Location

Single and looking for love in the UK? You're not the only one. Far from it, in fact. According to data from the 2011 Census, the single population is thriving in England and Wales.

An analysis of the data examined how the single population changed over the decade between 2001 and 2011. Over 15.7 million adults (35% of those aged 16 and over) in England and Wales had never been married in 2011, up significantly from 12.5 million (30%) in 2001. In contrast, there were 23 million (51%) ‘not married’ (meaning never married, divorced, or widowed) people in 2011, a rise from 19.4 million (47%) in 2001.

According to the analysis from the UK's Office for National Statistics, the rise in the single population could be the result of a number of factors. One explanation could be the proportional decline in marriage since the 1970s. Another could be the increased social acceptability of remaining single or cohabiting (either never marrying or not re-marrying following divorce or widowhood).

The Office for National Statistics also teased out a few interesting tidbits from the Census to highlight:

• The single population in 2011 was older than in 2001. The single population aged over the course of the decade, perhaps due to the increase in older divorced and widowed people. Of those who had never been married, women were younger than men, likely due to the trend for women to marry men older than themselves.
• Islington had the highest proportion of single people in its population. The majority of the top 10 local authorities with the highest proportions of individuals who were either never married or unmarried were in London. Islington had the greatest concentration of both these groups. The area with the lowest proportion of both never married and not married was East Dorset.
• There were 21 never married men for every 10 never married women in Richmondshire. In some areas, the ratio of single men to single women was drastically imbalanced. Richmondshire was home to 21 never married men to every 10 never married women. Within Richmondshire, Scotton had the largest difference between males and females who had never married: 97 men to every 10 women. There were no local authorities with considerably more women who had never married than men.

The Office for National Statistics also released an map that plots the results of the Census analysis. Use it to search by relationship status, gender, postcode or address to find out which parts of the country are most densely populated with singles. If you're looking for love and having no luck at home, it may be time to consider a move.

Every online dater has been there: stuck in an endless exchange of messages. When the end finally comes, it almost always happens one of two ways.

Option one: you meet in person, realize you're not at all compatible, and are furious about how much time you wasted on pointless messages. Option two: you never even get to that point. Someone just ghosts and the conversation is over by default.

Rarely does it end with option three: you meet, click instantly, and ride off into the proverbial sunset together

A new dating app is hoping to spare you some of that trouble. Whim promises to cut to the chase and set up actual dates - with "no endless texting" and "no flakes or fakes."

The process is exactly as simple as it sounds. Users create profiles and then specify which days they're free to go on a date. The date can be any night of the current week or a recurring weekly evening. After that, users browse profiles and indicate who they are interested in meeting.

When two users express interest in each other, Whim automatically sets up a time and place for the date, based on your availability and preferences (a user who doesn't drink, for example, won't be sent to a bar). Users can message each other about logistics, but it isn't required.

OkCupid alum Eve Peters started the venture two years ago. She told TechCrunch that Whim “surveyed the users of online dating apps and found that matches resulted in dates less than 10 percent of the time.” In contrast, matches on Whim resulted in dates more than 90 percent of the time.

The idea has its perks. Whim requires only a small time investment, which is increasingly important to users. It also guarantees that, when someone matches with you, they're actually looking to go on a date. A right swipe is a meaningful action on Whim and users have to think more seriously before they do it.

The idea also has its downsides. Those who are concerned with safety may not take to Whim's insta-date premise. For them, messaging before a meeting is an important part of the getting-to-know-you process – a filter for creeps, weirdo's, and other undesirables.

To counteract those concerns, Whim's dates all take place in public places. Peters also says the service relies on “high human touch” to ensure safety. All profiles are read by Whim team members, and users are encouraged to give post-date feedback so anyone objectionable can be removed.

The service is currently free and available only in the San Francisco Bay Area. Peters said she plans to charge $10 a month and launch in a second city by the end of the year. You can download the iOS app here. An Android version is expected in 2016.

The bad news just keeps coming for Ashley Madison.

The adultery dating site was hacked last month by a group calling itself The Impact Team. At the time of the security breach, The Impact Team threatened to release customer records online if Ashley Madison was not shut down.

Avid Life Media (ALM), which runs Ashley Madison and other dating sites, did not back down and the hackers made good on their threat. More than 30 million email addresses and credit card numbers have been exposed, including those of notable figures in entertainment and politics.

