Advice

Ever wanted to get inside the minds of thousands of daters to see what makes everyone tick? Maybe that seems cool, or maybe you’d rather sit in a dentist’s chair for five hours, but either way – it does make you curious.

So it’s no surprise that OkCupid Co-Founder Christian Rudder has decided to harness the power of OkCupid’s user data and create a book that piques our curiosity. After all, we all watched with fascination as the dating site’s blog OkTrends revealed its latest research, informing us of what types of people we are attracted to, we’re doing wrong in our online dating profiles, or how to effectively message other users. Rudder found interesting trends in the details, helping us ask questions we didn’t even know to ask. For instance, why does the angle of the camera matter in a photo, or how you smile? Why is it preferable to write a less descriptive profile? Why is it more attractive to have a guitar in your hand than a tennis racket, or possess an unusually-shaped nose than to be considered average-looking? Or the million-dollar question: what do people lie about the most when they are online dating?

OkCupid has given us the sometimes surprising preferences of online daters, based on all of the data they mine from their thousands of users. Because of the site’s format of creative questions and answers, it’s allowed them to dig deeper than most.

OkTrends has been on hiatus since 2011, when Rudder started taking the information to compile it into a book, rather than just posting the information for free on their website. Rudder’s new book is called Dataclysm: Who We Are (When We Think No One’s Looking), which comes out on Sept. 9 and examines interactions for insights into whom and how we date.

For one of Dataclysm’s studies, Rudder analyzed how men and women approach attraction. It turns out that as women get older, they like older men. Men, on the other hand, consistently prefer younger and younger women. Men will message women close to their own age, but only up to a point. For example, men in their mid-40s rarely talk to women older than 30. “We have a lot of serial daters on the site—men who just keep dating women 10 years younger than they are,” Rudder told Business Week in a recent interview. “Eventually their tactics start to fail, and the young ladies they’re messaging begin rejecting them. The result is a lot of 40-year-old men and women who find it hard to get a date.”

OkCupid isn’t worried about user backlash for mining their personal data. Rudder recently wrote a post to address this issue, pointing out that all websites experiment on users, admitting that OkCupid once tested its matchmaking algorithm by telling users who were not suited for each other that they were a near-perfect match. “We got maybe five complaints,” Rudder told Business Week.

Since OkCupid users don’t pay for the site or its advice, does Rudder have an audience willing to buy his book? We’ll have to wait and see.

Check out our review of OkCupid for more information on this popular dating site.

In a recent interview with Business Insider, eHarmony CEO Neil Clark Warren lamented the growing popularity of dating apps like Tinder, where users can swipe left and right after judging someone based on a few photos and short description. Many people prefer the ease and accessibility of dating apps to filling out long questionnaires or writing detailed profiles.

As a psychologist, Warren has touted the benefits of matching based on compatibility - eHarmony's mission and the basis of its marketing – as opposed to the pitfalls of just leaving things to chance. He believes that the game-like dating experience apps like Tinder offer could lead to superficial relationships that don't last for the long-term. 

"I’m sad about it, to tell you the truth, because it doesn't work," he told Business Insider. "It won’t work over time. These new apps tend to be so superficial. They will allure a lot of people into thinking that they belong together when they perhaps don’t belong together at all. They’re depending on superficial almost accidental compatibility. Compatibility is a serious matter, and it’s very deep and very important to figure out."

Tinder has taken the dating world by storm, almost rendering traditional online dating sites with algorithms and matching technology passé. Instead, Tinder has managed to present dating as more like a game - something that engages people and is easy to use, if not very focused on the end result.

But one has to ask: why should any dating app or online dating company be invested in people coupling up? It takes away their business in an industry that relies on sheer numbers in order to sell their product or attract investment dollars.

Dr. Warren however, maintains that he is focused on the end goal: matching people for the long-term, and doing it scientifically. He tells Business Insider that while "it isn't horrible to date people who aren't perfect for you," he thinks that these relationships will accidentally extend into something long-term, like marriage, where the partners eventually split. 

