When Aaron Schildkrout cofounded HowAboutWe.com, he had a vision for online dating, one that didn't rely on complex mathematical calculations to determine whether two people are compatible. He pictured a site where real-life dates were the focus, so users got straight to what really matters: meeting face-to-face.

"We branded ourselves as the offline dating site, as explicitly an alternative to these profile-heavy matching algorithm dating sites," he told The Washington Post. "It's about getting offline, going to the real world and getting chemistry."

It appears to be a smart approach at first glance, but since its founding in 2009, HowAboutWe has evolved to depend more on formulas, not less. As more and more users joined the site, the challenge was no longer to show them as many potential dates as possible, but to show them the right dates. In order to create an experience worth coming back for, HowAboutWe needed to get smarter.

HowAboutWe's two-person data science team created an algorithm that combines a user's profile information (like date ideas and demographics) with data gathered from that person's behavior on the site (e.g. what kind of profiles they looked at and how often).

In contrast to HowAboutWe's focus on casual dating, eHarmony believes its users are looking for long term relationships and its algorithm reflects that. eHarmony members are required to fill out a personality questionnaire with hundreds of parts developed from research of around 50,000 happily married couples. To determine compatibility, historical data is paired with analysis of users' behavior on the site and the constraints, like target age range, people place on their matches.

As expected, predicting love is no easy feat. Match.com president Amarnath Thombre says that what users claim they're looking for is often not the kind of profiles they actually view. How did Match cope with the mixed signals? "We said, 'We're going to base these things way more on actions you take. . . . If you start breaking your rules, we're going to start ignoring your rules,' " Thombre explained.

On AshleyMadison.com, the popular matchmaking site for affair-seekers, matching is driven almost entirely by an algorithm. "At least when it comes to the topic of infidelity, traditional research avenues have been kind of absent," said founder Noel Biderman. "There aren't a lot of universities out there that can give you wholesale data on how unfaithful this population or society is or what triggers this."

Can a mathematical formula ever fully replace the magic of serendipity? It seems unlikely, but if the two can work together, we stand a better chance of finding love than ever before.

For more about Aaron Schildkrout dating site you can read our review on How About We.

Around the holidays, it's easy to get caught up in the bustle - shopping for gifts for friends and family, going to holiday parties, and keeping an active social life. But sometimes it can feel like a bit much - which is why a lot of people tend to get depressed over the holidays.

For some, the holidays are a reminder of everything you don't have in your life - whether it's money, a house you love, a good career, family close by, or a romantic partner. There is evidence of happiness all around you - in the decorations or non-stop Christmas music, and yet you don't feel inspired or happy. You see couples holding hands and families laughing together and you might wonder why you're still alone.

While you can't help your feelings, it's also important to remind yourself to be grateful for all the things you already have in your life. That's really what the holidays are about. And gratitude, more than anything else, will help you attract more happiness and love to your life.

While this might sound like a cliché, reminding yourself really works. Make a list! Here are some questions to help you get there:

What have you accomplished? For the entire year of 2013, write down all of the things you've accomplished that you're grateful for, no matter how small. Did you finish that half marathon? Did you start saving for a trip to Belize? Did you learn a little bit of French? Did you clean out your garage? These victories are all important reminders of what you are capable of, and the future you are working towards.

Who do you love? When you're sad about your love life and feel like you'll never find the right person, it's good to remind yourself about who is most important to you right now. Maybe it's your best friend, who always lets you cry on her shoulder, or maybe it's your Aunt Susan who has a plate of warm cookies for you whenever you visit. Remember the people who are there for you and send a little thank you note to each of them this holiday season. That means more than any purchase.

What do you love to do? Is there something you are passionate about, whether it's writing poetry, playing guitar, or surfing? The holiday season is a great time to indulge in those activities you most enjoy, and remind yourself that no matter what, you have passions in your life that can bring you joy. That's something to be grateful for.

Volunteer. If you're really stuck, volunteering to help those less fortunate than you is always a good reminder of how much you have in your life. Whether you go to a soup kitchen or help the single mother who lives down the street by offering to babysit her children, you're sending love into the world. And that is a good thing, no matter what time of year it is.

Good news, eHarmony users! eHarmony.com has just announced the launch of a new service designed to enhance the experience for those who want a higher level of service from their online dating site. The new service, called eH+, offers the best of eHarmony alongside a very special upgrade: a personal counselor.