In the wake of the leak, things have only gotten worse for Ashley Madison. There are reports of suicides that may be tied to the hacking scandal. Avid Life Media is offering a $500,000 reward to anyone with info that leads to the arrest of the hackers. The company is also facing a $760 million class action lawsuit over the data hack.

Eliot Shore, a widower from Ottawa, is the plaintiff in the suit filed this week in Ontario against Avid Life Media and Avid Life Dating, a subsidiary that runs Ashley Madison. The legal action alleges that the privacy of thousands of Canadians was breached when the hackers infiltrated Ashley Madison.

"Numerous former users of AshleyMadison.com have approached the law firms to inquire about their privacy rights under Canadian law," the law firms Charney Lawyers and Sutts, Strosberg LLP said in a statement. "They are outraged that AshleyMadison.com failed to protect its users' information. In many cases, the users paid an additional fee for the website to remove all of their user data, only to discover that the information was left intact and exposed."

Lawyer Ted Charney told VICE News that around 100 people have expressed interest in joining the class action so far, noting that anyone who registers will remain anonymous.

It will be up to a court to decide whether Ashley Madison did enough to protect its customers. David Fraser, a Halifax-based internet, technology, and privacy lawyer, thinks the class action faces “a bit of a challenge.” He says the Ashley Madison terms of service are "decidedly consumer unfriendly" and "completely covered their butt."

There may even be a question over whether this can be a class action at all. Ashley Madison's terms preclude customers from filing such suits, but consumer protection legislation in Ontario protects the right to do so.

Either way, it won't be the end of the issue for Ashley Madison. The Associated Press reported that another lawsuit seeking class action status was filed in the US days after the hack became public.

Japan has a well-deserved reputation for being a techno locally advanced nation, but there's one piece of the technological puzzle they haven't mastered: online dating.

Japan is a cultural and economic powerhouse faced with a serious population crisis. The country's overall population will reportedly contract by almost a third within the next 90 years. Its birthrate is one of the lowest on earth, and the marriage rate is also declining.

On top of that, a 2014 survey conducted by the Japan Family Planning Association found that 49% of all respondents had not had sex in the past month, and 18% of men said they had no interest in sex at all.

Add it all together, and you have a country facing some very unique problems. What happens when people no longer want to procreate?

The answer to that remains to be seen. For now, many are asking how Japan got there in the first place and what can be done about it.

Comedian Aziz Ansari and sociologist Eric Klinenberg address the issue in their new book, Modern Romance. "The Japanese are legitimately worried about running out of Japanese people," they write.

One reason could be a cultural fear of being perceived as the sleazy, superficial player-type known as “charai.” Online dating carries a similar social stigma in many countries, but it could be amplified in Japan, causing Japanese singles to avoid it entirely.

Another issue could be online dating's reliance on profile photos. "In Japan, posting any pictures of yourself, especially selfie-style photos, comes off as really douchey,” reads Modern Romance. Instead of posting selfies, which are considered too narcissistic, Japanese singles post photos with multiple people – or even no people at all. It wouldn't be unusual to come across a profile with a picture of a pet or a posession, like a rice cooker.

And that's not all. According to a recent Fast Company article, many singles in Japan view online dating as a scam. Scams sites proliferated back in the 90s, and reports of scams aren't scarce today either. It's scared many singles away and done nothing to reduce the stigma.

Some are using social networking and meetup sites to meet new people, but out-in-the-open online dating is still a controversial subject in a country that prizes subtlety. Companies like Tinder, Match, and OkCupid can't flourish in Japan because the cultural differences are too great.

With young Japanese singles increasingly expressing frustration, the country's dating scene is ready for the “disruption” Silicon Valley startups are so fond of touting. The question is, which company will step up and be the first to blaze a trail into the brave new world?

In Aziz Ansari and Eric Klinenberg’s new book Modern Romance, they discuss the disconnect of online dating in Japanese culture. Despite Japan’s adoption of and love for technology, single people still stigmatize online dating.

