Communication

According to a recent study aiming to find the most desirable single in 2014, you'll have the most luck if you're 25 years old and rich.

The study pooled information from about 81,000 singles between the ages of 25-35 on the dating website Plenty of Fish, along with about 1.8 million messages to see what traits were the most desirable in both men and women who are online dating.

For both sexes, men and women in their twenties received more messages than those in their thirties. Women who were between 25 and 26 years old received the most messages, with a sharp decline once they turned 33.

It seems that both men and women prefer singles who make money. Women who earned between $50,000-$75,000 and men who earned between $75,000-$150,000 attracted more prospective dates than those earning less. And men who have law degrees are also likely to be the most successful in garnering attention online, with 33% more messages than the average single guy.

While data like this paints a certain picture of online dating, it's good to keep in mind that this is information gathered from only one online dating site and from just one demographic. If we were to look at online dating as a whole, the fastest-growing segment is singles over 50. And many people prefer paid dating sites like Match.com or eHarmony because daters tend to be more serious if they buy a subscription.

Free dating sites have always skewed younger, because many young daters aren't interested in serious relationships and want a chance to meet a lot of people. Paid dating sites tend to attract users of all ages who are on different levels of the dating spectrum - from casual to marriage-minded.

Twenty-somethings are also gravitating towards dating apps rather than online dating sites. Apps like Tinder, Hinge, and Are You Interested have been on the rise, mostly because of the ease of creating a profile and meeting people immediately, whereas most online dating sites require a little more effort and time before you're meeting each other face-to-face.

So while the POF study might feed into the stereotypes that persist about online dating (that singles prefer if you're young, earn a lot of money, etc.) - there are in reality a wide variety of singles who are online dating. Don't be afraid to explore a number of dating sites and see which one works best for you. This is the best time of year to do it, since more people than ever are online dating!

The Super Bowl has come and gone. The bets have been paid out. The hot wings have been eaten. The hangovers have been nursed. New Yorkers can stop not caring about the Super Bowl and go back to not caring about the Super Bowl (wait a minute...).

As the nation recovers from Super Bowl XLVIII, there's one way America's biggest sporting event might still have an impact on your life. Zoosk crunched the numbers to find out how your chances of finding love online improve or decrease depending on whether your football team wins or loses.

During last year's Super Bowl, the number of messages sent between users was 17% less than the average Sunday evening. On non-mobile devices, there were 20% less messages sent than on average. And on mobile devices, 11% less messages were sent than average. What all that means is that online daters take the big game seriously - so seriously that it impacts their dating game.

Looking at activity in each of the cities that participated in conference championship games, Zoosk found:

• When your team wins, you spend Monday talking about football among friends and co-workers.
• When your team loses, you seek comfort in companionship and turn your attention to your love life.
• Denver users sent 15% less messages and view 32% less profiles than average on the Mondays after their playoff wins.
• Seattle users sent 51% less messages and view 60% less profiles than average on the Mondays after their playoff wins.
• San Francisco users sent 40% more messages and viewed 32% more profiles on the Monday after their loss to Seattle than on the Mondays following their playoff wins on Jan. 5 and Jan. 12.
• Boston users sent out 79% more messages and viewed 73% more profiles on the Monday after their loss to Denver than on the Monday against their playoff victory over Indianapolis.

That means, if the pattern continues, that folks in Seattle are currently way too busy celebrating their smashing victory to spare a thought for online dating. It's good news for football fans, but not such good news for singles.

On the other hand, Denver's bad luck on the football field might mean good luck for its daters. The Broncos may have lost, but their bummed-out supporters are more likely to turn to online dating to cheer themselves up. Nothing eases the pain of a loss like meeting someone special!

Writing an online dating profile can be difficult, especially when it comes to self-esteem. You’re essentially convincing the reader why you’re a great person and a great catch; that can be a little difficult if you don’t always remember or believe that yourself. However, you can potentially help yourself (and maybe even your own search process) if you just think about your priorities a little differently.

