Valentine's Day

Sunday January 6^th is the busiest day of online dating’s high season, with many people downloading apps and swiping right, hoping to find love in the cold winter months, also known as “cuffing season.”

More people are also motivated to find love thanks to New Year’s resolutions (and the cold weather). With the holidays behind us, January is the perfect time to adopt new habits, including trying a new dating app or rejoining one you’ve used before.

Research has shown over the years that the first Sunday of January is generally the best time to download a dating app and start swiping. Most apps have reported a surge in activity on this particular day, as well as generally increased activity during the month of January through February 14^th.

Valentine’s Day is approaching, which means more news stories about the prospects of finding love online. Dating apps have changed the romantic landscape in recent years and offered more opportunities to meet new people, but have they really helped daters meet their ultimate goals?

On February 6^th Intelligence Squared U.S., a non-profit organization which encourages thoughtful discussion and debate, will be hosting a live debate from New York City: "Swipe Left: Dating Apps Have Killed Romance."

In a nod to the complicated state of dating today, the keynote will be delivered by Daniel Jones, longtime editor of the hugely popular New York Times’ essay column ‘Modern Love.’

Add dating to your list of New Year resolutions, because chances are, you’ll meet someone in January.

Online dating has a high season, and it seems the spirit of the holidays all the way through Valentine’s Day puts people in the mood for finding love.

A study by dating site Match revealed that more than any other time of year, people flock to dating sites between December 26^th and February 14^th. The numbers are telling – 50 million messages sent and 1 million dates happen during this time, and Sunday January 7^th is apparently the busiest day (and the best time to join – specifically 8:55pm EST).

Christian Mingle and JDate are having a sale on subscriptions to celebrate Valentines Day. The sale starts February 9th and runs to February 14th, 2017. During this time you will be able to receive 20% off a 3 month and 30% off a 6 month subscription. No coupon is required for this sale which appears automatically on the upgrade page.

• Visit JDate now and receive up to 30% off a subscription
• Visit Christian Mingle now and receive up to 30% off a subscription

Both Christian Mingle and JDate have been matching singles since the late 90s and are Spark Networks flagship online dating services. You can access the faith based services via their websites and dating apps which are available for Android and iOS phones.

For more information about these popular dating services please read our Christian Mingle review and our JDate review.

Just in time for Valentines Day, eHarmony is offering free communication for 5 days staring Thursday February 8th and running until the end of day on Monday February 13th, 2017. No credit card or code is required and the offer is available in both the United States and Canada.

The sooner you sign up as a free member the longer you can take advantage of this Valentines deal and communicate with your matches at no charge. The time between New Year's and Valentine's Day is the busy season for online dating services. This means you will find a lot of members actively looking for a partner on eHarmony.

eHarmony recently went through a number of changes making it easier for new members to receive matches faster. For new users who have not finished the Relationship Questionnaire, they will receive standard matches which are based on just preferences like age and location. Once you have finished the full questionnaire which takes about 40 minutes you will then receive "Compatible" matches which are based on the 29 Dimensions of Compatibility and give you the strongest chances of finding a long term relationship. Remember you cannot search for members on eHarmony so completing the Relationship Questionnaire is the preferred way to go.

During this event viewing of photos are not included with the free trial. For more details about this popular dating service please read our review of eHarmony.

In 2016, there’s no question about YouTube’s place in the world. The streaming site is the go-to destination for music videos, comedy sketches, makeup tutorials, adorable pets, and any other video whim the internet has. But before it was so firmly entrenched in popular culture, YouTube had an entirely different aim: dating.

According to co-founder Steve Chen, who recently spoke at the 2016 South By Southwest conference, YouTube was initially conceived as a way for singles to upload videos of themselves talking about the future partner they hope to meet.

“We always thought there was something with video there, but what would be the actual practical application?” Chen said, according to CNET. “We thought dating would be the obvious choice.” Chen and his co-founders, Chad Hurley and Jawed Karim, launched a site with a simple slogan: Tune In, Hook Up. Five days later, not a single video had been uploaded.

In desperation, the team took matters into their own hands. “Realizing videos of anything would be better than no videos, I populated our new dating site with videos of 747s taking off and landing," Karim told Motherboard. They took out ads on Craigslist in Las Vegas and Los Angeles and offered to pay women $20 to upload videos of themselves to the site. Again, they came up short.

The co-founders made the decision to ditch the dating aspect entirely. Early adopters began using YouTube to share videos of all kinds - pets, vacations, performances, anything. YouTube took on a new meaning, got a physical makeover, and this time, it worked.

Although YouTube’s matchmaking element was a bust, it’s an interesting origin story that has inspired a small amount of superstition in its founders. Chen noted that they registered the domain name YouTube on February 14 - "Just three guys on Valentine's Day that had nothing to do," he said.

Today YouTube is hardly “nothing.” It was acquired by Google for a $1.65 billion in 2006. It has launched the careers of many stars, from Justin Bieber to Swedish gamer PewDiePie. The company is nothing short of an empire.

Chen now has a new project in the works. He was at SxSW with Vijay Karunamurthy, an early engineering manager at YouTube, in support of their new startup, Nom. The service describes itself as “a community for food lovers to create, share and watch their favorite stories in real-time.” The food-focused site, which lets chefs and foodies broadcast live video of their edible adventures, launched in March.