Zoosk's dazzling rise to fame is the stuff of online dating legends. Over the last five years, Zoosk has evolved into a leader in the industry, and this year it celebrated a major milestone.

On May 22, 2013, Zoosk announced a company record: revenue exceeded $40 million in the first quarter of the year. That's not a bad way to celebrate the half-decade mark...

And that's not all Zoosk has achieved this year. The first quarter of 2013 also saw these breakthroughs for the popular dating site:

• Zoosk experienced a 116% increase in monthly total unique visitors compared to the same period last year.
• The number of monthly active users for Zoosk's mobile products increased more than 200% year-over-year.

Zoosk believes its success can be chalked up to its unique approach to matchmaking and a strong focus on the mobile market. The site set itself apart with its Behavioral Matchmaking engine, which learns users' preferences by observing their behavior on the site. It continuously improves subsequent matching suggestions as it more thoroughly profiles a user, resulting in increasingly better matches and higher levels of engagement with other singles.

The Behavioral Matchmaking engine is driven by three discovery tools:

• Zoosk's Scientific Matchmaking service, a daily introduction to a potential match
• Carousel, a rapid-fire round of profile pictures
• Search functionality that sorts through the millions of profiles on the site

On the mobile front, Zoosk created a variety of mobile applications to meet users' increasing demands for dating on-the-go. The applications are all optimized versions of the site's experience that are frequently updated to provide better and more sophisticated service. Applications are available for Apple devices on iTunes and for Android in the Google Play store.

Zoosk's commitment to mobile has paid off. It consistently ranks as the #1 dating app for the iPhone and iPad, and in Google Play the Zoosk app has been downloaded more than five million times.

"We wanted to bring a no-compromise approach to small screen dating for users on-the-go," said Shayan Zadeh, Zoosk CEO and co-founder. "So instead of designing our mobile product as an extension of our website, we built a brand new experience from the ground up. This mobile-centric design plus our Behavioral Matchmaking engine equals a powerful formula that is driving user adoption."

Congratulations to Zoosk on their stellar start to 2013. Can't wait to see what the rest of the year has in store...

For more on this dating site you can read our review about Zoosk.

I just got an "Upgrade your POF Account" email. After reading it I was only a little surprised to find even more free features of POF for paid members only.

These features includes reading date feedback, hottest girls that reply, and viewing extended profiles. Features that are new and for upgraded members only include standing out in all searches (highlighted) and seeing who viewed your profile after you voted yes or maybe on.

The last time we found Plenty of Fish removing free member features was in December of 2012 and this was for knowing when a user was last online (very important when using a dating site).

I wonder what is next on the chopping block? Does anyone have any guesses?

There's yet another dating app that's taking advantage of the power of Facebook. And why not? With all the connective power the social network has, why wouldn't companies capitalize on it to help people find love?

"You Should Totally Meet" is an app that helps you play cupid among your Facebook friends, introducing them to each other to see if they hit it off. (I guess you could say it's like setting two of your friends up on a blind date, but in a cool-because-it's-digital kind of way).

So, if you've been dying to set up your single friend Sally, you can be her wing-woman and set up a profile through the app. It allows you to list reasons why you think Sally would be so amazing to date. Then your other Facebook friends can agree or disagree with your assessment.

When the profile is complete, you can scroll through your list of friends and see if there's anyone you want to introduce Sally to, and then let them take it from there. As in real life, there's either a connection or there's not.

I met my husband through a mutual friend on Facebook, so I'm all about tapping into your network to see what can happen. But really, let's call this app for what it is - you're setting your friend Sally up, and you are playing cupid here, not some dating website. So you better be sure to run it by her before she starts getting emails and friend requests from people she doesn't know.

As cool as this app sounds, I wouldn't replace online dating with it. Although the company claims that it's a less awkward, more organic dating experience than meeting a stranger for coffee, it's also limited to your friend's circle of friends.

It's good to keep your options open when it comes to meeting people. Online dating, mobile dating, and plain old-fashioned ways like approaching the cute guy at your local bar are effective ways to meet more people, especially those outside of your network that you'd otherwise never come across.

Of course, online dating means meeting people without any mutual friends to help vouch for them. And sometimes in dating we like to know what we're getting. References are good, because they put us more at ease. We like to hear that Sally is a cool girl before we meet.

So, try it out. But don't drop your online dating membership.

You've met a great woman through an online dating site, and you've been seeing her for a few weeks. You haven't discussed your relationship or anyone else you're dating, but you always have a good time together and have become closer. You want to stop dating other people and have already taken down your online profile. But you've noticed hers is still active.

Do you ask her to take it down, or do you keep silent and hope that she'll do it herself if she's interested in you?

This can be a tough question, as most people signed up for online dating sites go out with several people and keep their profiles active. It really depends on where you're at in the relationship.

And admittedly, talking about your relationship status when you've only been dating a little while is a hard thing to do. There's a good chance you're not on the same page, so why ruin a good thing?

The problem is, if you are interested in someone, talking about it is the best (and only) way to move forward.

