Studies

If you’ve been anywhere near a news source lately, you probably heard about Facebook’s big news feed experiment. The social network manipulated the news feeds of hundreds of thousands of users to see if the emotion they absorbed through reading content on their news feeds impacted the emotion they later displayed in their own posts. People were, unsurprisingly, not too psyched at the revelation that Facebook had toyed with their emotions.

Shortly afterwards OkCupid revealed that it, too, has experimented on users, and the furor started again. In their most recent experiment, OkCupid told users — falsely — that they’re compatible in order to spark more conversations. As a result, OkCupid found that perceived compatibility is just as effective as real compatibility.

Reactions to both experiments have been mixed. Some have said that OkCupid’s testing is less controversial than Facebook’s. Others have called the OkCupid experiment worse than Facebook’s. What everyone seems to agree on is that they’re not quite sure if they should be upset or not. On one hand, lying to customers seems like an obvious faux-pas. But on the other hand, isn’t that just how the Internet works?

As Josh Constine noted in a TechCrunch post, by using services like Google, Twitter, LinkedIn and yes, Facebook, we agree to be part of experiments that change the way we experience the sites. The experiments are called A/B tests, and companies use them to figure how to encourage users to visit a site longer or click more things. This is nothing new.

However, there may be some room for concern. In academia, research involving human subjects is severely limited and carefully monitored by review boards to ensure that it is not deceptive and harm is minimized. Where companies are concerned, there’s no such thing as a review board. It’s up to the companies themselves to abide by the core principles of ethical research.

So how should you feel about Facebook’s and OkCupid’s experiments?

Any way you want. Unlike those two companies, I’m not here to manipulate into doing or feeling anything.

But if asked to take a stand, I’d have to put myself pro-OkCupid and less-than-convinced about Facebook. Facebook deliberately tried to change users’ emotions for the worse by manipulating content in their feeds, all without their consent. It’s hard to get behind that, no matter how much you enjoy psychological studies. For OkCupid, I’m willing to give a pass. At the end of the day, those kinds of experiments are just OkCupid doing its job. Without testing, OkCupid would never improve its ability to match users – and that’s the whole reason we’re there in the first place.

Are you an eHarmony or OkCupid user? Chances are, you wouldn’t join both sites, because they cater to two different types of users. eHarmony attracts daters who are more serious and committed to finding a partner, whereas OkCupid skews a bit younger and takes itself a lot less seriously.

But regardless of which online dating site you choose – wouldn’t you want to understand how to use it most effectively, so you could obtain better results? Would you want to know how other people are using the site, and potentially how they are matched and communicate with you?

Harvard Business School professor Mikolaj “Misiek” Piskorski is the author of the newly released book A Social Strategy: How We Profit From Social Media. In conducting research for his book, he obtained data sets from both OkCupid and eHarmony to determine how different demographics communicate, flirt, and connect over the websites. He set out to see the differences in communication styles between men and women as well as older and younger users.

In the course of writing his book, which is designed for businesses with social media presences, Piskorski studied the online dating habits of millions of users. After personal information was made anonymous so it wouldn’t be compromised, he started his search: specifically, how online daters send messages to each other, how they flirt online, and how they use the sites.

In a recent interview with Fast Company magazine, Piskorski said, “Where eHarmony varies dramatically is communication. People reach out to each other more on eHarmony, and get more responses on there. The people you traditionally would think have the hardest time reaching out to people do very well on eHarmony.”

What does this mean in terms of day to day use of the site? Generally speaking, because each person's pool of matches is smaller on a site like eHarmony where the matches are qualified, they tend to have an easier time reaching out. For timid users, it’s an empowering thing – they will message more on a site like eHarmony than on OkCupid when they know they are competing with thousands of other members.

Another reason for the increased communication on eHarmony is due to the fact that older women and men who are older, more overweight, or shorter than average daters are also more likely to reach out on eHarmony without feeling intimidated. Again, the limited number of matches he feels is a primary reason. Because eHarmony users have fewer choices than okCupid users, they are more likely to reach out, especially women, to people they are matched with.

