Did you find yourself alone under the mistletoe this holiday season? You’re in luck, because this Sunday is apparently the best time to find a date online.

Sunday is usually a busier day on dating apps than Friday or Saturday, per Fast Company, when people are more likely going on dates than looking for them. But the first Sunday of the new year, AKA “Dating Sunday,” is the biggest day of all.

• On Tinder, messages and likes shoot up 22% and 18.2%, respectively. People also respond 19.4 minutes faster, on average, than on any other Sunday.
• In 2022, Coffee Meets Bagel enjoyed a 47% rise in sign-ups on Dating Sunday compared to the previous 30 days.
• OkCupid sees a 70% pop in user activity.

The term dates back to 2016 and has been referred to as the “Super Bowl” of online dating by Match Group’s chief dating expert Rachel DeAlto.

Why?

People tend to spend the holidays wrapped up with family and friends — then, a kissless New Year’s countdown reminds them of how single they are. Plus, many people make being more social or finding a partner a New Year’s resolution.

All this increased activity continues for six weeks until Valentine’s Day, at which point swiping season slows.

This is good…

… for dating apps, if not the singles.

Though most dating apps are free, many have started charging users for features like: seeing who’s “liked” them, fine-tuning their search filters, or having their profile seen by more users.

Despite this, Match — owner of Tinder, Hinge, OkCupid, and Plenty of Fish — reported Q4 revenue predictions south of analyst expectations, as consumers pull back on discretionary spending.

Perhaps Dating Sunday will reverse that trend — at least until we all give up while eating our heart-shaped pizzas alone on Valentine’s Day.

To say it’s been a rough year for tech startups would be an understatement.

WeWork, once worth $47B, filed for bankruptcy. Convoy, the Bezos-backed trucking company valued at $3.8B, shut down. Health startup Olive AI shuttered after peaking at a $4B valuation.

And many other startups followed suit by selling for a fraction of their valuations or closing up shop:

• Hopin, the virtual-events startup once valued at $7.8B, sold its core business for $50m.
• Once valued at $2.5B, scooter startup Bird filed for bankruptcy last month.
• Fintech startup Plastiq, which raised $226m in funding, went bankrupt in May.

Nearly 3.2k private venture-backed startups went under in 2023 after raising a combined $27.2B in funding, according to data compiled by PitchBook for The New York Times.

Funding the future

All the turmoil has made VCs more selective, putting a squeeze on the funding that once flowed so freely in Silicon Valley.

• Between 2012 and 2022, the funding in private US startups multiplied eightfold, hitting $344B.
• In the last year, investments in US tech startups declined 49%.

This makes it even harder for startups to survive, meaning we might see even more closures in 2024.

And when a startup goes under, it’s not just the investors who get burned. Startup founders have long struggled — often in silence — with their mental health; investors predict this funding shortage will only magnify the issue.

It’s not all bad news

Behemoths like Uber and Slack were founded just after the 2008 recession — some experts say tough economic times can actually be good for business.

And with 262k+ tech workers laid off in 2023, there will likely be more talented minds diving into entrepreneurship.

Plus, there are plenty of other reasons it could be a good year for startups, per TechCrunch:

• Interest rates are expected to fall, which could boost valuations and help get VC funding flowing.
• Software is the most common startup product, and more companies will look to spend on software products.
• Big IPOs are coming down the pipeline (like Reddit and Shein).

And, of course, there’s AI, which could help businesses be more efficient and profitable.

Conversational lulls won’t be a part of your weekend. Any one of these discussion-worthy gems from this week’s news cycle will get people gabbing…

• Beamer, Benz, or Bentley? Turkish police won’t have to choose. Authorities cruised into the new year with a $3.5m fleet of 23 luxury cars — including a Ferrari 458 and a Porsche Taycan — seized from international drug trafficker Hakan Ayik. The 44-year-old outlaw and Australia’s most-wanted man was arrested, along with 36 associates, in Istanbul in November. Now, the cars will be employed by Istanbul’s traffic police.
• Did New Year’s Eve mark Las Vegas’ busiest wedding day yet? Industry experts think so. While the holiday usually sees 450-550 marriages, this NYE’s 1-2-3-1-2-3 date pattern represents what the $2B Las Vegas wedding industry calls a “specialty date,” which tends to draw flocks of lovebirds looking to get hitched. The city’s previous records for most single-day marriages have fallen on such dates, with an all-time high of 4,492 set on July 7, 2007, followed by 3,125 on Nov. 11, 2011. (Click here for our explainer video on how Vegas became the quickie wedding capital.)
• Elephants, reindeer, and bison at a Berlin zoo are feasting on this odd holiday leftover: Christmas trees. Nutrient-rich for the animals and an adorable spectacle for us, the holiday feed has become an annual tradition at zoos throughout Germany. While most Christmas trees are ultimately converted into mulch or wood chips, their use as animal feed isn’t uncommon. But if you’re looking to toss out your old Tannebaum, don’t look to the zoo — it only accepts fresh, unsold trees from certain vendors to avoid potential contaminants.
• An Alabama woman gave birth to two babies… from two uteruses… over two days. It was a one-in-a-million occurrence, according to the National Library of Medicine; double uteruses, AKA uterus didelphys, occur in just 0.3% of women. Still, the question remains: Are they twins? Yes and no — technically, twin pregnancies are defined as two babies sharing one uterus.