In a recent interview with Business Insider, eHarmony CEO Neil Clark Warren lamented the growing popularity of dating apps like Tinder, where users can swipe left and right after judging someone based on a few photos and short description. Many people prefer the ease and accessibility of dating apps to filling out long questionnaires or writing detailed profiles.

As a psychologist, Warren has touted the benefits of matching based on compatibility - eHarmony's mission and the basis of its marketing – as opposed to the pitfalls of just leaving things to chance. He believes that the game-like dating experience apps like Tinder offer could lead to superficial relationships that don't last for the long-term. 

"I’m sad about it, to tell you the truth, because it doesn't work," he told Business Insider. "It won’t work over time. These new apps tend to be so superficial. They will allure a lot of people into thinking that they belong together when they perhaps don’t belong together at all. They’re depending on superficial almost accidental compatibility. Compatibility is a serious matter, and it’s very deep and very important to figure out."

Tinder has taken the dating world by storm, almost rendering traditional online dating sites with algorithms and matching technology passé. Instead, Tinder has managed to present dating as more like a game - something that engages people and is easy to use, if not very focused on the end result.

But one has to ask: why should any dating app or online dating company be invested in people coupling up? It takes away their business in an industry that relies on sheer numbers in order to sell their product or attract investment dollars.

Dr. Warren however, maintains that he is focused on the end goal: matching people for the long-term, and doing it scientifically. He tells Business Insider that while "it isn't horrible to date people who aren't perfect for you," he thinks that these relationships will accidentally extend into something long-term, like marriage, where the partners eventually split. 

"These companies that are bringing out these apps, they haven't done any careful research about what works," Warren said. "They're just trying to throw something out there that makes money for the company."

He added: "As a psychologist, I've presided over the funerals of an awful lot of marriages, and I've seen people suffer a tremendous amount of pain who went through horrible divorces."

While this might be a little misleading - after all, to some extent, love happens by chance - be it through a dating app or an online dating site, or even while standing in line for your morning coffee. Connection happens, and sometimes it just has to be pursued, regardless of how compatible you are. But for those looking for more serious relationships, would you place your heart in the hands of Tinder or eHarmony?

Even the most open-minded singles come to online dating with preconceived notions about who’s on the other side of the screen, but AYI.com is here to put those speculations to rest.

AYI collected data from some of its 50,000 active UK members to find out exactly who the average user is. Though technology might seem like a young person’s game, you may be surprised to learn that the average age of a male online dater is 44 and the average age of a female online dater is 42. Perhaps the younger generations have all migrated to Tinder and other mobile dating apps, preferring to search for love on-the-go on their smartphones.

Where appearance is concerned, there’s no shortage of online dating horror stories. But is it really as bad as it seems? Sure, not everyone is Ryan Gosling, but they’re not Gollum either. According to AYI’s research, the average height of a male online dater is 5’10”, while the average height of a female dater is 5’4”. Both men and women claim to be “about average” where body type is concerned. Admittedly, an “average body” is a completely subjective concept, but it’s also exactly what you’d expect if you’re trying to construct a profile of the “average online dater.”

There are also other ways in which average male daters and average female daters sync up. Both say they drink “socially,” exercise “once or twice per week,” never smoke, and have an average diet. See? The sexes aren’t so different after all.

Where some things are concerned, anyway. The average man and woman start to diverge when their personal history and family plans come into play. The average male online dater has never been married before, but the average female dater is searching for a new romance after going through a divorce. And because the average woman has already been married, she also typically has multiple children and says she isn’t interested in having any more. The average man, on the other hand, is not a parent and says he may consider having kids someday.

Career-wise, AYI members have plenty of options to choose from - from teacher, to civil servant, to retiree. But despite the wealth of options, most people select “other profession.” Which pretty much means one of three things: 1) They have an embarrassing profession, 2) They’re wealthy and don’t want to be judged by their money, or 3) They’re a super spy.

Personally, I’m going to be hoping for #3.

A recent article in The New York Times shed light on a particular problem that’s been rearing its ugly head lately: companies are conducting secret experiments with users of social media and online dating sites. Facebook recently revealed that it manipulated the emotional content of news feeds of 700,000 people to see if emotions were contagious. In addition, OkCupid recently shared the results of its own three secret studies of users.

In one test, OkCupid obscured profile pictures so that people could communicate, but they couldn’t see who they were communicating with. The dating site found that members had more meaningful conversations, exchanged more contact details, and responded to first messages more often. When pictures were revealed, many conversations stopped.

In another test, OkCupid hid profile text to see how it affected personality ratings. In general, more attractive users were regarded as more personable – in other words, users were equating looks with personality – even though there wasn’t much information to go on.

The third experiment was the cause of the most controversy, where the site lied to a portion of users, telling them that matches who were (according to OkCupid algorithms) 90% compatible were actually only 30%, and matches with very little compatibility were told they had high compatibility. The end result? Communication went up when people thought they were being matched with someone very compatible, because OkCupid gave them that impression of compatibility, even if it wasn’t the truth.

While it’s interesting to note that people can be swayed by looks and influenced by what a dating site tells them might work, is it really going to improve the overall experience of online dating? In other words, we might track people’s behavior to understand it a little better, but deceiving people to see how they behave is a slippery slope, and doesn’t really improve the current dating experience on OkCupid (or any site). As the study noted, as soon as the pictures were revealed, people went back to their old patterns of behavior.

Facebook and OkCupid aren’t the only sites studying user behavior, and probably aren’t the only sites conducting experiments on users. But before we continue down this path, it’s important to ask: who are these studies really benefitting? Are they helping us to become more open-minded daters? So far, not really.