So does less mean more? Perhaps. OkCupid users tended to gravitate towards specific matching services that offered more bite-sized options, too. For women, it was Quiver, which showed them matches that OkCupid thought would be good based on their likes and communication patterns. For men, it was a service called Quickmatch, where they could look at photos and basic profile information and rate the users according to what they find attractive.

Perhaps a study of dating app communication will be next on Pikorski’s list.

I think a lot of things while sitting at my computer, but until now, none of those things have involved which giant Internet company has the hottest employees. I was perfectly content to search for cat videos on Google and order weird home appliances I’ll never use on Amazon without thinking about the attractiveness of the people on the other side of those companies.

Then Hinge came along, a dating app that matches young professionals in similar networks, and decided that was no way to live. According to Hinge, users are 14.2% more likely to “swipe right” for Amazon employees than their counterparts at tech companies like Google, Microsoft, Apple, and Facebook. Microsoft came in second, with right swipes occurring 8.2% more often than average. Apple ranks as the least attractive tech firm, with a dismal percentage of 0.2, which is a bit surprising given the cool factor attached to all things Apple.

Before you rush to send in your resume to Amazon, consider the facts behind the findings. Amazon reported having 117,300 employees as of January, including part-time workers. In contrast, Microsoft is home to 99,000 employees, Apple to 80,300, Google to 47,756, and Facebook to 6,337. Because Hinge connects daters through their career networks, it’s likely that more Amazon employees are on the app in the first place.

Oh, and there’s also the fact that Hinge found Amazon employees to be the least “picky” of all the tech companies. Meaning, in the app world, that they’re more likely to swipe right on a profile. And meaning, in the real world, that they’re not exactly selective about who they go on dates with (no judgment, of course…do your thang, Amazon employees). Amazon employees’ more open minded approach to dating could also account for their higher numbers.

Facebook employees displayed the most pickiness – defined by how often the users pass on prospective matches by swiping left – of the bunch. Employees at the social network turned down potential matches 7.5% more than the average Hinge user. Apple employees were found to be the second pickiest, though at a rate of only 0.5% more than average.

On the whole, techie types stacked up well against the competition. Men and women at four of the five companies were all rated more attractive than the average Hinge user (the fifth, Apple, got right-swiped at about the average rate).

Good luck ever ordering from Amazon again without thinking about the hottie who may be processing your order on the other side.

Do you have an iPhone or Android phone? Chances are, you didn’t purchase one or the other by chance: you had a definite preference.

Are You Interested, a dating app for singles, decided to test out its own user base and how their dating preferences correlated to the type of phone they used. We know that things like ethnicity, income, and height play a major role in how much success a dater has online. But could your phone have an influence too, considering how much time, money and effort we put into them? In some cases, yes.

AYI found that iOS users were contacted 17% more often than Android users. Turns out, those who prefer Apple products are more desirable dates. I looked into Cupidtino, the dating site dedicated to lovers of all products Apple, to see some profiles of the most desirable users, but found that it is now defunct. I guess more options are better, even for those dedicated to Apple lovers.

Android users seem to be the ones doing the pursuing, while Apple users tend to wait to be contacted. According to the study, Android users were 12% more likely than iOS users to contact someone on AYI.

The dating app company was able to examine 20 million interactions between their users, pulling from a portion of the 2.4 million mobile downloads of the app. Since other online daters can’t see what phone the other person has, AYI looked at what type of dater owned which type of phone. Interestingly, both groups skewed male, but Android users tend to be slightly older, with 42% between 45 and 60 compared to only 29% of iPhone users. Sixty-seven percent of iPhone users were under 45.

In addition, income seems to be a factor. Android users were 30% more likely to make under $60,000 than those with iPhones. Also, 83% of singles making over $150,000 owned an iOS device.