Many people think about their own profile in the most superficial terms, and work inward from there. For example, first they’ll focus on getting the right default pic; then they’ll focus on their accomplishments, like their job or some hobby they’re proud of. Only after all that do they start to think of their “inner” self and how to communicate who they “really” are to others.

The problem with this is twofold. First, all the emphasis is on the superficial, and that’s where many start to feel self-conscious (their job isn’t good enough, they’re living with roommates, their hobbies aren’t exciting). When you’re not confident from the beginning, the writing process goes downhill from there.

Secondly, the writer is forgetting that the main goal of the profile is find someone with whom they connect. And by focusing on their inner self as an afterthought, the profile focuses on the wrong things. It’s great to share a common hobby, and it can be a great starting point, but it doesn’t tell you much about compatibility.

So, a better approach might be to start by thinking about what, emotionally, you’d bring to a relationship. Everyone brings something: nurturing and support? Calming, laid-back decisiveness? Good communication skills? A sense of humor that diffuses most tension?

Pretty much everyone has a strength of some sort, so once you’ve identified what yours is you’re already feeling more confident. And the thing is, there’s no “wrong” answer, especially if you’re being truthful. Different people connect in different ways, and play different roles in various relationships.

As you go about your own searches, it can be helpful to keep this same mindset. Yes, this person is talking about their job, but what are they really saying about themselves? Are you interested in this person because they’re attractive or because they seem kind - or has the latter actually influenced the former?

As usual, the only real way to determine compatibility is to meet in person. But viewing online profiles with a different perspective might just narrow the field of potential matches in a different - or even more efficient - way.

This conversation was observed recently: a man looked at his phone, then sighed loudly. “I can’t believe I haven’t gotten a response yet,” he complained to his companion. “I texted her ten minutes ago.”

“Maybe she’s in another room and hasn’t read it yet,” offered the companion.

The man scoffed. “What is this, the eighteenth century? But no, she’s read it, the phone tells me that it was seen. The question wasn’t that difficult. I can’t believe she’d just ignore me. She does this all the time, too. In fact, last time -” He cut off in mid-sentence as his phone chimed. “There!” he exclaimed. “She says she was in her car and couldn’t text while driving.” He and his companion were silent. Finally, the man spoke. “At least she had a good reason,” he said.

If you think the man was being bratty and boorish, you’re not alone. However, we’re all guilty of a little of that behavior, especially when it comes to waiting for responses to first-contact emails. When we send off a message - particularly to someone we’re interested in - it’s not uncommon to sit there, drumming our metaphorical (or literal) fingers, hoping we’ll get an answer immediately.

When we don’t get an immediate response, our thoughts would probably be embarrassing if we spoke them aloud. “Why haven’t I heard anything yet? It’s already the evening! Everyone’s off work now!” “It’s been several hours already!” We can get anxious, cranky, even angry before the sun has set. Children are often expected to have more self-control.

When that poor woman texted the man back with a perfectly legitimate excuse, I was actually disappointed - because she didn’t owe the man an explanation. When it comes to social matters, no one should be tied to their phone or email, forced to respond immediately. If the woman was busy knitting, watching a TV show or just didn’t feel like interacting with other humans, those reasons ought to be equally “good.”

So remember that when you’re waiting for a response to a dating query, particularly on sites that let you know if your message has been seen or the person has logged in. We have no idea about the life of the person we’ve contacted; we don’t know their schedule. Maybe they’re tired at the end of the day. Maybe they want to wait until they’re in a good mood before they respond. Maybe they want time to construct just the right response. Whatever the reason, it’s theirs and it’s legitimate; though we may be impatient, we have self-control and can surely wait without a childish meltdown.

What does Netflix have to do with online dating?

No, it's not the fact that spending a lonely Saturday night solo with your Netflix queue makes you think "I should really give online dating another try."

Actually, that might be true too, but that's not the connection we're talking about here. What we're talking about is algorithms. In the same way that Netflix uses an algorithm to recommend movies a user might like by tracking that user's viewing history, online dating sites use a person's contact history to recommend partners with whom they might be more compatible.

