Tips

If you're looking to join an online dating site, the first two weeks after Christmas are the best time to do it. At least according to Zoosk, the dating website which typically sees a 26% increase in sign-ups during that time. According to Match.com, the busiest time of year for dating is between Christmas and February 14th.

So once you sign up for an online dating site, how do you attract the attention of other members?

Because of the expected rush of new sign-ups, Zoosk also put together data combed from over 4,000 members of the site to see what kind of profiles and pictures get the most responses. Why not make the most of your online dating experience this New Year?

Here are a few facts Zoosk shared to help you get a little more attention and increase your response rate:

Use a full-body picture. While you might feel a little self-conscious, users who post full body photos (both for males and females) typically receive three times as many messages as the average dater, and 33% more responses to their messages. It's not about looking perfect - it's showing who you are and that you have nothing to hide.

It's not all about work. People who talk about their hobbies in their online dating profiles fare better than those who don't. Exercise is always a winner. If you mention jogging, running, lifting weights or yoga, you get 21% more messages. If you say book, read or write, you also get 21% more messages. And if you mention music, guitar, or singing? You'll notice a 15% increase in your messages.

Be positive. Using words like "alone" won't help you in your online dating quest - in fact, you'll see 24% fewer messages. However, if you use words like creative, ambitious, laugh or healthy, you'll see a definite boost of 33% more messages.

Don't include pets or friends in your photos. Online daters want to know who they are dating - and if you pose with others in the picture, it takes the focus off of you. Zoosk found that having more than one person in your photo resulted in 42% fewer messages. Not only that - including pets isn't such a great idea either, even if you are looking for a pet-friendly date. Zoosk found that those who posed with animals received a whopping 53% fewer messages.

Selfies are gender-biased. If you're a guy and you want to take a selfie in the bathroom mirror, think again. You'll receive 8% fewer messages with selfie photos than your female counterparts - who receive a 4% uptick in messages with their selfies.

Happy dating!

A recent survey from Harris Interactive of 5,517 UK citizens found that one in 12 (8%) users of social media sites have been the victims of online abuse in some form or another. That part of the story won't surprise anyone who's spent even a marginal amount of time on the Internet. We've seen time and time again that when you put people behind a screen name, the anonymity creates a sense of invincibility and depersonalization that makes it easier to bully others.

The part of the story may be a surprise to some is the response we are taking to online abuse. Only a third (35%) of participants in the study said they reported their abuse to the social media platform on which it took place. Half said they would have reported it, if only they knew how. Another 12% said they chose to respond to the problem by turning the situation around and bullying their abusers.

"It's interesting to note the high percentage of people who say they would have reported the abuse had they known how to, or if the process was simpler," Lee Langford, research director for telecoms, media, technology and entertainment at Harris Interactive, said. "More steps need to be taken by networking sites, such as Facebook, Twitter and Ask.fm, to increase the effectiveness of reporting tools to prevent trolling."

Another survey, conducted by campaign group Bullies Out, found that 50% of their response pool had been victims of cyber bullies, some of whom were as young as seven years old. The CEO of BeatBullying, Emma-Jane Cross, believes both the problem and the solution lie with the social networking sites themselves. "Social networking sites need to take their users' safety seriously," she said, "which includes making reporting procedures much clearer and ensuring a swift response when abuse is recorded."

The difficulty in reporting abuse on websites is that it isn't just used for reporting abuse. Even the system for reporting abuse is abused. In many cases, a disgruntled user files an unwarranted abuse report simply to get another user in trouble and exact revenge. There is no system in place to distinguish malicious abuse reports from real abuse reports, meaning that many are never taken seriously.