The counselors are credentialed therapists working with eHarmony founder, himself a psychologist, Dr. Neil Warren. "Finding the love of your life is the single most underestimated challenge in the human experience," said Dr. Warren in a press release. "In the course of the dating process, we know that some people want or need a higher level of service in finding their marriage partner and since this decision impacts your life more than any other single decision, we want to provide help every step of the way."

So what exactly does it do?

"eH+ melds the power of eHarmony's online capabilities with the guidance and care of the matchmaking industry," said Grant Langston, Vice President of Customer Experience for eHarmony. "eH+ is exactly suited to take our proven compatibility algorithms and bring personal, one-on-one attention to the difficult process of finding the right person to share your life. We know that we have more marriages, with more satisfaction and fewer breakups than any other service and we are confident that eH+ will add another layer of strength to our already powerful process."

And that's not all. eH+ also promises:

• Matches chosen for you by your credentialed professional counselor
• Freedom from your computer - no updating profiles, managing matches, or juggling communication
• Matches who have been vetted for interest in you, so you no longer have to wonder whether your interest is reciprocated
• A deeper and more varied set of matches than what you likely would have encountered without an eH+ counselor
• Increased privacy, because your profile isn't automatically exposed to hundreds of people you've never met

If you think all that personalization comes without a price, think again. The bespoke eH+ service will cost $5,000 for a one year subscription. It certainly isn't cheap, but according to eHarmony 66% of its members were surveyed and indicated they would be interested in subscribing (though who knows what "would be interested" actually means?). Unfortunately the service is too new to hear reviews from users.

eH+ launched in beta on November 1, and its official launch is set for December 1. For more information on this dating site and its features you can read our full eHarmony Review.

What do you do when you love data, but can't seem to crack the online dating code? Rewrite the code, of course.

That's exactly what Amy Webb, author of Data, A Love Story: How I Gamed Online Dating to Meet My Match, did. After a bad breakup, and a series of bad dates through online dating sites, Webb decided to turn her passion for numbers and algorithms into a strategy for hacking the online dating system. "Rather than waiting for an algorithm to set me up," she told a rapt TED conference audience, "I'm going to try reverse-engineering this entire system."

She began by writing down every possible trait she was looking for in a mate. By the end she had amassed 72 different data points that covered everything from religion, to occupation, to hobbies, to children and parenting styles, to travel plans, to body type. She then prioritized the list, breaking it into a top tier and a second-tier of points and ranking them from 100 down to 91. Finally, she devised a scoring system to mathematically calculate whether or not she thought the date would be a good match for her.

At first glance, her points system appeared to be a success. She returned to online dating and found a good-looking, well spoken, and well-traveled man she thought could be the man of her dreams. There was just one problem: he didn't like her back. That's when Webb realized there was one variable, the competition, she hadn't considered. What about all the other women on online dating sites?

Webb's next step was market research. She created 10 fake male profiles in order to gather data about the women who were attracted to the kind of man she really wanted to marry. She looked at both qualitative data (the humor, the tone, the voice, the communication style) and quantitative data (average length of their profiles, how much time passed between messages). Her findings are fascinating.

"Content matters a lot," she explains. "Smart people tends to write a lot, 3000... 4000... 5000 words, about themselves." Successful online daters also tend to use nonspecific language and optimistic language, which makes their profiles feel more approachable. Timing is also very important, Webb found. "The popular women on these online sites spend an average of 23 hours in between each communication," she says. "And that's what we would normally do in the usual process of courtship."

Armed with new insight, Webb could optimize her online dating approach and create a super profile. And it worked. She is now married and has a daughter, and wrote a book to share her insider knowledge of the online dating system with the world. The question is...what does all this mean for you?

"There is an algorithm for love, it's just not the ones that we are presented with online," Webb says. "In fact, it's something that you write yourself...all you have to really do is figure out your own framework and play by your own rules."

Related Article: Amy Webb Tells TED How She Hacked Online Dating

Four of the biggest names in the dating industry have released their 2013 third quarter financial info. And it's probably a surprise to no one actively involved in online dating that IAC, Meetic, Spark Networks, and MeetMe all saw growth.

