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.

The latest dating app launch is capturing a lot of buzz - and aimed at marketing to the so-called “dating elite.” If you’re single and successful, The League might be the app for you.

The League has gotten attention because of its latest round of funding. Though founder Amanda Bradford was at first looking to raise half a million according to Time Magazine, she has now received $2.1 million from investors looking for the next Tinder – but without, you know – all the low-brow hook-ups.

The League differentiates itself from its competition by offering exclusivity – you have to be accepted into its network. The acceptance algorithm it uses according to Business Insider “scans the social networks to ensure applicants are in the right age group and that they are career-oriented.” The article goes on to say: “That doesn’t mean they have to be Ivy graduates or work for a big-name firm. But they should have accomplished something in their 20s.”

If you are accepted, you are given a limited number of matches each day at 5:00pm, which The League calls “Happy Hour.” You are also given the ability to refer one friend.

The League isn’t the first app to offer more “quality” matches as opposed to the giant dating pool that is Tinder. Hinge is invitation-only, working from your social media circles and offering a limited number of matches per day, as does Coffee Meets Bagel. The difference is that The League utilizes LinkedIn to find matches, avoiding direct contacts (like your boss) and working with those a little further removed. Some have argued that this blurs the line between business and personal, although eHarmony announced earlier this year they would be offering job-matching services to employers and potential employees.

So far, The League has attracted around 4,500 users from San Francisco. Like Hinge, CEO Branford wants to move slowly, city by city, to build her network in a more thoughtful way. She discovered most couples meet through school or work connections, and she wanted to optimize these already-existing networks (hence using LinkedIn for matching). In fact, she is doing much of the business networking herself by attending parties of tech execs in Silicon Valley and fundraisers in San Francisco. She walks around demonstrating her app and offering bracelets with the app’s logo to attendees.

“It isn’t an app for everybody,” Branford told the New York Times. “We’re trying to hit home that…people do have high standards.”

Recipient
OurTime.com

The Editor's choice for the Top Pick - Senior Award of 2014 is Our Time. This dating site for 50 plus singles is the largest dating site that is dedicated to matching seniors together.

OurTime.com has many features which makes online dating easier. The member’s home page is well laid out and it makes navigating the site simple. One neat and useful feature that OurTime has implement involves communication. When you create your profile you have the option of adding Message Starter Ideas. These make first contact messages much easier as it gives the person sending the message and idea of what you want to know about your matches. The type of questions you can select from include asking about their family to what your main goals in life are.

It doesn’t take long to create a starter profile on OurTime which allows you to log in and see what this dating site is all about. You just need to go through a six step process and in about a few minutes you will be done. From there, you can search and view other profiles for free. If you find someone you like and want to communicate with you can add the rest of the details to your profile (including pictures, your interests, and your physical attributes). After paying a small monthly fee you will then be able to send and receive messages and chat with other members who are online the same time you are.

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

This Year's Runner Up for this award is: SeniorPeopleMeet.com