So what can you do? We can't eradicate abuse from the Internet completely, but there are a few steps that can be taken to decrease the likelihood of bullying:

• Only post things you want the public to know. Once something is online, it is no longer under your control.
• Guard your personal information closely, and ask your friends to do the same. Request that they not post personal info, negative comments, check-ins, or any other information that you're not comfortable sharing.
• Don't say or do anything online you wouldn't in person. It may seem easier to express yourself when you are not face-to-face, but don't forget that online communication has real-life consequences.
• Always report inappropriate behavior, harassing messages, and abusive comments to the site administrators. Even a small amount of action is better than no action.

Communication is the most important part of online dating. You might have great pictures and an amazing profile, but if you don't reach out to matches or respond to emails, then you're letting opportunities slip by.

Also, your approach is very important when you're online dating. Remember, these are people who don't know you. They might not understand your sense of humor, or your storytelling, or why you are obsessed with a particular video game. It's important to read over your emails and ask yourself, "would I date a total stranger who sent me this email?" before you hit send.

If you want more success with online dating, which means more in-person dates than you're getting now, it might be worth examining how you communicate with people online first. Following are some general rules for emailing your matches:

Respond quickly. It' important to check in with your online dating site every day, even if it's just for ten minutes. If someone emails you, they typically don't want to wait several days for a response or they just move on. Dating moves quickly, so don't get left behind.

Reach out to more people. Have you sent twenty emails this week? Then maybe you should double or triple the number. Online dating is definitely a numbers game unfortunately, and if you're emailing someone who gets a hundred emails a day in her inbox, then it's difficult to stand out. Don't be so selective - after all, you don't know these people, you only get a little information from a picture and profile. Their energy in person is usually what attracts you. So get to the date before you write someone off the list. Send more emails to more people.

Don't be generic. Many women get the same email from different guys, along the lines of "hey, sexy how are you?" If you want to get a woman's attention, don't compliment her looks or ask how she's doing. Instead, read her profile and craft your email with questions that relate. Better yet, in the subject line refer to something in her profile - it will make her much more likely to open your email than if you just say, "hello."

Check your spelling. Many online daters think this doesn't matter, but spelling and grammar are extremely important factors in online dating. These are also easy to check and fix with spellcheck and grammar tools. So don't be lazy and let this one slide. Proof your emails before you send them out.

A few months ago, Brandon, a newly single friend, came to my city to visit me. What made the largest impression on him wasn’t the architecture or the attractions the city had to offer; it was the women. “Whoa, maybe I should move here,” he said, eyeing a group who were walking past us. “The women seem much more beautiful here.”

In reality, the women here are likely not any more attractive than in Brandon’s city; he was simply seeing them from a different perspective. We were at a park, in the midst of a hot summer, surrounded by beachwear; not at Brandon’s local grocery store. It’s also worth mentioning that Brandon was just out of a long-term relationship; he was probably actively looking at women much more than he had in years. And there’s one element that can’t be underestimated; the women, the faces, were simply different from the ones he normally encounters.

For many, the grass is very often greener on the other side of the fence. Even if you’re surrounded by attractive people, they soon become familiar. And if you associate negative connotations with them, that familiarity can breed contempt.

For example: let’s say you belong to an online dating site, and have for some time. It started out well, but lately you’ve been in a dating desert: no one seems to reply to your first-contact emails, and no new faces seem to be signing up. The same old profiles seem to mock you.

Instead of toughing it out, pinning way too many hopes and expectations on any new profile you see, why not take a break and enjoy different scenery? It could mean trying a different site, or even doing something different in your everyday routine - going to that park instead of looking for love at the grocery store, for instance.

Sometimes the only thing that will get you out of a rut is time, but that doesn’t mean you have to sit there, watching the clock. Why not try something outside your personal box? The grass just might be greener on the other side of that fence.

What do you do when you love data, but can't seem to crack the online dating code? Rewrite the code, of course.

That's exactly what Amy Webb, author of Data, A Love Story: How I Gamed Online Dating to Meet My Match, did. After a bad breakup, and a series of bad dates through online dating sites, Webb decided to turn her passion for numbers and algorithms into a strategy for hacking the online dating system. "Rather than waiting for an algorithm to set me up," she told a rapt TED conference audience, "I'm going to try reverse-engineering this entire system."