Let's say you've discussed trying exclusivity with each other. In this case, it's fair game to ask each other to take down your online dating profiles. You've agreed to be exclusive.

But if you haven't had a discussion about exclusivity, then both of you are entitled to keep actively dating on the site until you are both ready to move forward. In fact, it's good to keep your options open instead of counting on something that may fizzle out in a few weeks' time. Until you're ready to have that discussion, you should keep your profile active on the site and not take it down prematurely.

If you've been seeing each other a few weeks and you want to move forward but she doesn't, what do you do? It's important to note here that she might not be ready for a relationship. Or, she might want to keep her options open because she isn't sure about you. Either way, you don't want to take your profile down and see her exclusively when she isn't doing the same. It will cause heartbreak in the future, because you both have different expectations.

Let's say she's more interested in being exclusive than you are. She took down her profile after your third date, hoping you'd want to move forward, too. But if you still want to meet new people, her actions shouldn't deter you. When you're dating non-exclusively, you're not beholden to anyone. You should be dating multiple people at a time, just to see what it is you do and don't want - until you're ready to move forward with one person.

Bottom line: Communication is important as you get further along in the dating process. Keep dating others until you have agreed to exclusivity.

In Hollywood, everyone wants to be on the A-List. It means invites to the best parties, schmoozing with the biggest celebrities, and being showered with the most expensive swag.

Much to my dismay, the OkCupid A-List doesn't involve quite as many sexy movie stars and free Chanel clothes. Instead, the OkC A-List offers:

• Ad-free browsing
• Extra photo albums
• A-List only forums
• Enhanced search features
• Username change
• Anonymous browsing plus the ability to see who viewed your profile
• Unlimited message storage
• Protection against scammers, trolls, and fake users
• Private photos attached to messages
• Increased visibility on the site

The service launched in 2009 to mixed reviews. For those with very specific needs, A-List membership comes with useful perks. But for the majority of OkCupid users, A-List membership comes with nothing but a question: "What's the point?" The features are far from essential, and some users feel that the additional elements detract from their online dating experience.

On the plus side, there are a few genuine advantages to using the A-List service. The site can become a more effective matching tool when you can specify a search radius lower than 25 miles. Anonymous browsing means you can check back on a profile to remind yourself who someone is without looking like a creepy stalker. The advanced search features can come in handy, as can the increased mail box size for those who are prolific writers. The most intriguing benefit of A-List membership is the ability to change that stupid username you chose before you realized there was no going back.

Other A-List features are a little odder. One feature allows an A-List member to send email to a user whose mailbox is completely full. Another gives feedback from A-List users priority over feedback from free users. A third allows for the creation of adult photo albums.

On the negative side of things, A-List services hardly provide any extra value and may come with unwanted baggage. Harsher users may assume that anyone who pays for A-List membership is creepy, desperate, or needy. That's a big price to pay for something that doesn't offer much in return.

In the long run, A-List seems to be a needless expense. Deleting messages from a full inbox is hardly a chore, is it? Why add features that make your online dating experience more complex instead of simpler? And with so few differences between A-List memberships and standard memberships, why pay for something that you could get for free?

For more on this dating site you can take a look at our review of OkCupid.

When online dating site PlentyofFish.com first launched (now just pof.com), it quickly gained attention. Free dating sites were not as popular (or as common) as the standard ones like Match.com and eHarmony. Over the first seven years, the site grew to over ten million users.

Within the last few years however, the site has gained a reputation for being a hook-up site, with its "Intimate Encounters" option a prime example of how many male subscribers were using it. Unfortunately, as founder Markus Frind admitted, many of the female profiles were actually men posing as women. On top of that, the male users were harassing the female users. So Frind has decided to scrap Intimate Encounters option and refocus the brand back to its original intention - connecting people for relationships, not for hookups.

While this might seem like a daunting task, Frind has outlined some of the ways he's trying to prevent people from misusing the site. He claims that the rise in mobile dating has created a kind of urgency to meeting people that pushes hook-ups, but there is also the issue of the fake female profiles.

Some of his changes include:

"Any first contact between users that contains sexual references will not be sent. Anyone who tries to get around this rule will be deleted without warning.

You can only contact people +/- 14 years of your age. The majority of messages sent outside those age ranges are all about hookups. Anyone who tries to get around this rule will get deleted.

Intimate Encounters will go away in the next few months. There are 3.3 Million people who use the site every day, of those there are only 6,041 single women looking for Intimate Encounters. Of those 6,041 women, the ones with hot pictures are mostly men pretending to be women. Intimate Encounters on POF can be summed up as a bunch of horny men talking to a bunch of horny men pretending to be women."

I appreciate his honesty and his attempt to reign in the users of the site and gain more trust. But it's easy to see how this happened, since the members don't pay for their membership and there is no financial repercussion when they abuse their privileges. There is less at risk, which means that more people will join and use the site to their advantage.

While online dating sites have little control over which users join, how they represent themselves, and how they behave on the site, there are certain steps that sites can take to ensure greater safety. Plenty of Fish has started this process, and I'm curious to see its effect, and how other sites may follow.

To find out more about this service you can read our Plenty of Fish dating site review.