically companies trying to appeal to a younger demographic.

For instance, last year Tinder was featured on The Mindy Project to help its main character find a new boyfriend, and Domino’s pizza created a Valentine’s Day advertising campaign offering deals to Tinder users. But the dating app’s latest tie-in is getting some buzz. Tinder teamed up with Gillette to analyze 100,000 male Tinder users – with facial hair and without – to see if women swiped left or right more often for the clean-shaven guys. The results? It seems Gillette won, with a vast majority – 74% of total right swipes going to the well-groomed guys - as well as 37% more matches.

Gillette put together a 30-second spot outlining the study and its results, showing groups of single women on their Tinder apps, swiping left (rejecting) guys with facial hair and then swiping right (accepting the match) for the same guys once they were clean-shaven. The women were also shown commenting on which guys looked better without facial hair.

Gillette is promoting the test results on a website called shavetest.com, as well as through YouTube. Of course, the main idea is that guys would rush out to purchase Gillette products so they can score more dates. But really, it seems the winner is Tinder, with more well-known brands trying to capitalize on its popularity and reach consumers where they are – on their phones.

No partner? No problem.

There's an app for that, because there is, no joke, an app for everything at this point.

Picture a family get-together. Picture that family asking you invasive questions about your relationship status. Picture awkwardly trying to deflect their questions. Picture inventing a fake significant other just to avoid the interrogation.

Now picture a world where that doesn't have to happen. To alleviate the social pressures single people face, St. Louis business partners Matthew Homann and Kyle Tabor decided to do the hard work for you. They created the Invisible Boyfriend and Invisible Girlfriend apps so you don't have to worry about dreaming up a believable fake date.

The apps promise a faux SO “your family can believe in” and “real-world and social proof that you’re in a relationship - even if you’re not - so you can get back to living life on your own terms.” For $24.99 a month the app offers a personalized partner constructed from a hundred text messages, 10 voicemails and one handwritten note. You'll also get crowd-sourced selfies and a story about how you met your sweetie, plus the opportunity to customize your invisible SO's name, personality, interests, and physical characteristics.

Before you start worrying you'll fall in love with your faux dream person and wind up living the real-life version of Her, Matthew Homann says it's out of the question. “We’re not trying to build something that could fool you,” he told TIME. “Our intention has always been to build something that helps you tell a better story about a relationship you’re not in.”

The apps were inspired by real life events. Nine years after Homann divorced his wife, he found himself feeling frustrated when his mother asked if he was bringing a date to Thanksgiving dinner. "In that moment I realised how great it would be to have an answer for her that didn't require me to actually be dating someone," he writes on the website. He started putting the plan into motion in 2013 and the app went live into public beta this month.

You may be wondering just how unhealthy it is to have an invisible BF or GF. That's definitely one of the stops on the crazy train, isn't it?

Gail Saltz, MD, Health‘s contributing psychology editor, says that isn't the case, as long as you're honest about why you're using the service. If it's all in fun, you have nothing to worry about. It only becomes a problem if you become so lost in the fantasy that you forget to look for real relationships.

It may even be a useful tool, Dr. Saltz adds. “Someone with a lot of social anxiety might practice with something like this as a method of making themselves more comfortable for the real thing.”

There's just one problem: what happens when your parents want to meet the new love of your life?

Too many cooks spoil the broth, but do too many dates spoil the romance?

People love online dating because it offers so many choices, including potential partners you may never have met otherwise. Falling in love with someone who lives halfway across the world was almost impossible before the Internet.

But all those choices could be making dating harder. Instead of making your life easier, online dating might be making it more stressful thanks to a psychological phenomenon called the “paradox of choice.” The more choices you have, the more difficult it is to actually make one. Instead we consistently feel unsatisfied with our choices, or simply refuse to choose at all.

Increased choice has been scientifically proven to cause anxiety and “choice overload,” which is exactly what you think it is. Your brain can become overwhelmed when faced with too many online dating profiles, causing it to misremember what it sees in each. It can also cause you to make decisions that are less than optimal, and settle for partners who don't match your own stated preferences.

And let's not forget about the time factor. Online dating is a notorious time-suck, and it gets worse the more options you have. A 2009 study found that "more search options triggered excessive searching," making it harder for participants to weed out incompatible options and hone in on what they really wanted.

The famous experiment that tested the paradox of choice was conducted by Columbia University professors in 2000. Grocery store shoppers were presented with 6 jam samples on one table and 24 on another. More customers visited the table with 24 choices, but fewer actually purchased from it. That means that while we are initially attracted to having many options, we find it more difficult to choose when actually presented with them.

Online dating is a table full of thousands and thousands of jams. The variety is endless and the supply is bottomless. It's hard to decide what's going on your toast under those circumstances, and the end result is apathy.

But there's hope. Other research has found that, under the right circumstances, more options can actually make you more certain of your choice by heightening the distinctions between possibilities. Online dating allows you to get hyper-specific about what you want, meaning you can narrow down your options to maximize effectiveness.

In the end, the real benefit of online dating sites is a little bit of both. By getting hyper-specific, they put the most relevant, compatible people directly in front of you. And by offering so many choices, they also leave open the possibility of meeting someone you didn't even know you were looking for.

Zoosk may be a leading online dating company, but recent times have proved it isn't smooth sailing even if you're a hit.

Sources told TechCrunch Zoosk laid off 15% of its employees in January 2015, a figure the company has since confirmed. The change was made as part of a larger effort to cut costs in many areas.

This latest news comes after a string of ill omens for Zoosk. The company's founders left their leadership positions at the end of 2014, hinting at trouble that may be happening behind the scenes. Shayan Zadeh and Alex Mehr pulled back from their daily involvement with the company, choosing to become members of the board instead. CFO Kelly Steckelberg stepped up as CEO in the wake of their departures.