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The business of online dating continues to grow, as more apps enter the market and compete for funding from investors ready to cash in on the next Tinder. The latest financial news in the industry involves popular gay dating app Grindr, who just announced that Chinese online gaming titan Beijing Kunlun Tech has taken a “majority investment” in their app.

According to The New York Times, Beijing Kunlun’s stake in the company will be about 60%, with the remainder to be owned by Grindr employees and Joel Simkhai, the company's founder. The valuation of Grindr seems to be about $155 million according to the same article, although the actual amount invested was not disclosed.

Interestingly, Grindr had not raised capital from outside investors prior to their deal with Beijing Kunlun. The company was started and funded by Simkhai himself, who began with only a few thousand dollars. He grew the company and the brand: according to PC Magazine, the average user spends up to 54 minutes a day on the app – a figure that exceeds Facebook’s 42 minutes and Instagram’s 21 minutes.

According to leaked documents back in August, Grindr predicted pulling in about $38 million for 2015.

According to Financial Review, Carter McJunkin, chief operating officer of Grindr said in an interview: "We have users in every country in the world, but in order to get to the next phase of our business and grow faster, we needed a partner," McJunkin added that the relationship made sense for Grindr because of Beijing Kunlun's digital expertise, and because the company agreed to let Grindr's founders continue its operating structure and retain its current team.

Beijing Kulun saw Grindr as a good opportunity to expand beyond its core gaming focus, into more of an overall “lifestyle” brand. 

It’s interesting to note that Beijing Kunlun’s choice to purchase stake in a gay dating app seems incongruous, since homosexuality is still a taboo subject in China, and many gay people face widespread discrimination. It is not clear if Grindr intends to expand its business into the Chinese market, but there would be social stigma to overcome.

Beijing Kulun might see Grindr as a sound investment above all, despite its target market. Or perhaps they are paving the way for other Chinese investors to expand and reach out to invest in more diverse, successful brands outside of China. "We have been very impressed by Grindr's progress to date and are extremely excited about the future of the company," Yahui Zhou, chairman of Kunlun, said in a statement. "We will continue to seek out and invest in high-quality technology companies led by top-tier management across the globe.” For more information on this gay dating app you can check our our Grindr Topic.

Lone Star Introductions, a matchmaking service operating in the state of Texas to help singles find love, was forced to cease operations and pay restitution to its former customers. According to Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s office, the judgment came from a lawsuit against the Massachusetts based company ‘for violating the Texas Deceptive Trade Practices Act and Texas Internet Dating Safety Act.’

A state district court issued an injunction that calls on the dating service and affiliated dating sites, including eLove Matchmaking, International Dating Ventures and International Introductions, to cease operations in the state. Lone Star Introductions was using multiple company names to pursue its aggressive tactics, and was informed by the state of Texas two years ago that they were being investigated.

The attorney general says the company uses lead generating companies to mine online dating services for customer contacts, then uses the information to make cold calls in Texas, without registering as a telemarketer. They would pressure prospective clients to meet in the Lone Star Introductions offices to sign expensive contracts for dating services which they would then not provide.

According to website Courthouse News, Lone Star Introductions was particularly ruthless when it came to getting money from vulnerable clients. According to court documents, once Lone Star would get a phone number, they "use high pressure and coercive tactics" to try to get targets to sign up, including "incessant phone calls," coercion and manipulation. "Defendants charge consumers between $7,995 and $12,995 for prospective dating introductions," the state says.

Lone Star calls its telemarketers "counselors,” but according to Paxton’s office were little more than aggressive telemarketers.

Courthouse News goes on to note the following from the lawsuit: "Consumers who complained to defendants and requested to cancel their contracts are harassed and threatened by defendants with financial ruin and criminal prosecution. One consumer alleges that an eLove representative 'yelled four-letter curse words at [him], threatened to destroy [his] credit, prosecute [him] for a felony, and report [him] to the Texas Attorney General's Office' when the consumer attempted to cancel his contract."

According to Paxton’s office this type of harassment and threat to consumers violates debt collection regulations. Also, the “Counselors” at Lone Star Introductions failed to comply with the Texas Internet Dating Safety Act, which includes advising customers of safe dating practices.

The final judgment ordered the defendant to pay $500,000 in civil penalties and pay $20,000 in restitution to customers.

eHarmony is offering a 4 day Cyber Monday Special this weekend in Canada. It starts Friday November 27th and ends on Monday November 30th, 2015.

With this special you can receive up to 75% off on select memberships at eHarmony. This is a great deal for singles who are looking to try out online dating. To receive the deal you don't have to do anything more than signup to eHarmony by November 30th. Once you have created your membership and completed the profile questionnaire you will find the discounted prices on your membership subscription page.

For more information about this online dating site, you can read our review of eHarmony review.

Looking for a new dating app? It’s not hard to find something besides Tinder – it seems a new dating app launches every week, each with its own particular spin. But the new U.K. launch of dating app Once has got my attention, because it offers something the other apps don’t – real human matchmakers in place of computer algorithms. (We are now going back to basics with online dating.)

Once works like this: once every 24 hours, users will get a hand-picked match to either decline or accept within the next 24 hours. Dates are carefully chosen using several criteria, including interests, looks and personal preferences.

With Once, there is no auto-swiping or endless browsing or location matching like you find on apps like Tinder because the match is personally curated. But it also means as a dater, you have to have patience, because you only get one match a day.  After all, the human matchmakers have a lot of other people to cater to, not just you, and this takes time.

