But Brad Goldberg, president of Peak6 and Spark’s new board director as of August, said that through modernizing the company’s technology and focusing on how to effectively market its two best known sites — JDate and ChristianMingle — the company will adapt and “take advantage of the changing industry landscape.” 
 
 JDate was created in 1997 in a West Los Angeles condominium; ChristianMingle was added in 2001. Spark Networks (which trades under the ticker symbol LOV) eventually grew to about 30 dating sites, but the crown jewel has always been JDate. 
 
 Mr. Goldberg estimates that 70 percent of the Jews of dating age in the United States have had some contact with JDate or JSwipe, with about one million registered users. 
 
 “We’re unambiguously touching a greater percentage of the Jewish population than ever before,” he said. 
 
 That may be the case, but according to Spark Networks’ 2015 filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, the number of paid subscribers to its Jewish networks declined to around 65,000 last year from a little over 85,000 in 2012. Its total for all networks dropped by more than 55,000 people, to under 204,000. 
 
 This comes at a time when an increasing number of Americans are trying to find partners online. According to the Pew Research Center, 15 percent of Americans have used online dating sites or mobile apps, compared with 11 percent in 2013. Spark Network’s revenues fell nearly 22 percent from 2014 to 2015. 
 
 Some of the decline could reflect Spark’s management turnover, but it is also indicative of the challenges facing the online dating industry. 
 
 Advertisement Continue reading the main story 
 
 There are about 4,500 online dating companies, according to a report by the market research company IBISWorld, but the majority are tiny. The largest player in the field is the Match Group, with 51 dating sites; over the last few years alone it acquired such high-profile companies as Tinder and Plenty of Fish. 
 
 “It’s never been cheaper to start a dating site and never been more expensive to grow one,” said Mark Brooks, a consultant for the internet dating industry who also runs Online Personals Watch. Part of the problem, he said, is that 70 percent of internet dating in the United States is now on mobile. 
 
 Photo 
 
 Dating apps usually start by offering their services completely free to bring in new users. There are then two ways for the services to make money: advertising and turning free users into paying ones. 
 
 “It used to be 10 percent of those who registered converted to paid,” Mr. Brooks said. “Now it’s more like 2 to 3 percent.” 
 
 Advertising can be tough to get, said Tom Homer, editor of the website Dating Sites Reviews, and on a mobile device it does not pay much because there is less real estate available than on regular websites. 
 
 Newsletter Sign Up Continue reading the main story Please verify you're not a robot by clicking the box. Invalid email address. Please re-enter. You must select a newsletter to subscribe to. Sign Up You agree to receive occasional updates and special offers for The New York Times's products and services. Thank you for subscribing. An error has occurred. Please try again later. View all New York Times newsletters. 
 
 Other tensions are pulling at the online dating industry. Do consumers want to find a special someone or just anyone? Internet dating used to mean filling out questionnaires to match interests and culture. With sites like Tinder, Bumble and Hinge, it is all about who is nearby and available. 
 
 Some of the difference, of course, is generational. Younger people are more likely to be interested in casual dating and more likely to use mobile devices for dating, the IBISWorld report states. 
 
 But, as Mr. Goldberg, the Peak6 president, sees it, now “there is growing frustration as people tire of swipe-based apps.” He added, “Consumers want companionship and deeper interactions, and the industry will have to adapt.” 
 
 Some also see a move toward ever more niche sites like MouseMingle.com (Disney lovers) and GlutenFreeSingles.com (the name says it all). But, when you slice the pie ever thinner, “you’re also slicing your membership base,” Mr. Homer said. 
 
 Advertisement Continue reading the main story 
 
 Amarnath Thombre, chief strategy officer of the Match Group, disagrees. He does not see one approach growing at the expense of the other. Rather, he said, online dating will expand to encompass more and more categories of people. 
 
 The wave of the future for online and mobile dating, he predicts, is the growing use of artificial intelligence and better data science. 
 
 Artificial intelligence, by pulling from a variety of places — say, a user’s Goodreads list or Instagram or list of charity donations — could more effectively match people than relying simply on a person’s own profile or questionnaire, he said. 
 
