Dating Services

Here is some exciting news for singles interested in trying out an online dating site to find a partner.

To celebrate Saint Valentine's Day which is right around the corner, Lavalife will be giving a 30 day free trial to any new user who signs up within the month of February. This free trial gives you unlimited access to Lavalife and all the features they offer, and all without a credit card. This includes sending and receiving unlimited emails and instant message plus you can find out who has viewed your profile. This 30 day free trial is the same as purchasing a one month membership from them.

February is the busiest month in the year for dating sites. When you have a professional high quality dating site like Lavalife giving away 30 day memberships to new users you can expect this service to be VERY BUSY. If you are single, this is one service I would definitely try out.

There are several things that makes Lavalife stand out among the other dating services. One of the main things is they offer 3 dating communities within the site. So if you are searching for a simple date, long term relationship, or an intimate encounter you can join 1 or more of these communities in Lavalife and find singles looking for the same type of relationships.

To find out more about this online dating site, check out our Lavalife review.

"If someone doesn't think you're hot, the next best thing for them to think is that you're ugly."

It's a wild claim, but it's the conclusion drawn by OkCupid's latest study, "The Mathematics Of Beauty." We reviewed the data gathered from the experiment in two previous posts (you can find them here and here), so let's get straight to everyone's most burning questions:

"What on earth is going on here? And what does it mean for me?"

The first question can be answered using game theory. We're presented with a paradox: when some men on a dating site think a woman is unattractive, other men are more likely to message her, and when some men consider a woman "cute," other men show less interest in her.

Game theory explains the paradox like this:

• A man who is interested in a woman has less competition for her affections from men who are not interested in her.
• Believing that other men are not interested the woman, the man will begin thinking "Perhaps she's feeling lonely and unappreciated because men aren't pursuing her. I have a greater chance of connecting with her because my competition is so weak."
• That man would therefore have increased incentive to send her a message, because the odds of it being received positively are higher.

• On the other hand, a woman who is universally considered "cute," but not "hot," is likely to appear more in-demand than she actually is.
• To the average man, she is attractive enough to create the impression that many other men are interested in her, too.
• Some men will decide to take their chances and send her a message anyway, but many will think that the competition is too strong and will chose to move on to someone else they think they have a better chance with.

It's difficult to make a change to your overall level of attractiveness, but this theory can be used to your advantage in other ways. The key to success, according to this study, is to create variance, a difference of opinion regarding your attractiveness. In Christian Rudder's words: "Take whatever you think some guys don't like - and play it up." Think of the Suicide Girls type - tattoos and piercings aren't for everyone, but some people love them. People with body modification know that it makes them unique, show it off, and don't are if some people don't like it. And it gets them lots of attention.

You don't have get "Mom" tattooed on your bicep or pierce your eyebrow to get dates, but the principle is the same. Browse through the profile photos of any dating site, and you'll see countless pictures that are taken to hide a trait that is supposedly undesirable or unattractive, like a angle that disguises a large nose or a cropped photo that only shows the face of an overweight person. But if the OkCupid research team is right, "we now have mathematical evidence that minimizing your 'flaws' is the opposite of what you should do." Display the mole on your face or the embarrassing tattoo you got when you were drunk with pride! The men who aren't into your look will increase your chances with those who are, and the ones who do like will fall for you even harder.

To find out more about this online dating service, you can check out our OKCupid.com review.

Kristen Bell is universally thought of as good-looking.

Megan Fox is frequently considered super hot, but is also regarded as unattractive by many.

And how do regular OkCupid users stack up against such famous competition?

To explore how mathematics can determine a man's reaction to a woman's appearance, the OkCupid research team found users willing to submit their photographs to scrutiny under the site's 5 star rating system. Woman A had an attractiveness rating of 3.4/5 stars, and the number of messages she receives per month is 0.8 times the site's average. Woman B had an attractiveness rating of 3.3, and the number of messages she receives per month is 2.3 times the site's average. Though their star rating is very similar, the number of responses these women receive is very different. The pattern of votes that determined their attractiveness rating is also very different: for Woman A, there was a clear consensus, while for Woman B, there was a split decision. In simple terms:

eHarmony's Free Guided Communication Event begins at 12:01AM on Friday, January 28th 2011 and ends at 11:59PM on Monday, February 28th 2011 (US only). This is the first time ever that eHarmony.com is having a free communication event that is a whole month long. Best yet, it is happening at the busiest time of year for online dating sites, during the month of February and Valentine’s Day. This ensures that many singles will be taking advantage of this promotion.

During this event no credit card is required to create a profile, receive matches and to use the guided communication process. This communication process has 3 stages that help you and your match to get to know each other better. eHarmony Mail, viewing of members profile pictures and Fasttracking the communication process are not included in this promotion.

This free guided communication event will be eHarmony's 33rd with the last one occurring at the end of December (see Story).