IAC

Revenue for Q3 2013 was $756.9 million, a growth of 6% from Q3 2012, the majority of which came from Search & Applications. Websites revenue increased primarily due to the contribution from About.com (acquired September 24, 2012) and CityGrid Media (moved from Local to Search & Applications in July 2013).

IAC also saw growth in Match revenue. Core, Meetic, and Developing revenues grew 7%, 11% and 58% to $118.8 million, $56.3 million and $26.0 million, respectively, thanks to increased subscribers and the contribution of the introduction service Twoo. As of September 30, 2013, IAC had $768.0 million in cash and cash equivalents and marketable securities as well as $580.0 million in long-term debt.

Meetic

At the end of Q3, Meetic, the European leader in online dating, had increased revenue over the first nine months of 2013 by 2.7% to €126.1 million. Meetic's subscribers for the same period of 2013 increased by 72,998 or 9.5% year over year to 840,801 as of September 30 , 2013. Meetic owes the majority of its growth to its online offerings, but mobile is playing an increasingly important role in the company's success.

Spark Networks

Total revenue for Spark Networks grew for the 11th consecutive quarter in Q3 2013. Divided, Christian Networks revenue grew for the 12th consecutive quarter and Jewish Networks revenue grew for the 2nd consecutive quarter. Q3 2013 revenue totaled $17.4 million, up from $15.9 million in Q3 2012. Most importantly for Spark Networks, revenue growth outpaced the growth of marketing expense, meaning company-wide contribution hit its highest level since the first half of 2012.

MeetMe

MeetMe's 10.1 million in quarterly revenue for Q3 2013 was primarily driven by its mobile segment. Mobile revenue reached another quarterly record of 2.9 million, up 65% year-over-year and 12% sequentially from the second quarter of 2013. The MeetMe team is now focused on driving engagement and bringing new audiences to the MeetMe application, with a significant update planned for the first quarter of 2014.

David Clark, Chief Financial Officer of MeetMe, added, "Third quarter results build on the improvement in top and bottom line financial performance achieved in the second quarter. Together with the launch of our new apps, we are encouraged by the start of what is traditionally our seasonally strongest quarter.

Are you concerned about your privacy when you use online dating sites? EFF is, and you should be too.

What is EFF? EFF is the Electronic Frontier Foundation, an organization dedicated to confronting cutting-edge issues defending free speech, privacy, innovation, and consumer rights in today's digital world. Of course, no discussion of today's digital world would be complete without a conversation about online dating sites. When EFF examined eight popular online dating sites to see how well they safeguard user privacy, they found that the majority of the sites tested did not take even basic security precautions.

We already took a look at how well the two most popular free dating sites, Plenty of Fish and OkCupid, performed on EFF's tests, and the results were less than stellar. Now the question is: does paying for a dating service guarantee better protection of your privacy? Let's take a look at how major dating sites eHarmony and Match stacked up against the freebies...

Neither Match nor eHarmony uses HTTPS, standard Web encryption, by default. By failing to use HTTPS, these sites expose their users to eavesdroppers when accessed from shared networks. All it takes is free software such as Wireshark for someone to access data that is transmitted in plaintext. This is potentially worrisome on any website, but it's particularly distressing on dating sites where information of a sensitive nature is routinely posted.

The next factor tested by EFF was whether or not the sites are free of mixed content. Mixed content is a problem that occurs when the site is primarily secured with HTTPS, but delivers part of its content over an insecure connection. Even if a page is encrypted over HTTPS, it may still be possible for an eavesdropper to access portions of the page if it displays mixed content. In some cases, EFF warns, a sophisticated attacker could even rewrite the entire page. Both eHarmony and Match contain mixed content.

EFF also tested whether the sites use secure cookies or HSTS. Failing to use secure cookies, which both eHarmony and Match are guilty of, can expose users to session hijacking. HSTS (HTTPS Strict Transport Security) can be used to request the use of HTTPS when communicating with a specific website. The user's browser will remember this request and automatically turn on HTTPS when connecting to the site in the future. Once again, both Match and eHarmony failed to employ HSTS.

Finally, EFF investigated the sites' policies on deleting data after the closure of a user's account. eHarmony's policy was deemed "vague," while on Match.com the fate of a user's information wasn't discussed at all.

So, where privacy is concerned, does it pay to pay? According to EFF, the answer is no. There is no significant difference between free dating sites and paid dating sites when it comes to privacy and security practices.