OkCupid

OKCupid’s official blog, OKTrends, recently sent a powerful warning to its readers:

Don’t Be Ugly By Accident!

The eye-catching admonishment is the title of a post about the site’s latest study, an in-depth technical look at profile photos that forms the perfect follow-up to their previous report on the subject, “The 4 Big Myths of Profile Pictures” (check out our review of the article here). Instead of merely considering the content of the photos we post, writer Christian Rudder advises, we should also take practical matters like aperture, flash, and focus into account.

The article chronicles the results of a study that aggregated 11.4 million opinions on what makes a successful photo. The experiment was simple: subjects were shown two photographs of different people, chosen randomly from the 552,000 sample user pictures that were collected, and asked which person they would prefer to go on a date with. The information gathered was then compared with data about the photography itself, like the time of day and shutter speed at which the pictures were taken.

The most amusing claim, by far, is that iPhone users have more sex than users of other mobile devices. BlackBerry users came in second place, with Android aficionados bringing up the rear. No word on how much sex Windows Mobile users can expect during their lifetimes (or at least the lifetimes of their cell phones).

In less humorous news, OKCupid’s findings show that the best photos come from Panasonic Micro 4/3s cameras, while the worst come from the cameras on Motorola phones. The next best camera brands were Leica, Canon, Pentax, Nikon, Sony, and Olympus (in that order), while Kodak was judged to be almost as bad as the Motorola phone. Of the camera phones, Sidekick was considered the best, with Apple’s iPhone close behind. Somewhat surprisingly, Android, Nokia, BlackBerry, and Windows phones were all rated lower than phones of less popular brands.

The flash, according to the study, should always be avoided. Subjects consistently assigned a higher attractiveness rating to photos that did not use the flash. Based on their data, the experimenters determined that the flash adds about 7 years of age to the person in the photo (and, consequently, not using a flash can remove 7 years of age from a person’s appearance).

Other findings suggest that the best pictures have “a very shallow depth of field,” which means that the photo’s subject is sharply in focus while the background of the picture is blurry. The article goes on to give a very technical explanation for this effect, and some examples of it, so be sure to visit the source at the link provided below if you’re interested in photography.

The study’s final conclusion is that late night and late afternoon are the ideal times at which to take your profile photo. Rudder “irresponsibly theorize[s]” that this is because “photos taken in the former bracket tend to be more provocative,” while “those taken in the latter tend to be pleasantly lit.”

OKCupid’s findings are certainly attention-grabbing, but do they actually have any value? Tune in next time when we’ll take a look at what the data actually means, and where it might be leading you astray.

Read more about the study here.

We all want to portray ourselves in the best light possible when it comes to online dating. After all, the more attractive you seem online, the greater your chance of receiving responses and garnering more dates.

The problem is, many people fudge the truth in order to get more responses. So how do you know what information is real and what's not when you're looking at potential matches?

OkCupid recently did a study of its membership base to determine what online daters are most likely to lie about, along with the likely reasons why. Here's what they found:

• Online daters tend to lie about height. Generally, men are two inches shorter than the height they claim to be. The surprising statistic OkCupid also noted was that women tend to lie about their height just as frequently, although shorter women tend to get more attention. The study noted women under 5'4" get 60 more responses per week than their 6-foot counterparts.

• A second popular lie is about income. Generally, men and women both exaggerate their income levels by about 20%. However, men have more incentive to lie. Their response rates increase significantly when they claim to make more than $100K as opposed to a more modest salary. Also, after 23 years of age, if a man is making less than $40K, likely he won't be getting much response at all.

• The more attractive the picture, the more likely it is to be out-of-date. Typically, people seem to be posting recent pictures on OkCupid, the median date being about 92 days old. However, more than a third of the most attractive photos on the site are over a year old. Also, older singles tend to post older pictures. Men and women over 30 tend to post pictures that are a year old or more.

For more on this dating site, you can read our OKCupid review.

We heard that OkCupid has sent some emails out to their better looking members letting them know that they have been placed higher in the search results because of their attractiveness. They will also be matched with other members of similarly rated attractiveness.