The study succeeded in making online daters even more cynical about online dating. How do they know if what OkCupid is telling them about compatibility or ratings is true? It makes the already confusing world of dating a little less friendly and upfront. Dating needs more honesty, not less.

IAC fell slightly short of expectations in Q2 2014, but nevertheless had a solid second quarter.

Subscribers are up where IAC's dating sites are concerned, but revenue dropped in its Search & Applications unit. Match Group revenue increased 8%, as paid dating subscribers grew 10% to 3.5 million globally.

The Media segment fell 36% to $36.7 million, due primarily to the closure of the Newsweek print business and the sale of its digital business. However, video site Vimeo increased revenue over 45% and reached nearly 500,000 paid subscribers. Websites revenue also increased 1% and page views grew 8% to 8.5 billion.

Search & Applications was the weak link in the chain for Q2 2014. Revenue declined 7%, enough that it could not be offset by growth elsewhere. On the whole, consolidated revenue declined 5% year-over-year. Consolidated Adjusted EBITDA dropped 10% compared to the previous year. Total revenue for Q2 2014 is $756.3 million, down from $799.4 million in Q2 2013 and below the $796.6 million consensus estimate of analysts consulted by Thompson Reuters.

Looking to the future, IAC will push forward with its new marketing campaign for Match and plans to put a renewed focus on native mobile apps. IAC will also acquire the Princeton Review, an in-person tutoring service that publishes college rankings, via its online-only tutoring firm Tutor.com. And then there’s one thing that gets more attention than any other: Tinder.

IAC says it intends to monetize the popular dating app this year, and stands to make quite a hefty sum. Greg Blatt, chairman of IAC’s Match Group unit, said recently that Tinder has the potential to generate as much as $75 million a year in earnings (before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization).

“It’s growing like a weed,” Blatt said, but earning money from Tinder is still “a work in progress in terms of exact manner and timing.” Several monetization possibilities are available to IAC at this point. Back in April, IAC chairman Barry Diller said three approaches are currently under consideration:

• Subscription
• Advertising
• Freemium (which offers basic access for free and charges for additional services)

Tinder certainly isn’t hurting for opportunities, so at this point any direction seems like a real possibility. “I have been developing online businesses for quite a while now,” Diller claims, “since the Internet started. I have never had the number of people banging through our doors to see if we would sell them a little piece of Tinder.”

So far it hasn’t happened, but don’t think he doesn’t have something up his sleeve. “We have got lots of little areas marked for revenue,” Diller said. “You bleed into them over time.”

For more on these 2 dating services you can read our reviews of Tinder and Match.com.

eHarmony has started today a 4 day Free Communication Weekend which runs from 12:01AM Friday, August 15th to 11:59PM Monday, August 18th (Pacific Standard Time).

This will most likely be the last free communication weekend (FCW) of the summer. So if you are interested in trying out this dating service, now is the chance to do it for no cost and with no credit card required.

All new and existing free members participate in FCW so once you have created your membership account and taken the personality questionnaire all you need to do is review your new matches. Once you have selected one or more members you would like to converse with you then start the guided communication process. This is a series of 3 or 4 questions that you ask your match. He or she will then answer the questions along with asking their own. This process is a great way to break the ice and helps get the conversation going. Once it is complete you can then start mailing the person directly. This FCW does not include eHarmony's secure call, profile photos or skip straight to email. To enable these features you will would have to purchase a subscription.

To find out more about this dating site / dating app you can read our eHarmony review.

Just when you think Facebook couldn’t possibly get any bigger than it already is, it goes and shatters all expectations. For the 8^th quarter in a row, Facebook’s earnings beat projections.

Much of that growth is in mobile, where Facebook is growing twice as fast as it is compared to its services as a whole. Facebook currently logs 654 million daily mobile users and 1.07 billion mobile users each month. Thanks to the continued increase in smartphone usage, 62% of the social network’s ad revenue came from mobile in Q2. In total, Facebook now has 829 million daily users and 1.32 billion monthly users. Altogether, they are responsible for a spectacular 2^nd quarter for Facebook. The company beat Wall Street’s estimated earnings of $2.81 billion to end Q2 2014 with $2.91 billion in revenue.

Here’s how that stacks up against Q1 2014:

• Facebook's total user count is up 3.125% from 1.28 billion total monthly users to 1.32 billion
• Total daily user count is up 3.36% from 803 million to 829 million
• Monthly mobile user count is up 5.9% from 1.01 billion to 1.07 billion
• Daily mobile user count is up 7.4% from 609 million to 654 million

Revenue isn't the only way Facebook is exceeding expectations. Some critics have said the social network is losing its influence with Western users, but its monthly user count in the USA and Canada grew by 2 million this quarter. And for anyone who dared to suggest that Facebook wouldn't survive the transition from desktop to mobile, Facebook's 391 million mobile-only users dwarf its 240 million desktop-only users.

Internationally, Facebook is showing equally impressive numbers. Ad revenue is up everywhere, and the site hit an all-time high average revenue per user in every region around the world.

The only low point was payments revenue, which Facebook largely derives from the 30% tax on the in-app purchases from its Web games platform. Total payments revenue dropped slightly to $234 million from $237 million in Q1. On the plus side, it's still up 9% compared to Q2 2013.

On the horizon for Facebook now is the launch of Facebook Audience Network, the company’s mobile ad network that will bring in revenue by incorporating its targeted ads in other companies' apps. Another big development is Slingshot, a photo and video messaging app that Facebook hopes will be a competitor for Snapchat.

When asked for his thoughts on Facebook’s remarkable 2^nd quarter, all CEO Mark Zuckerberg had to say was “We had a good second quarter. Our community has continued to grow, and we see a lot of opportunity ahead as we connect the rest of the world.”

To find out if this social network makes a good dating tool you can read our Facebook review.