"These companies that are bringing out these apps, they haven't done any careful research about what works," Warren said. "They're just trying to throw something out there that makes money for the company."

He added: "As a psychologist, I've presided over the funerals of an awful lot of marriages, and I've seen people suffer a tremendous amount of pain who went through horrible divorces."

While this might be a little misleading - after all, to some extent, love happens by chance - be it through a dating app or an online dating site, or even while standing in line for your morning coffee. Connection happens, and sometimes it just has to be pursued, regardless of how compatible you are. But for those looking for more serious relationships, would you place your heart in the hands of Tinder or eHarmony?

 

Are you an eHarmony or OkCupid user? Chances are, you wouldn’t join both sites, because they cater to two different types of users. eHarmony attracts daters who are more serious and committed to finding a partner, whereas OkCupid skews a bit younger and takes itself a lot less seriously.

But regardless of which online dating site you choose – wouldn’t you want to understand how to use it most effectively, so you could obtain better results? Would you want to know how other people are using the site, and potentially how they are matched and communicate with you?

Harvard Business School professor Mikolaj “Misiek” Piskorski is the author of the newly released book A Social Strategy: How We Profit From Social Media. In conducting research for his book, he obtained data sets from both OkCupid and eHarmony to determine how different demographics communicate, flirt, and connect over the websites. He set out to see the differences in communication styles between men and women as well as older and younger users.

In the course of writing his book, which is designed for businesses with social media presences, Piskorski studied the online dating habits of millions of users. After personal information was made anonymous so it wouldn’t be compromised, he started his search: specifically, how online daters send messages to each other, how they flirt online, and how they use the sites.

In a recent interview with Fast Company magazine, Piskorski said, “Where eHarmony varies dramatically is communication. People reach out to each other more on eHarmony, and get more responses on there. The people you traditionally would think have the hardest time reaching out to people do very well on eHarmony.”

What does this mean in terms of day to day use of the site? Generally speaking, because each person's pool of matches is smaller on a site like eHarmony where the matches are qualified, they tend to have an easier time reaching out. For timid users, it’s an empowering thing – they will message more on a site like eHarmony than on OkCupid when they know they are competing with thousands of other members.

Another reason for the increased communication on eHarmony is due to the fact that older women and men who are older, more overweight, or shorter than average daters are also more likely to reach out on eHarmony without feeling intimidated. Again, the limited number of matches he feels is a primary reason. Because eHarmony users have fewer choices than okCupid users, they are more likely to reach out, especially women, to people they are matched with.

So does less mean more? Perhaps. OkCupid users tended to gravitate towards specific matching services that offered more bite-sized options, too. For women, it was Quiver, which showed them matches that OkCupid thought would be good based on their likes and communication patterns. For men, it was a service called Quickmatch, where they could look at photos and basic profile information and rate the users according to what they find attractive.

Perhaps a study of dating app communication will be next on Pikorski’s list.

I know a woman that I absolutely cannot stand - and with whom I should be best friends.

On paper, we’ve got so much in common. We shared the same major in college. We have many of the same interests in books and movies. We share almost all the same political beliefs. She’s done many things that have earned my respect.

Now, if only we could have a conversation without one of us gritting our teeth. I’m not sure exactly what the problem is; there’s no apparent underlying issue, like competition, for instance. We’ve both tried to get along. I simply feel like we’re speaking two different languages. Chatting is never easy, even though we’re both extroverts. We’re somehow oil and water.

I’ve known her for many years. I’ve long accepted that we’re never going to be best friends, and that’s okay. Occasionally, though, I’m reminded by how compatible we ought to be, and I’m bewildered all over again.

The same thing happens on occasion in online dating. We see a profile that looks promising, and get excited, only to be disappointed when our personalities don’t mesh nearly as well in person as they do on paper.

The problem is that sometimes we want to believe the profile is the truth, not the person. We’ve become infatuated with that profile, and we’re not ready to let it go. So we try a second date, or a third.