Kang Zhao, assistant professor of management sciences in the Tippie College of Business at the University of Iowa, and doctoral student Xi Wang were part of a team that developed a more successful online dating formula. The team used data provided by a popular online dating service. They examined 475,000 initial contacts involving 47,000 users in two US cities over 196-day period.

Out the 28,000 men and 19,000 women studied, men were far more likely to initiate conversations. Men made 80% of the initial contacts, only 25% of which were actually reciprocated. To improve that rate, the researchers developed a model that recommended more suitable contacts based on two factors:

• A user's tastes (determined by the types of people the user contacted in the past)
• Attractiveness/unattractiveness (determined by how many of those contacts were returned and how many were not)

As it turns out, the combination of taste and attractiveness do a far better job of predicting the success of a connection than the self-reported information online daters enter into their profiles. Why is that? Some online daters are deliberately misleading while others, Zhao theorizes, simply might not know themselves well enough to identify their real tastes in a partner.

Zhao says the existing model for online dating algorithms leads to a return rate of about 25%, but claims that his team's model could boost that rate to 44%. According to the researchers, their model performs best for males with athletic body types connecting with females with athletic or fit body types. The model also works well for women who indicate they "want many kids" and for users who upload a large number of photos of themselves.

So it looks like you'll have no trouble finding a date for next Saturday night if you're an exercise enthusiast who looks forward to breeding and can't stop uploading selfies to Instagram.

When we view someone’s profile, we’re reading about that person in their own words. Thus, the literary concept of the “unreliable narrator” applies. This person says they’re quite a catch - but are they, really? They say they’re low-drama - but is the fact that drama is even brought up signifying something? Even the most compelling, best-written profiles should be taken with a grain of salt until you’ve met in person and hopefully acquired more information, even if it’s just a gut feeling.

So we know that profiles can not always be completely trusted - so what about the preferences of the author? Are they really looking for someone within that exact age range, or would a year or two matter? What about an inch in height? Or body type - how we even define body type is purely subjective, so what would this person make of yours? We have the preferences spelled out in front of us, but should we listen?

The answer is essentially, “How do you feel about gambling?” There’s typically no rule that says you can’t still send someone a first-contact email, even if you don’t fit their specifications perfectly. For some reason we tend to put extra emphasis on those “statistical” preferences like height and age - hard numbers we either fit or don’t. In contrast, we wouldn’t think twice about contacting someone even if we happened to dislike their favorite TV show. Indeed, we actually get less information from those statistical preferences, because there’s usually no room to explain or qualify; are these loose guidelines, or hard rules?

So you can still email whomever you please, but you’re running the risk that age or height or whatever else is actually the most important aspect to them, and that they won’t be pleased you ignored their judgment. For many, though, the risk is worth it: you wouldn’t have been matched up otherwise, so it’s either a gamble that pays off or, worst case, you get one irate email. The decision is yours.

A few points to remember, though: you’re doing this at your own risk. You might get an irate email, or worse - one that is deliberately cruel. If you’re sensitive, you might not want to put yourself through the unneeded stress. Also, if someone does reply that they’re not interested, never, ever argue the matter with them. Some people take a polite refusal as an opportunity to bargain, but it’s the quickest way to turn a situation sour. When you sent the first-contact email, you were seeking clarity; now that you’ve got it, let the matter drop.

Sometimes it’s best to take someone at face value, especially if they’re saying something like, “I’m not interested in commitment” or “I’m only looking for something in the short term.” You might think you can change their minds, but don’t be shocked if ultimately you can’t. Quibbling over points of compatibility is one thing; striving to change life decisions is another.

So if you see a profile that seems perfect except for one niggling point, it might not be a bad idea to contact them anyway and see where it goes. Just remember: the true test of compatibility involves meeting in person. Whether or not this gamble pays off, it’s still best to take the profile with a grain of salt.