She began by writing down every possible trait she was looking for in a mate. By the end she had amassed 72 different data points that covered everything from religion, to occupation, to hobbies, to children and parenting styles, to travel plans, to body type. She then prioritized the list, breaking it into a top tier and a second-tier of points and ranking them from 100 down to 91. Finally, she devised a scoring system to mathematically calculate whether or not she thought the date would be a good match for her.

At first glance, her points system appeared to be a success. She returned to online dating and found a good-looking, well spoken, and well-traveled man she thought could be the man of her dreams. There was just one problem: he didn't like her back. That's when Webb realized there was one variable, the competition, she hadn't considered. What about all the other women on online dating sites?

Webb's next step was market research. She created 10 fake male profiles in order to gather data about the women who were attracted to the kind of man she really wanted to marry. She looked at both qualitative data (the humor, the tone, the voice, the communication style) and quantitative data (average length of their profiles, how much time passed between messages). Her findings are fascinating.

"Content matters a lot," she explains. "Smart people tends to write a lot, 3000... 4000... 5000 words, about themselves." Successful online daters also tend to use nonspecific language and optimistic language, which makes their profiles feel more approachable. Timing is also very important, Webb found. "The popular women on these online sites spend an average of 23 hours in between each communication," she says. "And that's what we would normally do in the usual process of courtship."

Armed with new insight, Webb could optimize her online dating approach and create a super profile. And it worked. She is now married and has a daughter, and wrote a book to share her insider knowledge of the online dating system with the world. The question is...what does all this mean for you?

"There is an algorithm for love, it's just not the ones that we are presented with online," Webb says. "In fact, it's something that you write yourself...all you have to really do is figure out your own framework and play by your own rules."

Related Article: Amy Webb Tells TED How She Hacked Online Dating

If you haven't heard of TED (and what off-the-grid deserted island have you been living on, if you haven't?), TED is a global set of conferences owned by a private nonprofit foundation dedicated to showcasing "ideas worth spreading." Past presenters include Bill Clinton, Jane Goodall, Malcolm Gladwell, Bill Gates, countless Nobel Prize winners, and artists of all kinds.

Amy Webb, author of Data, A Love Story: How I Gamed Online Dating to Meet My Match, took to the TED stage to tell the story of how she hacked online dating. After a bad date left her at a restaurant with a $1300 bill, she decided to game the online dating system by creating an algorithm of her own. Using dating sites as databases, she came up with 72 data points designed to identify her ideal partner. She prioritize the 72 points and devised a scoring system:

• 700 points and she'd send an e-mail
• 900 points and she'd go on a date
• 1500 points and she would consider a relationship

What she was attempting to quantify with serendipity. Most people take the "expect it when you least expect it" approach to love, but that wasn't enough for Amy Webb. She wanted to know the exact probability of finding her Mr. Right, and she knew her passion for data and numbers was the way to do it.

Of course, it wouldn't be a story if it was always smooth sailing. Webb began her online dating journey by copying lines from her resume and posting them into her online dating profile. I'm sure you can guess how that turned out: not well. The dating site's algorithm paired her with terrible matches that led to even worse dates. Some would give up then, but not Amy Webb.

She began collecting data points during her awful dates. She tracked things like awkward sexual remarks, bad vocabulary, and the number of times her dates attempted to high-five her. After gathering the data, she crunched the numbers and started making correlations.

Perhaps the most surprising finding was that the algorithms on online dating sites weren't actually failing. They were doing exactly what they were designed to do: take user-generated information and match it with other user-generated information. The problem with Webb was that she'd put bad information - her resume - into the algorithm in the first place. "The real problem here," she explained to her TED audience, "is that while the algorithms work just fine, you and I don't."

What was her solution? The answer will amaze you...

Related Article: Amy Webb Tells TED How She Hacked Online Dating (Part II)