The clock is ticking on JDate. No, I am not talking about the biological clock of millions of single women who are positive that their lives will be over if they can't find Mister Right before they turn 30. JDate's problems are of the business variety.

Spark Networks Inc. (AMEX: LOV), the parent of JDate and countless other singles sites, is a vestige of the early days of the Internet. Heck, I bet half of the computers sold during the late 1990s were to single people looking for their cyber soul mate. That's why I got online, and sure enough after gazillions of bad dates I met my wife. Even then, JDate was an expensive service. I met my wife on AOL's personal site which was free at the time. The competition for the online dater has gotten even more intense since then which is why I found the report in the New York Times that Spark Networks was looking for a buyer not surprising.

Online dating services are a dime a dozen. They are fairly cheap to set up and maintain. Moreover, social networks including News Corp.'s (NYSE: NWS) MySpace, reportedly one of Spark's suitors, and Facebook offer fairly easy ways to meet members of the opposite (or same sex) as does craigslist. Barry Diller's IAC/InterActiveCorp (NASDAQ: IACI) may be interested in Spark to help its Chemistry.com service compete more effectively against eHarmony.

While I am sure that these companies would eagerly snap up Spark at the right price, investors may be ones who wind up with the broken hearts.

Before the bell: Awaiting payroll data, futures slightly higher

After making inroads throughout the year, Thursday it became official. Toyota Motor Corp. (NYSE: TM) overtook in 2007 Ford Motor Co.'s (NYSE: F) second place as determined by U.S. sales. Toyota sold 2.62 million cars and trucks in 2007, up 3% for the year. No. one automaker by sales remained (at least for now) General Motors Corp. (NYSE: GM), selling 3.82 million vehicles in 2007, down 6% from the previous year. December was a tough month for automakers despite holiday discounts, with Toyota's sales slipping 2% for the month, GM's down 4% and Ford's down 9%.

Meanwhile, General Motors might miss its target to have its breakthrough electric-powered car the Chevrolet Volt in production by 2010. CEO Rick Wagoner made these comments during an online forum Thursday to mark the 100th anniversary of the automaker.

FORTUNE's Apple 2.0 brings an interesting case where Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ: MSFT) has actually lawyers filed a suit on the last day of 2007 against Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL) for "illegally maintaining a monopoly in the digital music market by failing to support Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ: MSFT)'s Windows Media Audio format." It is interesting to see Apple, not Microsoft, on that end of the law suit for a change.