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SNAP Interactive has made its online dating site Are You Interested (AYI) a priority, and it looks like it’s paying off. The company announced that AYI has become the number one grossing application in US Lifestyle category in the Apple iTunes Store as of August.

The company hit other big milestones, too. In July, its mobile apps contributed to the highest percentage of total logins ever, at 38%. New mobile subscription transactions were up 57% year-to-date compared to the same period in 2013, and total mobile logins were up 33% YTD compared to the same period in 2013.

AYI began as a Facebook-based online dating site, and has since expanded to its service to develop its mobile platform. SNAP said that it has put a huge focus on mobile in the past year, specifically improving the user experience for iPad, iPhone, and Android phones. The goal was to create a seamless cross-platform experience for everyone, no matter what device they were using.

Mobile has become a crucial part of the online dating market, and its numbers are only going up. Traditional online dating sites have been developing and marketing their mobile platforms for this reason – many daters want more ease and accessibility - and don’t want to have to sit in front of their laptops when they can use their phones to connect with potential dates. Popular apps like Tinder, Hinge and Grindr have also created a new market of younger daters who find dating via phone apps to be the most convenient way to meet people.

Snap's Chief Executive Officer Clifford Lerner commented, "Mobile is the primary platform for an increasingly large segment of online dating users, and we were determined to create an excellent experience on all mobile platforms to take a leadership position in the market.  We're excited to be the #1 Top Grossing application in the US Lifestyle category in the Apple iTunes store.  It shows that iPhone users have really embraced the AYI app and user experience we worked so hard on.  We believe mobile is an important engine of growth in the online dating industry, and we're pleased to be one of the leading providers of online dating applications."

Snap's Chief Operating Officer Alex Harrington added, "Mobile is not only strategically important, but also a very lucrative platform for the Company.  In July 2014, approximately 52% of our user acquisitions occurred on mobile platforms, which helped diversify marketing sources and increase marketing efficiency."

SNAP Interactive hasn’t mentioned any future development plans for AYI. For more on this dating service you can read our Are You Interested review.

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.

eHarmony is well-known in the online dating space. It has been around over fourteen years and has grown to be one of the biggest competitors due to its emphasis on finding people serious relationships. Now, it wants to get serious about your job search, too.

The company’s strategy and technology is all about compatibility matching. Subscribers to the dating site are put through a rather lengthy sign-up process to ensure that the technology behind the site really captures the essence of what each person wants, along with his or her relationship tendencies. (One of the best things about the sign-up process is that eHarmony provides a snapshot booklet of who you are as a dater: the kind of personality you have, they type of person you gravitate towards, and the positive and negative ways that your dates may interpret your behavior. It’s incredibly insightful, and helped make me a more observant dater.)

Now, eHarmony is taking this compatibility matching technology and applying it to your job search. The new site called Elevated Careers by eHarmony is set to launch in December.

According to MarketWatch, few details were revealed about how the career-matching algorithm will work. But eHarmony CEO Neil Clark Warren said some of the likely qualities that will be analyzed include “conscientiousness, honesty and conflict resolution,” among others.

When asked why Dr. Warren thought eHarmony should move into the career space, since it seems so far removed from romance and peoples’ personal lives, he countered that love and work are more connected than we think. “If people come home and they’re unhappy with their job and boss, it puts a lot of tension on a marriage,” he told MarketWatch.

While eHarmony boasts that is has made 600,000 marriages, they have also gained a divorce rate of 3.9%, slightly higher than the national average of 3.6%.

It is an interesting idea at a time when job dissatisfaction is high. Roughly 70% of Americans described themselves as “not engaged” or “actively disengaged” from their workplaces according to a recent Gallup report. And according to an article in Entrepreneur.com, the average worker hops jobs every 4.6 years. That doesn’t lead to a loyal workforce or employee satisfaction when nobody is willing to commit. Perhaps it is time for a change, and for both employers and employees to look at compatibility, rather than waste resources training people who remain actively looking for another job.

I don’t think job satisfaction is completely reliant on company culture and employer-employee compatibility, though it is certainly a factor. Many people find themselves in careers that aren’t what they expected and want a fresh start. Perhaps there is a way eHarmony will use its technology to also advise what career might be best for each of us. Until then, we’ll see what Elevated Careers has to offer.

I think a lot of things while sitting at my computer, but until now, none of those things have involved which giant Internet company has the hottest employees. I was perfectly content to search for cat videos on Google and order weird home appliances I’ll never use on Amazon without thinking about the attractiveness of the people on the other side of those companies.

