Communication

People who participate in online dating may be more open to interracial relationships than those who stick solely to traditional dating, says a study published in the Journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Researchers from the University of California, San Diego analyzed the first interactions of 126,134 American OkCupid users to study the complex relationship tween online dating and race. They found, unsurprisingly, that many users tended to send messages to other users of their own race – but they also found that they were much more likely to respond to messages from users of a different racial background. The study also found that once an individual responded to a member of another race, they were even more likely to initiate conversation with other users of different ethnicities in the future.

"It's not that people's levels of prejudice are changing; people are avoiding others from a different racial background because they think those other people won't be interested," study author Kevin Lewis, a sociologist for UC San Diego, told USA Today. "Receiving an interracial contact and replying to it makes you send over twice as many new interracial messages in the short-term future than you would have otherwise."

Online daters may be chipping away at racial barriers, but that doesn't mean they've fallen completely. "Race as a dividing factor is much more important than basically any other attribute," Lewis explained. The study found that white online daters, both male and female, overwhelmingly made contact with other white users (although that's also due to the fact that there are more white people on OkCupid to choose from). Caucasian users were also the most likely to seek out people of another race. Those who identified as black, Hispanic, Indian or Asian were much more likely to stay within their own racial lane while online dating.

The only group that consistently bucked the trend was Asian women. Asian women were more likely to contact white men and other Asian men. They were also more likely to respond to white men (though it's important to note that all races were most likely to respond to white men).

Lewis calls online daters’ reluctance to reach out to users of different ethnic backgrounds "pre-emptive discrimination." Based on the way race has shaped their lives so far, they expect to experience rejection – or at least to have little in common with someone who doesn't share their heritage. But, says Lewis, the study suggests that if someone is bold enough to make the first move and overcome their fear of rejection, they are rewarded with the realization that the pool of potential partners is wider and richer than they had ever imagined.

Just in time for spring, Zoosk has announced the beta release of its new Priority Inbox feature to take Behavioral Matchmaking to the next level. The new technology will prioritize messages from members with whom you are more likely to discover mutual attraction. This update makes Zoosk the first online dating platform to offer a feature that ranks messages in members' inboxes based on the potential for compatibility.

Traditional online dating services are based on static profiles, compiled via one-time surveys and questionnaires. Zoosk, on the other hand, is powered by its dynamic and personalized Behavioral Matchmaking technology, which tracks and analyzes a member's activity on the site in order to recommend better matches. By applying this technology to inboxes, Zoosk is making its experience more effective than ever.

“At Zoosk, we are continuously working to provide the best possible experience for members to find relationship satisfaction online,” said Shayan Zadeh, Co-Founder and CEO of Zoosk. “Lots of dating websites highlight messages from people you’ve already talked to, but our technology allows us to take it a step further by prioritizing messages from new people we think you’ll want to have a conversation with.”

The new Priority Inbox feature will identify messages from members with a greater likelihood of compatibility, which it calls Priority Messages, using stars and highlights. Those messages will be driven to the top of users' inboxes so they can't be missed.

“When developing the Priority Inbox feature, we took into account the fact that sometimes people who date online, especially women, become inundated with messages,” said Alex Mehr, Co-Founder and President of Zoosk. “Priority Inbox is a very unique feature for our members who will be spared the task of having to dig through a mountain of messages to find their desired match; not only leading them to form stronger connections, but to form meaningful connections faster than ever before.”

The patent-pending Priority Inbox feature is currently only available to some Zoosk members, but the site expects to roll it out to the rest of its 25+ million members over the course of the next month. With the #1 grossing mobile dating app and a top 25 grossing app on the iPhone in the United States, Zoosk is already a market leader in the dating industry. The service can now be found in over 80 countries in 25 languages. Priority Inbox is just the latest in a long series of innovations taking matchmaking to the next level and keeping Zoosk on top of the dating game.

There's a lot to learn from reading about online dating (trust me, I know!), but there are also plenty of lessons that can't be learned off a page or computer screen.

It's like the first time you ever got sick from drinking too much. You knew that's what would happen, but somehow it didn't quite seem real until your head was in the toilet. And the hangover…oh, the hangover…

The good news is, online dating is a lot less scary than you think it is. But the bad news is that there are some things you'll have to learn the hard way:

1. Trust your gut. If you think something is off, it probably is. Your adventures in online dating will include meeting some strange people and getting even stranger messages, and though most everyone is kind and respectful, the bad apples are out there. Put your safety first and don't do anything if you don't feel 100% comfortable.
2. Rules can be restrictive. Knowing what you want is a good thing. Having deal breakers is a good thing. Setting ground rules is a good thing. But nothing is right all the time, and if you're not willing to occasionally bend your rules or change your expectations, you run the risk of missing out on someone awesome.
3. It's a rude world out there. Offline, it's pretty rare that someone leaves you hanging. Online, it happens all the time. You'll be exchanging e-mails back and forth with someone you’re into and then, all of a sudden, they’ll completely disappear. It feels a little disappointing at first, but the sting wears off.
4. Get straight to the point. As the formerly-shy type, I understand what a challenge it can be to be direct. Fortunately, online dating is the perfect opportunity to practice being assertive. Being direct is the only way to guarantee that uncomfortable situations come to an end. Date isn't going well? End it early and don't feel bad about it. Don't waste your time or anyone else's.
5. That goes for going on dates, too. It's tempting to exchange endless messages with someone new in the name of safety, but don't do it. Yes, you should be safe, but don't fall into the trap of becoming penpals. Meeting in person is the most efficient way of gathering information about someone. There's only so much you can learn about a prospective date by reading, and virtual chemistry doesn't guarantee real-life chemistry.