Say it isn't so OkCupid!

For a dating site which prides itself on its unique way of matching singles through the use of quizzes, this approach makes OkCupid seem more like a hook-up site instead of a dating site which values real relationships. Obviously attraction plays a role in relationships but to automatically push a profile higher because of how well a photo is rated seems one-dimensional.

To find out more about this dating site, read our OkCupid review.

OkCupid's blog post about picture myths was very popular. To capitalize on this OkCupid has released an experimental widget that will generate a report for you based on votes from members of OkCupid. All you need to do is upload a couple of photos. Once completed you will then need to help out and analyze other people's photo submissions (or how else will someone analyze yours? Pay it Forward!). After a little while a detailed report will be made available showing which photo was considered the best for a dating site.

In your report you get to see how many people voted and a list of 16 personality types of how people voted in a bar graph for each photo. This allows you to find out, for example, if Artists, Christians, Divas or Jocks either loved your photo or preferred a different one you uploaded. It also lists in the bar graph the age range and gender of the people who voted to give you a better idea if your pictures appealed to a younger or older audience.

MyBestFace looks to be sort of a smarter version of a picture rating website like Hot or Not .

To try My Best Face, visit this page and to find out about this dating site, check out our review of OkCupid.

Most dating websites have several landing pages for visitors (these are web pages visitors are meant to enter the dating site with). Some are completely dependent on the actual URL while others may take into consideration other criteria like what country the visitor may be coming from. I notice the other day that OkCupid has revamped their homepage. Gone are the featured profiles as seen in the right top photo. It looks like OkCupid decided to simplify things as seen in the bottom left snapshot. On the left column OkCupid has the member signup area along with 4 quotes from leading publications like Time and the New York Post. The main section of the page is reserved as a place for new members to signup. There is a hand drawn image of a woman saying "Welcome to OkCupid! We just need a few things to get started." and she is pointing at the profile questions which ask the Gender, Orientation and your Relationship Status with a Next button which continues the sign up process.

I wonder if this new homepage is converting better for them than the old one. Does straight to the point quotes like "The Google of online dating" and the start of the create a profile form get more people to sign up for the dating service than seeing a bunch of members profiles in a gallery format? It seems like a lot of sites now days have moved away from the show what members we have approach. Most now usually show a stock photo of a couple having fun along with the initial questions for the profile.

To find out more about this dating site, read our OkCupid review.

The OkCupid blog has been a hit lately in the media with such posts about Picture Myths and how Race Affects Dating. Their recent post about why you shouldn't pay for online dating garnered a number of negative blog posts in return about OkCupids research on the subject (and not from other dating sites).

The Strange to Say blog has a well written post called "OKCupid’s Misfired Arrow". In it he points out several flaws in OkCupids thinking. The first thing he points out is that OKCupid offers a paid component to their service as well called the A-List. This omission on OkCupids part in the article is surprising and makes you wonder what is OKCupid really trying to say here? Are they saying that you're stupid to pay for a dating service, except if it is theirs? Strange to Say had a good comparison for this. To them it would be like GM saying not to buy cars from Ford or Chrysler since they are American made and then not telling the public that their cars (GM) are American made as well.

Another good point that the Strange to Say blog presented was that OKCupid says paid dating sites do not have the interest of their members in mind when they join their site. OkCupid says their main goal is to keep you paying for a membership as long as possible instead of finding the member a match as quick as possible. The funny thing is this logic also works against supposedly free dating sites. Free dating sites make most of their money from Ads being displayed on their site. The more members viewing ads, the more money they will make. Because of this, it seems free dating sites may have a conflict of interest as well. A good example of this is when PlentyOfFish removed the instant messenger from their site (see Story) just over a year ago. The reason POF did this was because they wanted members using the website and mail system (where they can increase ad impressions) instead of communicating with other members via Instant Messenger.

The Unofficial eHarmony Blog also has a good article on the OkCupid blog post. While their post deals with more on what OkCupid says about eHarmony it does poke a few additional holes in OkCupids theory.