Then Hinge came along, a dating app that matches young professionals in similar networks, and decided that was no way to live. According to Hinge, users are 14.2% more likely to “swipe right” for Amazon employees than their counterparts at tech companies like Google, Microsoft, Apple, and Facebook. Microsoft came in second, with right swipes occurring 8.2% more often than average. Apple ranks as the least attractive tech firm, with a dismal percentage of 0.2, which is a bit surprising given the cool factor attached to all things Apple.

Before you rush to send in your resume to Amazon, consider the facts behind the findings. Amazon reported having 117,300 employees as of January, including part-time workers. In contrast, Microsoft is home to 99,000 employees, Apple to 80,300, Google to 47,756, and Facebook to 6,337. Because Hinge connects daters through their career networks, it’s likely that more Amazon employees are on the app in the first place.

Oh, and there’s also the fact that Hinge found Amazon employees to be the least “picky” of all the tech companies. Meaning, in the app world, that they’re more likely to swipe right on a profile. And meaning, in the real world, that they’re not exactly selective about who they go on dates with (no judgment, of course…do your thang, Amazon employees). Amazon employees’ more open minded approach to dating could also account for their higher numbers.

Facebook employees displayed the most pickiness – defined by how often the users pass on prospective matches by swiping left – of the bunch. Employees at the social network turned down potential matches 7.5% more than the average Hinge user. Apple employees were found to be the second pickiest, though at a rate of only 0.5% more than average.

On the whole, techie types stacked up well against the competition. Men and women at four of the five companies were all rated more attractive than the average Hinge user (the fifth, Apple, got right-swiped at about the average rate).

Good luck ever ordering from Amazon again without thinking about the hottie who may be processing your order on the other side.

There are many online dating sites and mobile apps competing for the same market of single men and women, looking for innovative ways to position themselves differently than “just another dating site/app.” But How About We continues to make innovative moves in this industry and buck the trends, including its initial hook – taking online dating offline for better results. Now they're also offering services to couples and getting into the digital content space.

Online Personals Watch recently interviewed CEO Aaron Schildkrout about the success and challenges of How About We, the choices he’s made, and what he wants to do next with the brand.

How About We is focusing on the couples space, since Schildkrout claims it will be "twenty times bigger" than the dating space will be. The fundamental problem with dating sites is that it works to their advantage for people to stay single and looking, so the focus is on gathering more subscribers, not necessarily making a product that helps customers meet their goals of finding partners. Shildkrout maintains that meeting up in the real world works better for singles, which is why they made it their focus.

Now here's some news you probably never expected to hear: not only are more people meeting on social networks (which doesn't come as a surprise to anyone who hasn't been living in a remote jungle for the last decade), but their relationships are also happier than those that begin off-line in more traditional ways.

What?

Yes, apparently it's true. Jeffrey Hall, associate professor of Communication Studies at the University of Kansas, discovered that 7% of people who married after meeting online didn’t meet in matchmaking chat rooms or on online dating sites. In fact, they met for the first time on social networking sites like Facebook.

Surprised by his finding, given that dating isn’t the purpose of social networking websites, Hall decided to investigate further. He was curious to learn more about who is meeting their significant others this way and how well their relationships fair. He put together a sample of 19,131 participants who'd been married once between 2005 in 2012. Each participant had met their partner in one of four ways: online dating sites, e-mail or instant messaging, online communities like chat rooms or virtual reality games, or social networking sites.

Hall found that those who met on social networking sites were more likely to be younger, married more recently, and African-American compared to those who met via other digital methods. He also found that, when compared based on marital satisfaction, the partners who met via social networking reported being just as happy as those who were introduced any other way – even on online dating sites, which are designed to nurture connection and tout their compatibility benefits.

What surprised Hall even more, however, was that the relationships that started on social media were actually happier than those that begin offline, in traditional ways like being introduced by mutual friends.

What explains his findings?

Hall has a couple of theories. “I think that social networking is the digital version of being introduced by friends,” he says. So although the medium has changed in the 21st century, the method has not. Social networks also have another potentially huge advantage over dating services: there is way less pressure. Online dating can be intensely stressful, so it's not hard to believe that romance might blossom better under more relaxed, Facebook friend-ly circumstances.

The result is conversations on social networking sites that are more casual and low risk, and removed from the anxiety of traditional online dating. Low risk + high reward = hello, online romance!