 Spark Networks, of course, already offers niche products, but Lisa McLafferty, Spark’s new chief revenue officer and chief marketing officer at Peak6, says its aim is now to “refresh the brand.” 
 
 “Over the last few rounds of management, the brand got a little lost,” she said. With JDate, “we’re seeing an evolution away from a marriage focus and religiosity and more to connecting on a cultural-values plane.” 
 
 With ChristianMingle, the plan is to move in the other direction. The site, consumers say, has become too broad-based, with a variety of Christian date seekers, and the goal is to pivot back to its evangelical roots, Ms. McLafferty said. 
 
 Despite these efforts, Mr. Young, the former Spark executive, said he would not be surprised if Match Group acquired Spark in the near future “so they have the No. 1 players — JDate and ChristianMingle — in each of these categories.” 
 
 Mr. Thombre, of the Match Group, said he would not speak publicly about his company’s acquisition strategy. 
 
 Whether JDate and ChristianMingle end up refreshed by Spark or in a new marriage remains to be seen. Mr. Goldberg did not want to address that issue, but he said he was certain of one thing: “I don’t know what it will look like, but I bet the world of online dating in 18 months to two years will look completely different than it does today. That’s just the way we’re moving.” ||||| Usage by 18- to 24-year-olds has increased nearly threefold since 2013, while usage by 55- to 64-year-olds has doubled 
 
 Throughout human history, people have sought assistance from others in meeting romantic partners – and Americans today are increasingly looking for love online by enlisting the services of online dating sites and a new generation of mobile dating apps. A national survey by Pew Research Center, conducted June 10-July 12, 2015, among 2,001 adults, finds that: 
 
 12% of American adults have ever used an online dating site, up slightly from 9% in early 2013. 
 
 9% of American adults have ever used a dating app on their cellphone. The share of Americans who use dating apps has increased threefold since early 2013 – at that point just 3% of Americans had used these apps. 
 
 Taken together, a total of 15% of American adults now report that they have used online dating sites and/or mobile dating apps, up from the 11% who reported doing so in early 2013. 
 
 This growth has been especially pronounced for two groups who have historically not used online dating at particularly high levels – the youngest adults, as well as those in their late 50s and early 60s. 
 
 The share of 18- to 24-year-olds who report having used online dating has nearly tripled in the last two years. Today 27% of these young adults report that they have done so, up from just 10% in early 2013. Meanwhile, the share of 55- to 64-year-olds who use online dating has doubled over the same time period (from 6% in 2013 to 12% in 2015). 
 
 For young adults in particular, this overall increase in online dating usage has been accompanied by a dramatic increase in the use of mobile dating apps. Fully 22% of 18- to 24-year-olds now report using mobile dating apps, a more than fourfold increase from the 5% who reported using dating apps in 2013. These young adults are now more likely than any other age group to use mobile dating apps. 
 
 41% of Americans know someone who uses online dating; 29% know someone who has met a spouse or long-term partner via online dating 
 
 Although 15% of Americans have used online dating themselves, a larger share report that they are familiar with online dating from the experiences of people they know. Some 41% of American adults say they know someone who uses online dating, while 29% indicate they know someone who has married or entered into a long-term partnership with someone they met via online dating. 
 
 As was the case in previous Pew Research Center surveys of online dating, college graduates and the relatively affluent are especially likely to know people who use online dating or to know people who have entered into a relationship that began online. Nearly six-in-ten college graduates (58%) know someone who uses online dating, and nearly half (46%) know someone who has entered into a marriage or long-term partnership with someone they met via online dating. By comparison, just 25% of those with a high school diploma or less know someone who uses online dating – and just 18% know someone who has entered into a long-term relationship with someone they met this way. 
 
 Those who have tried online dating offer mixed opinions about the experience – most have a positive outlook, even as they recognize certain downsides 
 
 Users of online dating are generally positive – but far from universally so – about the pros and cons of dating digitally. On one hand, a majority of online dating users agree that dating digitally has distinct advantages over other ways of meeting romantic partners: 
 
 80% of Americans who have used online dating agree that online dating is a good way to meet people. 
 