Update #1: eHarmony.co.uk is also having a free communication event. It ends on February 15th, 2011.

For more information on this online matchmaking service, you can read our eHarmony review.

Recipient of Gold
Match.com

Recipient of Silver
eHarmony

Recipient of Bronze
Zoosk

We closed the 2010 Dating Sites Reviews Single's Choice Award poll earlier this month with a total of 798 votes from visitors. The poll really was popular this year and it received over 10 percent more votes than last year while being available only for 3 months when compared to 5 months in 2009. I had hoped to start the poll in August or September but it wasn't online until October. Next year the plan is to have all the awards finished up by the end of December instead of running into the new year like we have always done.

It's interesting to see how the results vary from year to year in the Single's Choice award as the dating sites compete to be number one with singles. This award is sort of like the "Best Director" award at the Oscars, it is the most important. The reason the Single's Choice award stands out is it is decided by the public with votes, and not us. With our Editor's Top Pick awards we try to make an unbiased selection but, when you talk dating sites everyday sometimes the decision may not be as clear as we would like.

For 2010 we listed the top ten dating sites for you to vote on. The three dating sites which received the most votes will get an award, Gold for first, Silver for second and Bronze for third.

The recipient of the Gold 2010 Single's Choice Award is Match.com. Not surprising, this is the fourth year in a row that this dating site has won the Gold Single's Choice Award. Match.com continues to lead in the dating industry and this year they received over 37 percent of the votes. This is a huge eight percent increase over last year which shows Match.com is gaining in popularity and continues to be the one to beat. Match.com was also the winner of the Editor's Top Pick - Overall award as well.

The recipient of the Silver 2010 Single's Choice Award is eHarmony. This is eHarmony's third year to win this award and their popularity remains about the same at 20 percent of total votes. eHarmony is designed for singles with long term relationships in mind so it is not for everyone. With them winning Silver it shows just how popular and effective they are especially since they do all of the matching for you.

The recipient of the Bronze 2010 Single's Choice Award is Zoosk. Zoosk is a relatively new dating service and it is the first time they have appeared in the DSR Choice awards. This is a great accomplishment for them to receive an award this year let alone a Single's Choice award which is decided by votes. Zoosk received 94 votes which is almost 12 percent of the total vote.

This year's standings for the Single's Choice award for all dating sites in the poll are (click the dating site name to read our full review):

1. Match.com
2. eHarmony
3. Zoosk
4. PerfectMatch.com
5. Chemistry
6. Lavalife
7. Date.com
8. FriendFinder.com
9. SinglesNet.com
10. True.com

Once again, we would like to give a big THANKS to everyone who cast a vote this year in the Single's Choice Award.

• Girls who are described as "cute" tend to be ignored by men.
• The more men as a group disagree about a woman's level of attractiveness, the more they end up liking her.
• Having some men think she is "ugly" can actually work in a woman's favor.

These are three of the surprising conclusions drawn from the latest OkTrend's study, "The Mathematics of Beauty." This time, the researchers at OkCupid focused on female attractiveness by looking beyond a woman's profile photo and "into the reaction she creates in the reptile mind of the human male." As always, the data used was gathered from the activity of actual OkCupid users, in this case 1.54 million votes, 596,000 messages, and 64,000 profiles.

It should come as no surprise that the hottest OkCupid members receive more page views and messages than less good-looking users, and it probably also isn't a surprise that men dedicate more time to the pursuit of attractiveness than women do. A beautiful woman on OkCupid receives approximately 4 times more messages than an average woman, and 25 times more messages than an unattractive woman. The OkCupid team examined a sample of 5,000 women, and sorted them based on attractiveness and the number of messages they received during the last month.

The graph, which can be found here in the original article, was adjusted to account for differences in factors like "race, location, age, profile completeness, login activity and so on," so that the only meaningful difference between the subjects plotted on the chart was their physical attractiveness. The graph revealed an extremely wide range of results, showing women with the same level of attractiveness receiving a vastly different number of messages per month.

Armed with the data, the OkCupid team set out to determine what caused the disparities they had found...and the key, it turns out, is in mathematics.

If we rate attractiveness using the classic 10-point scale, a woman who is rated a 7 could be a 7 because everyone who sees her considers her to be one. On the other hand, she could be a 7 because the majority of people consider her a 10, and a few think she is a 0. If all we know about a woman is that she's a 7, we don't know how that number was determined. Writer Christian Rudder uses actress Kristen Bell to illustrate the point: while she is certainly good-looking, she is not out-of-this-world, supermodel hot. Most people would probably rate her as "very attractive," while a smaller number of people will likely consider her "super hot" and few would say she is "unattractive." In the case of Megan Fox, however, many people are likely to rate her attractiveness as extremely high - higher than Kristen Bell's - but a significant number of people will also probably rate her attractiveness as low (lower than Kristen Bell's).

What happens when this theory is applied to real OkCupid users?

We'll find out next time.