But patience can work in your favor, and often leaves you more interested to tuning in and seeing who your featured match will be. Chances are, you’ll accept more matches when you don’t have an endless array of potential dates to choose from – and because it’s a bit more personal, instead of computer-generated choices. The thinking is that you and your hand-picked date will have some things in common, and the likelihood of relationship success will be greater. The jury is still out on this, as Once hasn’t been on the market long enough to see results.

The dating app recently launched in France, and managed to gain 100,000 users in only a couple of weeks. Once has now launched in the UK, where real-life matchmakers will be picking daters to match in London.

"People are fed up with having just to sit and swipe through hundreds of people in the hope that they might find one person who they like and then start a conversation with," said Jean Meyer, the CEO and founder of Once in an interview with Mashable. He also noted the time-saving aspect of his app: “With Once, we’re taking that responsibility on ourselves, and are handpicking great people for London’s time-starved daters.”

While Once is available in France and the UK on both iOS and Android devices, there is no news yet on the app’s roll-out in other countries. Perhaps this adds to its mystique, to keep daters guessing. Dating Sites Reviews will keep you updated as we learn more.

Forget Black Friday. Forget Cyber Monday. China’s Singles' Day is now the world’s biggest online shopping bonanza.

The holiday, an anti-Valentine's Day for single people, traces its origins back to Nanjing University in 1993. Students began celebrating the single life annually on November 11, a date chosen because of the connection between singlehood and the number 1. Upon graduation many continued the tradition and the celebration of Singles' Day is now widespread amongst young Chinese people.

To mark the occasion, Chinese singles party with other single friends. The festivities can include a special breakfast, karaoke and blind date parties hosted in attempt to end singlehood as soon as possible. Singles' Day has also become the largest online shopping day in the world, with sales in e-commerce giant Alibaba's sites Tmall and Taobao clocking in at US$9.3 billion in 2014.

Yes, $9.3 billion. That’s more than the total U.S. online sales on Black Friday and Cyber Monday combined in 2014. And no one got run over in a tragic store stampede.

Singles' Day shopping originated with Alibaba, but today merchants throughout China participate. Shoppers can score major deals on clothing, cosmetics, electronics and even food. Looking at the numbers will make your head spin:

• Alibaba's Singles' Day 2015 selection will include 6 million products from more than 40,000 merchants, and over 30,000 brands from 25 countries
• China’s post office estimates that nearly 800 million packages will be shipped as a result of the hoilday
• A Nielsen survey found that 56 percent of more than 1,000 internet users in China said they would increase spending compared with 2014
• Consumers are expected to spend an average of $277 per person, up 22 percent year on year
• Alibaba estimates that 1.7 million deliverymen, 400,000 delivery vehicles, 5,000 warehouses and 200 airplanes will be necessary to handle the deliveries

If predictions are accurate, 2015 could be the biggest year yet for retailers on Singles' Day. Alibaba sales could hit $10 billion in a 24-hour period.

"It's not a huge surprise that consumers are planning to spend more during this year's 'Double 11,'” Yan Xuan, President of Nielsen Greater China, told CNBC. “Income levels and internet penetration continue to rise throughout China, so this is a natural progression.”

Singles' Day is also expanding worldwide. Five thousand overseas brands from 25 countries – including the U.S, Europe, Japan and South Korea – will be available this year. This year's international participants include Costco, LG Electronics, Walt Disney Co., Fisher-Price and Lego. In recent years, Apple, Calvin Klein, Macy's and Burberry have participated.

Perhaps Singles' Day itself will soon be a global phenomenon.

Dating can feel like a spin of the roulette wheel. You could wind up a winner or go home a loser, and either way, your fate is in the fickle hands of Lady Luck. Run into a particularly bad string of dates and you might even think your odds are better in Vegas.

Online dating can't take luck out of the equation entirely, but matching algorithms attempt to add science into the mix. Much has been said about how data is used to help online daters meet their match, but what about the dating sites themselves?

Lynsey Tomkinson, senior marketing manager at eHarmony, spoke to CMO about how an audience segmentation project opened up a whole new world of possibilities for eHarmony. Tasked with increasing the effectiveness of the company's marketing programs, Tomkinson's team relied on data to find ways to better understand and interact with prospects and customers.

The team's investigation began with eHarmony's testimonials. In an age that's widely accepting of online dating, testimonials are no longer needed to persuade new prospects to try it for the first time. Instead, it's about persuading them to switch to eHarmony.

eHarmony also decided to dial down on its marriage-based messaging. Although the company built a strong reputation as a marriage-minded site, that motif becomes increasingly less relevant in the modern world. The company will now showcase that it's a relationship-oriented site without focusing on marriage specifically.

eHarmony launched an audience segmentation project late in 2014 to delve deeper into audience insights. The goal was to find better ways to target individuals using messages carefully tailored to their needs, interests and lifestyles. eHarmony drew on data from its 2.6 million Australian members and analyzed more than 70 million data points – the largest bespoke audience segmentation project in the company's eight-year history in Australia.

Ten unique audiences were identified based on profitability, volume and opportunity. Tomkinson's team emphasized the top three, most commercially viable segments. As a result, customer subscriptions and engagement rates leapt by double digits, while eHarmony improved the cost of its registration-to-subscription rate by 53 percent.

After the success of these data-driven experiments, the next step is to boost data analytics capability in-house. “This provides the business the case to get these systems running internally for us,” Tomkinson told CMO. eHarmony is now taking steps to build its infrastructure. Tomkinson hopes the company can produce more data-driven initiatives internally by this time next year.

“This work has set up a good foundation for us that hopefully will work well internally in the future,” she says.

For more information on this dating service please read our review of eHarmony.com.