Alas, like my non-friend and me, you can’t usually talk yourself into having chemistry. Sure, randomly bad first dates do happen, but that second date will confirm everything you need to know, if you’re honest with yourself. So if you find yourself in a similar situation, remind yourself: you’re not looking for a great profile, or a great emailer. You’re looking for someone who is just as good - or better - in person as they are on paper.

Now here's some news you probably never expected to hear: not only are more people meeting on social networks (which doesn't come as a surprise to anyone who hasn't been living in a remote jungle for the last decade), but their relationships are also happier than those that begin off-line in more traditional ways.

What?

Yes, apparently it's true. Jeffrey Hall, associate professor of Communication Studies at the University of Kansas, discovered that 7% of people who married after meeting online didn’t meet in matchmaking chat rooms or on online dating sites. In fact, they met for the first time on social networking sites like Facebook.

Surprised by his finding, given that dating isn’t the purpose of social networking websites, Hall decided to investigate further. He was curious to learn more about who is meeting their significant others this way and how well their relationships fair. He put together a sample of 19,131 participants who'd been married once between 2005 in 2012. Each participant had met their partner in one of four ways: online dating sites, e-mail or instant messaging, online communities like chat rooms or virtual reality games, or social networking sites.

Hall found that those who met on social networking sites were more likely to be younger, married more recently, and African-American compared to those who met via other digital methods. He also found that, when compared based on marital satisfaction, the partners who met via social networking reported being just as happy as those who were introduced any other way – even on online dating sites, which are designed to nurture connection and tout their compatibility benefits.

What surprised Hall even more, however, was that the relationships that started on social media were actually happier than those that begin offline, in traditional ways like being introduced by mutual friends.

What explains his findings?

Hall has a couple of theories. “I think that social networking is the digital version of being introduced by friends,” he says. So although the medium has changed in the 21st century, the method has not. Social networks also have another potentially huge advantage over dating services: there is way less pressure. Online dating can be intensely stressful, so it's not hard to believe that romance might blossom better under more relaxed, Facebook friend-ly circumstances.

The result is conversations on social networking sites that are more casual and low risk, and removed from the anxiety of traditional online dating. Low risk + high reward = hello, online romance!

After years of off-again, on-again relationship, dates that didn’t go anywhere, and, yes, online dating, one of my best friends finally seems to be in a great relationship. They’re approaching a year together, with no end in sight.

They happened to meet at a series of company events, but they both have online dating profiles on the same sites. Naturally, one might wonder: why didn’t they meet sooner?

The answer is that they filtered one another out. For one thing, the guy - Steve - is a good twenty years older than his girlfriend, Lisa. Though Lisa was open to dating older men, twenty years was a bit out of her comfort zone. For another, Steve has children. Lisa wasn’t interested in having kids. However, dating an older man means that the children are grown and out of the house, and for Lisa, that’s a horse of a different color.

On Steve’s part, he too had filtered Lisa out due to her age, assuming he wouldn’t have anything in common with someone that much younger. He had also filtered out anyone with cats, as he’s allergic. In an odd twist of fate, Lisa’s pet cat had passed on earlier, and she had no plans to get another, but she hadn’t thought to update her profile.

Despite their “differences,” a quick perusal of their profiles would have revealed that they still had much in common - everything from their tastes in pop culture to their political opinions. And while there are differences, they aren’t on the opposite ends of the spectrum. If they’d seen one another’s profiles, they might well have messaged each other.

But they didn’t. They’d each filtered the other out, and met solely on chance.

There’s nothing wrong with using the filter tools of an online dating site; they can help cut through the white noise and help you make sense of the sheer number of options. But if you’ve become familiar with your site, and you feel like you’ve perused all your current options, it might be worth experimenting with peeling back your filters, one at a time. What if you didn’t place a restriction on body type? What if you didn’t worry about a height difference?

There are exceptions to every rule - but identifying those exceptions is still a task left up to the human heart, not an algorithm. Severe search options clean up your list of options, but occasionally it doesn’t hurt to allow a little mess.

Related Article: Stories in Success, Part II