Statistics

Add dating to your list of New Year resolutions, because chances are, you’ll meet someone in January.

Online dating has a high season, and it seems the spirit of the holidays all the way through Valentine’s Day puts people in the mood for finding love.

A study by dating site Match revealed that more than any other time of year, people flock to dating sites between December 26^th and February 14^th. The numbers are telling – 50 million messages sent and 1 million dates happen during this time, and Sunday January 7^th is apparently the busiest day (and the best time to join – specifically 8:55pm EST).

We are welcoming the new year 2018 today, so it’s time to look back on the highs and lows of 2017.

The dating world has been busy over the last 12 months. We saw big breakups (Rachel Bilson and Hayden Christensen, Chris Pratt and Anna Faris, Fergie and Josh Duhamel) and even bigger hookups (hey, Prince Harry and Meghan Markle). We said goodbye to tiger selfies on Tinder. Plenty of Fish and eHarmony embraced embraced digital assistants. The League turned profile pictures black and white. Bumble took a stand against hate groups. And even a rhino tried to swipe for a mate.

To make sense of it all, Zoosk reviewed dating from more than 40 million members, and reviewed the biggest dating trends of 2017. What’s in: lunch dates, higher education, nice guys, guac. What’s out: sluggish messaging, mocking vegans, too many filters. Check out the highlights below.

Most everyone in America has heard of Tinder, even if they haven’t used it. Many more swipe-friendly dating apps have followed in its popular wake, but still, singles are finding the dating app scene to be a little daunting, more than a little tiring, and would just like to meet someone more organically.

A new study by YouGov Omnibus found that almost half of American singles would prefer to meet a romantic partner in real life rather than through an app like Tinder. According to the study, even Millennials – the generation that brought online dating into the mainstream – prefer to meet potential dates at a bar, coffee shop, or even being set up by friends and family members over swiping right on a dating app.

Researchers surveyed over 1000 single Americans across the U.S. to find out how many have been set up on a date by friends or family, how many would like to be set up again, and how many would rather meet online.

Since the company launched in the late-nineties, eHarmony has branded itself as a more serious online dating service, focused on helping users find relationships and cultivating a different reputation that popular hookup app Tinder.

The company has long prided itself on this distinction, but in the process, has also fallen behind fast-growing apps like Tinder and Bumble who cater to a more tech and social media-saavy audience. eHarmony’s strategy to attract new users has focused primarily on TV advertising, an old school approach, but now they are ready to move forward and capture more users via social media ads.

“When I became CEO a year ago, there were a number of things that needed changing,” said eHarmony’s Grant Langston in an interview with Digiday. “The apps, communications and design all felt antiquated — it was like we stopped working on the product in 2010.”

I am always looking for the latest dating service statistics and I see that the research firm IBISWorld has updated their report on dating services in the United States for 2017. I don't have access to the complete report but they do list a few statistics on their summary page.

Now when people think of dating services they think of just online dating. In today's world online dating covers both websites and dating apps (mobile dating). This is not the complete picture though as matchmakers, and singles events (meeting people in real life) are also included in these statistics.

In 2017 revenue is expected to be over $3 billion USD. Annual growth from 2012 to 2017 is 5.3%. In all there are 6,747 companies in the dating business who employee 9,592 people.

If you are interested in more information on the dating industry you can check out our Dating Industry facts and statistics page which also includes information on the more popular companies in the dating world along with different statistics about relationships when related to meeting online.

Online dating is one of the most popular ways to meet people, thanks to free apps and services like Plenty of Fish and Tinder. But many daters opt to be more particular in their search, and are willing to pay for a more curated experience, whether it’s online dating, matchmaking, or even “casual dating” services, like escorts.

According to a new study done by Statista for the Digital Market Outlook (DMO), the United States has the largest share of adults worldwide who are actively paying for a dating service. More than a quarter – 26 percent - of daters in the U.S. are paying for dating services, followed by the UK at almost 21 percent and Germany with 17 percent.

Daters in France, China and Saudi Arabia were the least likely to pay for a dating service according to the study, with 13%, 11% and 5% of daters respectively who were active paying customers at the time of the study.