Online Dating

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.

There’s an art to attracting a woman’s attention – especially when it’s through your online dating profile. The biggest mistake I see guys make is assuming that women will automatically respond to their emails or overtures – when the truth is, most women are bombarded with messages.

You have to cut through the clutter to make a good impression. It’s up to you to make your profile stand out so that she will want to respond. Maybe it doesn’t seem fair that guys have to work a bit harder in that respect, but that’s the reality. And isn’t it worth it to meet a great woman?

Following are some tips to give your profile a competitive edge:

Be yourself – not your resume. As cliché as this sounds, there really is meaning behind it. No woman wants to hear all of your work accomplishments or accolades, she wants to know if she can connect with you. Instead of crafting a resume, try expressing what you’re passionate about, what you want to learn, or your sense of humor.

Watch the grammar! Proofing is the most important thing you can do for your profile, at least according to the latest Match.com study. The vast majority of women want to know that you can put a sentence together (not text-speak). Considering how many people leave incomplete profiles with poor grammar, this will give you an advantage.

Stay away from selfies. Have you been working out? Do you want to show off your six-pack? Please don’t. Even if you look great, your matches will be turned off because you’re showing yourself to every single woman on the site. Instead of taking that shirtless selfie, try taking a picture playing a guitar instead. Studies have shown that if you include shots of yourself doing something active – especially playing a guitar or musical instrument – you’ll get more responses.

Be sincere, not generic. It might seem easier to write things you think women will want to hear, but it will work against you. “I like long walks on the beach” will cause her to scroll right past you. Instead of going for cliché try injecting your personality into the mix. What do you really like? Where would you take her on your ideal date? What’s your favorite memory from childhood? These details into who you are will capture her attention.

Complete the profile. So many men leave profiles blank or hide photos, which will cause a woman to think you’re hiding something (maybe a girlfriend). Don’t write an essay or refuse to post photos, but DO use complete sentences and try not to leave anything blank. If it looks like you spent about five minutes filling out your profile, she’ll notice. A little more effort goes a long way.

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.

If you've experimented at all with online dating, odds are you've come across that impossibly perfect profile pic that made you think "Oh great, now I’ll never find a date because this #^@*$ is going to steal them all!”

Not so, says science. Online dating may feel like window shopping for hot people, but it's actually the more unusual looking people who score the most dates. In fact, having some people find you unattractive could work to your advantage.

Hannah Fry, of the YouTube channel Head Squeeze, claims that this seemingly counterintuitive claim makes sense if you take game theory into consideration. Looking at the data, it's definitely not true that good-looking people get the most messages on an online dating website. What's more important than how attractive you are is how much you divide opinion.

Picture two celebrities. The first should be someone, like Halle Berry, who is universally acknowledged to be one of the most attractive people on the planet. The second should be someone, like Sarah Jessica Parker, who tends to be more controversial. If you asked people to rate the attractiveness of both celebrities on a scale of 1 to 5, the majority of people would choose the same number for the first celebrity. For the second celebrity, however, you would likely see a large split between the top end of the scale and the bottom end of the scale. That spread is what's most important on an online dating site.

Online daters are better off dividing opinion like the second celebrity than they are being thought of as objectively attractive like the first celebrity. And that's where game theory comes into play.

Online daters sending messages are probably thinking about their own chances before initiating communication with someone. A user who appears to be objectively attractive will probably receive hundreds of messages from interested suitors, meaning that each individual faces stiff competition. On the other hand, the user whose looks are more controversial means less competition for the suitors who are interested. It's extra incentive for them to get in touch.

Most people, when they set up an online dating profile, go to great lengths to hide the things they think make them unattractive. We leave out certain interests to hide our nerdy sides, or only post face photos to hide the imperfections of our bodies. It seems like a good strategy on the surface, but it's exactly the opposite of what we should be doing in order to have the most success online.

The more you play up what makes you different, even if you think some people might find you unattractive because of it, the more likely you are to attract people who are genuinely into you.

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!).

Dating is never easy, but apparently it's especially hard if you're a woman living in New York City or man living in San Francisco.

According to data from 2012, there are 473,600 unmarried men aged 20-44 living in the Bay Area, and 396,373 unmarried women in the same age range. Men outnumber women by 77,227. In New York City, on the other hand, women outnumber men by 7,215. An online dating service called The Dating Ring is getting a lot of press lately for promising to fly a jet full of single ladies from NYC to SF (while sending a plane-load of men in the opposite direction) if they can raise the money for the stunt.

It started out as a joke, but now Lauren Kay, CEO of the dating service, is seeking $10,000 to $50,000 in Crowdtilt funding to buy plane tickets for some lucky single people on Memorial Day weekend. If the financial goal isn't reached, everyone who made a donation will get their money back, but if all goes as planned, the East and West coasts will become the sites of “matchmaker-curated dates” arranged by The Dating Ring.

"It's a crazy idea that started out in jest," Kay told the San Jose Mercury News. "But it is not that crazy to go to another city with better odds to look for someone special." She suggests that subjects think of it as “a fun vacation.”

Frankly, it sounds like the perfect opportunity for another terrible reality show. Just imagine all those touchy-feely Californians going up against the hardened New Yorkers! So much potential for drama!

Richard Lane, a Bay Area dating expert with Events & Adventures, thinks that local men “will want ladies at the same level of intelligence as them.” Men in San Francisco “want someone who wants to get up and go. A woman who will hang with him at the sports arena in sweats, with her hair pulled back, by day -- but that night, can dress up, go dancing and knows how to pick the right wine to go with a great meal."

Of course, the potential culture clash isn't the only thing that stands to go wrong with this silly scheme. Jeremy Bollinger, president of DateSwitch, a San Francisco speed-dating firm, notes that the setup is dooming New York women and San Francisco men to being in long-distance relationships from the get-go. "Why do this,” he asks, “when there are actually San Francisco women looking for San Francisco men?"

I’ll tell you why, Jeremy: publicity. And it’s working darn well…the Internet hasn’t shut up about the idea since it was first announced.