The reasons are part cultural and part historical. Japanese singles haven’t had a good experience with online dating, historically speaking. In the 1990’s when online dating first hit the singles scene, online dating companies had male members pay per message and also used their female employees as bait, posting their profiles on the dating sites to attract more male users. More recently, fake dating sites have been exposed, with companies using male employees to pose as girls on the sites and charging their male members to talk to them – (obviously, those members never get to the date).

It’s easy to see why Japanese singles are skeptical. But now dating apps have made things a little easier to verify. First, like most dating apps all over the world, users are verified through their Facebook profile, so it’s not easy to create fake accounts. And Japan is really embracing social media, especially after both LinkedIn and Facebook helped families find each other after the 2011 earthquake.

But another interesting trend is happening with Japanese online daters. The culture is rather conservative when it comes to dating – and guys don’t want to be thought of as players. Since dating apps have become synonymous with hook-ups, Japanese - and men especially - are weary to sign up for fearing like they will come across as insincere. So people aren’t really embracing online dating.

In fact, they aren’t dating much at all. Most Japanese singles are much more focused on work, which means working long hours and delaying starting a family. This is also taking a toll on their social lives. A 2014 survey by the Japan Family Planning Association found that 49% of all respondents had not had sex in the past month, and 18% of men said they had no interest in sex at all. On top of this, they face a serious population decline.  According to Business Insider, a 2012 report by Japan's National Institute of Population and Social Security Research shows the number of Japanese people will fall from 127 million to around 87 million by 2060.

Still not everyone is averse to online dating. The country has seen some interesting trends.

Selfies tend to be popular with online dating in most countries, but are looked upon as narcissistic in Japan. Even a photo showing an online dater by herself is frowned upon because Japanese tend to view this as self-centered. Most daters either post photos with a group of friends (so you can’t really identify the person you are meeting), or they post photos of their cats or random objects. One of the weirdest trends among online daters is posting photos of their rice cookers in their profiles, according to Modern Love.

There are definite cultural and practical barriers to get beyond when it comes to online dating in Japan. But as time goes on and it becomes more trust-worthy and mainstream, hopefully singles will embrace it.

Did you know crafty ladies love Houston, men in Seattle seek outdoor adventure, and intellectual singles flock to Washington, DC?

It's hard to put much stock in the interests section on online dating profiles. Occasionally you may connect with something, but mostly it's a lot of boring clichés (“I like traveling and hanging out with my friends”). All most of us use the interests section for is scanning for red flags and looking for microscopic signs of compatibility.

Well, it turns out those interests may serve a more important purpose. Using an interest-based algorithm, PlentyOfFish examined the dating profiles of more than 10 million singles over the age of 21 to group them into personality types. The results were released as a new research study called PlentyOfPersonality.

The research identified the top 20 personality archetypes, based on corresponding interests, of singles in 11 major American cities. The data was then broken down by city and gender to asses how differences and similarities in the personality types might impact dating habits.

The 20 personality types are: Artist, Bar Game Buff, Cultured Urbanite, Curious George, Eternal Optimist, Family First, Fast and Furious, Happy-Go-Lucky, Health Buff, Intellectual, Live Event Fan, Mainly Mainstream, Pinteresters, Romantic, Salt of the Earth, Social Butterfly, Sports Fanatic, Weekend Warrior, Well-Rounded, and Outdoor Adventurer.

Scanning the data, it's clear that some cities have greater potential for compatibility than others. Men and women in Detroit, for example, sync up on three of the four top personality types: Weekend Warriors, Eternal Optimists, and Bar Game Buffs.

On the other hand, singles in Boston may have a hard time finding their matches. Female residents are Cultured Urbanites, but most men are partying Weekend Warriors. A similar split is seen in Seattle, where men are Weekend Warriors and Outdoor Adventurers, but women fit into the quieter and more creative categories of Pinteresters and Artists.

So what we can we learn from POF's personality study?

First, don't skip over the interests section. You may be tempted to say “I dunno,” “Ask me,” “Too many to list here,” or leave it blank, but you're missing a valuable opportunity.

When you do fill it out, consider your answers carefully. Discerning visitors are using your interests, consciously or subconsciously, to construct a portrait of your personality. Make sure it's an accurate representation of who you are and make sure the statement it's making is positive.

If all else fails, perhaps it's time to pack up and move. Love could be waiting across state lines. For more on the dating service which conducted the study, you can read our Plenty of Fish review.