OkCupid

The folks from OkCupid are back again to blow our minds - and the lids off some of the common, as they call it, "Myths of Profile Pictures". While, of course, it's best to view any set of data with a critical eye and place it in the proper context (uhoh, I'm channeling my Statistics professor), let's see what we can take away from this study. One thing I'd like you to bear in mind, before we begin: OkCupid is just one dating site, and might have a different ratio of people looking for "hookups" or relationships. Also, success is measured in messages - no clue if those messages were worthwhile, or simply leering. You might get attention, but there's no guarantee it's the kind of attention you want. Now, the "Myths of Profile Pictures":

Myth 1 - It's better to smile This "myth" is somewhat misleading. In general, you can't really go wrong with smiling; what is supposedly shocking is that women also get positive responses by "flirting" directly into the camera, and men get positive responses by brooding at something off-camera. Now, is this really all that surprising? That men respond to a bit of pouty eye contact and women like that tall, dark and mysterious persona?

• What we can take away: Smiling is a still a safe bet. If you really think your best pictures fall into one of the other two categories, you can gamble and see how it pans out. Also remember that smiling sends a host of other messages, like honesty, openness, kindness, that are harder to convey in other types of photos.

Myth 2 - You shouldn't take a picture with your phone or webcam The study found that self-shot photos are marginally more successful, possibly due to the "intimate" feel these pictures have. I say this makes sense; "casual" or "natural" is almost always better than stilted and posed. And today, webcams and phones are much better than they were even five years ago.

A related find in this "myth" is that the "Myspace" shot (taken from above) is incredibly successful for women (even when you remove shots that include cleavage). While this is more surprising, it hints at how we've been changed by social media. OkCupid has a pretty large late-teen, early-twenties demographic, thanks to their quizzes, and these are kids who came of age with Myspace and digital cameras. Undoubtedly their perception of what they find attractive has been shaped by the prevalence of social media. Perhaps in days past, pinups and magazines shaped the most "alluring" poses; now, it's the Internet.

• What we can take away: Go for natural rather than posed pictures, and if you have to do the Myspace thing, you'll be just as successful without featuring the cleavage.

Join me next time to dissect the last two myths, Guys should keep their shirts on and Make sure your face is showing (see Story) .

For more about this dating site, read our review of OKCupid.com.

Sam Yagan indicated that an iPhone application was in the works for OkCupid earlier this month (see Story), and now it is out (much sooner than I was expecting). This is a full featured dating application that offers:

• Sending and receiving of your OkCupid mail messages.
• Instant Messaging with members.
• Updating your profile and photos.
• Spend time answering those famous OkCupid match questions.
• Search for users.
• Search for matches based on your current location.
• Find out who has been checking you out.

Have you always wanted to be able to start conversations with other members easier on OKCupid? Now you can as their new Ice Breakers feature is now in beta. Ice Breakers are a little different on OkCupid than on other dating sites (also called Winks, Flirts, Express Interest). Ice Breakers have their own page which when you visit will show you other people with similar interests. From there you can then write a short message to one or more of these people about those interests, an instant conversation starter.

Thanks to Online Dating Insider for the heads up. To find out more about OkCupid's Ice Breakers read our reviews of OkCupid.

Free dating site OkCupid recently did several studies about online dating emails, looking at over a million of their members. They took a look first at the words that people wrote to one another and how those words correlated to response rate. (Here's a hint: Use proper English and not netspeak if you want replies.) But probably their most controversial article related to how your race determines the amount of replies you will receive.

We all want to assume that people are a lot more colorblind than they used to be, but OkCupid has found that's simply not the case. Even if we say that race doesn't matter, the numbers don't lie - it really does.

OkCupid's CEO, Sam Yagan, told NPR's Michel Martin that they were intrigued by the idea that they could get some answers to the questions people have about the role race plays in online dating. After all, when people are asked to state their dating preferences in their profile, they check off certain boxes. Do those boxes match up to the emails they deem worthy of a reply?

This time OkTrends took a look at almost 1 million people and their messaging habits on OkCupid. What they found may shock some people:

A message sender's race is a huge factor on the average reply percentage.

Here are a few interesting points they raised:

• Black women are the most talkative. They are more likely to reply to your message, about a quarter more than other races.
• White men get more replies from almost all groups when then send a message to someone on a dating site.
• White women prefer white men but Hispanic and Asian women do more so.
• Men don't tend to write black women back as often as the average response rate.
• White men are rude to all races. The average response rate of a white male is 40.5% across all groups but the average response for non-white men is almost 8% higher at 48.1%.

Visit the OkTrends for the complete details on this story including easy to read graphic charts. To find out about OkCupid, read our review.

OkTrends recently took a look at how religion and race affects online matching. This is a summary of what they found based a random pool of 500,000 members:

• The Zodiac Sign - Statistically makes no difference. It doesn't matter if you are a Leo and female, the person you end up with has an equal chance of being any of the twelve Zodiac signs.
• Match By Religion - Agnostics and Jews get along better with most other religion groups while Muslims and Hindu men tend to be the most choosey.
• Match By Religious Attitude - It doesn't seem to matter how serious someone is about their religion. You have an almost equal chance of liking someone who doesn't take it too serious.
• Match By Race - Surprisingly there is nothing dramatic here. The overall compatibility of all races is pretty even.

For a more detailed explanation on how race and religion effect matching, read oktrends and to find out more information about this dating site read our review of OkCupid.