 62% agree that online dating allows people to find a better match, because they can get to know a lot more people. 
 
 61% agree that online dating is easier and more efficient than other ways of meeting people. 
 
 On the other hand, a substantial minority of these users agree that meeting people online can have potential negative consequences: 
 
 45% of online dating users agree that online dating is more dangerous than other ways of meeting people. 
 
 31% agree that online dating keeps people from settling down, because they always have options for people to date. 
 
 16% agree with the statement “people who use online dating sites are desperate.” 
 
 But despite these reservations, those who have personally used online dating themselves – or know someone who does – tend to have much more positive attitudes compared to those with little direct exposure to online dating or online daters. For instance, just 55% of non-users agree that online dating is a good way to meet people, while six-in-ten agree that online dating is more dangerous than other ways of meeting people. 
 
 Overall, men and women who have used online dating tend to have similar views of the pros and cons – with one major exception relating to personal safety. Some 53% of women who have used online dating agree that it is more dangerous than other ways of meeting people, substantially higher than the 38% of male online daters who agree with this statement. ||||| These crawls are part of an effort to archive pages as they are created and archive the pages that they refer to. That way, as the pages that are referenced are changed or taken from the web, a link to the version that was live when the page was written will be preserved.Then the Internet Archive hopes that references to these archived pages will be put in place of a link that would be otherwise be broken, or a companion link to allow people to see what was originally intended by a page's authors.The goal is to fix all broken links on the web . Crawls of supported "No More 404" sites. ||||| These crawls are part of an effort to archive pages as they are created and archive the pages that they refer to. That way, as the pages that are referenced are changed or taken from the web, a link to the version that was live when the page was written will be preserved.Then the Internet Archive hopes that references to these archived pages will be put in place of a link that would be otherwise be broken, or a companion link to allow people to see what was originally intended by a page's authors.The goal is to fix all broken links on the web . Crawls of supported "No More 404" sites. ||||| The seed for Wide00014 was: 
 
 - Slash pages from every domain on the web: 
 
 
 
 
 
 -- a ranking of all URLs that have more than one incoming inter-domain link (rank was determined by number of incoming links using Wide00012 inter domain links) 
 
 
 
 -- up to a maximum of 100 most highly ranked URLs per domain 
 
 - Top ranked pages (up to a max of 100) from every linked-to domain using the Wide00012 inter-domain navigational link graph
– More Americans than ever—some 48 million—go online in their quest for love, signing up on dating sites increasingly tailored to them. There are sites grouped by religion, such as ChristianMingle and the Jewish-oriented JDate, or time-pressed casual users can swipe to find a match on apps like Tinder. (Even Disney fans have MouseMingle.com.) But as the New York Times reports, the business model behind these sites is rarely a happy marriage. With the exception of companies like Match Group, which has 51 sites, most of the 4,500 online dating outfits are tiny. While it is cheap to start a dating site, it has "never been more expensive to grow one," says consultant Mark Brooks. Most traffic is now going to mobile apps that suffer from low advertising revenue, and subscribers who time balk at paying for the service. Take the case of Spark Networks, owner of 30 sites including JDate. With revenue down 22% and 55,000 fewer subscribers than in 2012, the company last summer closed its Israel office, scaled down, and sold off 16% of its stock to an investment firm. All the while, the company estimates that 70% of American Jews (1 million registered users) have some contact with JDate or its spinoff, JSwipe. "Every Jew knows someone who knows someone who met on JDate," says one former exec. Online dating execs are split over the industry's future. While Spark's Brad Goldberg thinks users, tired of swiping apps, will want "deeper interactions," a chief strategist at Match Group foresees tapping users' accounts on Instagram and the like to find their perfect mate. Then again, if Match acquires Spark, as some predict, the distinction could be moot. "I bet the world of online dating in 18 months to two years will look completely different than it does today," says Goldberg. (These are the 10 best and worst cities for singles.)