But can a formula determine whether two people will have a successful long-term relationship? According to market research company IBISWorld, the online dating industry made 3 million in Canada in 2014.

Services like e Harmony and promise to find you the best potential matches based on complex and tightly guarded algorithms.

At a press launch, Facebook reps showed off the new product, explaining that it could be used to search for restaurants, or for job recruiting.

At one point, a Facebook employee stood to demonstrate a search for “friends of my friends who are single and living in San Francisco.” And that’s when Facebook entered the online dating game, doing away with what was, until now, a fragile divide between quotidian online activity and the act of browsing for potential mates.

Today, nearly half of the public knows someone who uses online dating or who has met a spouse or partner via online dating – and attitudes toward online dating have grown progressively more positive.

To be sure, many people remain puzzled that someone would want to find a romantic partner online – 23% of Americans agree with the statement that “people who use online dating sites are desperate” – but in general it is much more culturally acceptable than it was a decade ago.

One in every ten American adults has used an online dating site or a mobile dating app.Online dating has jumped among adults under age 25 as well as those in their late 50s and early 60s.The share of 18- to 24-year-olds who use online dating has roughly tripled from 10% in 2013 to 27% today.Take the 2012 article Online Dating: A Critical Analysis From the Perspective of Psychological Science.The study's authors sifted through decades of research about what makes people romantically compatible.