Bonus lesson learned the hard way: Don’t take your dates to your favorite spots. If the date goes south, you don’t want to run into them later at one of your regular haunts (especially if one of you is on another date!).

It seems there’s a new online dating site every time I turn on my computer. And why not? It’s a billion-dollar-a-year industry and growing, especially now that most sites are adding mobile capabilities, which are growing at an even faster rate.

So to make an entrance at this point with the saturation of the market, you really have to come in with an interesting idea. And DreamCliq has high expectations – dubbing itself as “the Pinterest of online dating.”

Did you look to the most popular kids in high school when you needed dating advice? After all, they must be doing something right!

More often, I tried to listen to the good friends I had that knew me so well, but OkCupid seems to go along with the theory that the most popular kids have the most to teach the rest of us, at least when it comes to dating. So, I wanted to take a look at what they were saying.

OkCupid picked four of the most popular daters on the site (male and female, gay and straight) to provide tips for singles on how to online date.

The most popular straight female is a 23 year-old woman named Lauren who gets a lot of attention from her striking pictures and tattoos that cover her arms and legs. According to a recent interview in New York Magazine, Lauren receives around three dozen emails a day; in the last seven months, she’s received five-star ratings, the highest possible rating, from nearly 8,000 men.

Lauren admits she has an advantage because she is a make-up artist and knows how to create a good photo. Plus, she knows how to work the camera to show off features because guys are most interested in visuals. “I believe in a head-to-toe shot to show what you look like,” she says. “But you don’t need to have your ass hanging out!”

She also notes her love of astronomy, explaining that she likes to show her intelligence as well as her looks, even though guys still will message women based only on pictures (as we saw with a recent OkCupid experiment with the worst profile ever created).

She got a surge of emails she got when she first joined the site by choosing “casual sex” as a relationship possibility, along with long and short term options. This opened a floodgate of lude emails from guys. “I’m not a prostitute,” she tells the magazine. “But they don’t get that.” So she removed this description from her profile.

Some of the most questionable advice came from 29 year-old James Hawver, who said that he could double for Ryan Gosling, which I’m sure if it was true he would be one of the most popular guys on the site. He likes to accept every woman as a potential match, which I admire. When he uses Tinder, he accepts all matches even before looking at them. Same with OkCupid. He wants to know that a woman is interested before he starts messaging, so he only responds to the ones who accept him back, in order to cut down on the rejection. Because this can be time-consuming, he sends out the same generic yet flirtatious email to each of them, and gets quite a few responses.

He also likes to “round out the truth,” especially when it comes to physical factors like height. He is an inch shorter than his 5’10” profile would proclaim.

What does he do with all these matches? He goes on a lot of dates, and he doesn’t seem ready to settle down anytime soon. “A lot of us want the best: the best job, the best apartment, the best significant other,” he says.

So I guess it makes sense to keep on dating. For more on this online dating service you can take a look at our Okcupid.com review

Users of online dating sites sometimes get frustrated and overwhelmed with all the lengthy profiles and messaging back and forth before they ever get to a date with a potential match. A simple solution: why not test the chemistry first by video chatting with each other before meeting for drinks or coffee?

Enter a new crop of online dating apps focused on video interaction. Among those making headlines in this growing field are Date.fm, Flikdate, Video Date and two new apps launched last fall -- View N Me and Instamour.

Developers of these apps saw an opportunity when they noticed how Skype and Facetime are fast becoming typical platforms for people to communicate. They figured singles would want to see if there's chemistry before spending the time and money and effort to meet a date in person. And why not do that from your laptop or mobile phone?

While it sounds great to meet a potential date through a video chat, some people aren't so convinced. Not everyone is a movie director or cinematographer who can figure out good lighting to highlight someone's most attractive features. All too often, poor lighting and strange camera angles can interfere with making a good first impression. View N Me offers tips for looking your best on video to address this problem.

Safety is another concern, and different app developers deal with it in different ways. For example, Video Date does not use phone numbers or e-mails for people to communicate through the service, and messages delete after 24 hours. View N Me offers a strict no tolerance policy for any type of inappropriate behavior on its site. Once someone is reported they conduct a review and terminate the subscription if the user's behavior is deemed inappropriate.

But the most important question for daters is: how easy is the service to use?

Date.fm works a bit like a video-enabled Tinder app. It is simple to use - the service provides general information like age and location along with photos of matches, and you can like or dislike them. If you both like each other, you are sent a notification and then can start video chatting from within the app. FlikDate touts itself as "the fastest date in the world." You simply connect with your Facebook account and play a type of video roulette, where you can chat with someone instantly, see if you click, and accept or reject your match on the spot.

It's no surprise that video dating is becoming more and more popular. People are looking for quick ways to get to know each other. But the real test for love still takes time and effort.