Marital status is another factor, with Android users being 20% more likely than iOS users to be divorced. Another interesting finding from the study: iOS users tend to drink 50% more often and take drugs twice as often as the Android users. On the flip side, they were also 18% more likely to work out every day compared to Android users.

In terms of education, iOS users were twice as likely to have a Master’s degree and 55% more likely to have a Bachelor’s degree. A whopping 72% of Android users had not completed college.

AYI studied profile information from 13,690 of its mobile app users in the United States for the study. For more information on this dating site please read our review of Are You Interested.

Online dating has become a typical way to meet people outside of your own social networks. In fact, the majority of people have tried it at least once.

But what about the opportunity to connect via social media? Most people have a Facebook or Twitter account, and they contain a wealth of information about what we like, who we are, who are friends are, and what we do. The natural progression of social media is to harness this information and look to who might benefit from it – including online daters.

In fact, eHarmony released a study recently which found 7% of people who married after meeting online had met for the first time on social networking sites like Facebook, MySpace and ClassMates – not through matchmaking chat rooms, online dating sites or other romance-based online connections.

In an article in Time Magazine, Jeffrey Hall, associate professor of Communication Studies at University of Kansas, decided to investigate this connection. He wanted to learn more about who was meeting their significant others through social media, and how well these marriages fared.

He surveyed over 19,000 people who had been married between 2005 and 2012, and asked them how they’d met. Those who met on social networking sites were more likely to be younger and married more recently compared to those who met online in other ways. He was surprised to find that those who met via social networking sites were just as happy as those who met online, and those who met online in general were happier than those couples who met in more traditional ways, such as through friends.

Social networking sites have potential advantages over online dating sites, Hall noted. For one, you can meet people through networks of friends, which means there is some connection first. This puts many people – especially women – more at ease. Also, people are more likely to represent themselves in an honest light over Facebook, because their friends are reading their posts and making comments. You get a more complete view of the person you’re meeting – where she likes to eat, what TV shows she watches, what she does for a living. A Facebook page is a little more personal than an online dating profile.

Another interesting finding in the study was that most of the marriages resulting from social media connections were among African Americans. Hall attributes this to the fact that African Americans and Latinos were over-represented on social networking sites between 2005 and 2012, and use social networks to engage with their already close network of friends.

Social media is an important part of making romantic connections, and is growing in popularity every day. Maybe it’s time to check Facebook if you want to meet someone new.

Traditionally, online dating websites match users based on things like shared preferences, interests, and goals. There's no doubt that all those things are important elements of a successful relationship, but there's one hugely important factor that dating algorithms don't take into account: physical attraction.

Sure, online daters can list vague specifications about things like height and body type preferences, and of course most of us are guilty of spending more time on photos than profile essays, but matchmaking formulas give very little weight to attraction. Until now, that is. A new potential matchmaking formula created by computer scientists at the University of Iowa puts mutual physical attraction front and center by only matching you with partners who are likely to find you attractive.

The formula works by analyzing your message history in order to make date recommendations based on shared tastes and the kinds of people you found attractive in the past. The scientists who designed the algorithm described it using a fictional online dater named Mike: “It is Mike’s taste that affects whom he approaches through initial contacts, and his attractiveness that determines whether he can get responses.”

In other words, Mike – or any of us – can initiate conversations with anyone he wants, but he won't get very far if he continually reaches out to people who don't find him attractive. If the people you contact never reply, all the recommendations in the world will never be of any use. The most effective online dating algorithm would be able to suggest matches based on the likelihood that they will respond to your messages.

“Considering the match of both taste and attractiveness, our model tries to improve dating partner recommendations by boosting a user’s chance of getting responses,” the researchers write.

To test their theory, they used anonymized data on 47,000 users from a real dating website over the course of a period of nearly 200 days. Their program analyzed the replies each user received and used them to evaluate the user's attractiveness or unattractiveness based on the assumption that people who receive more replies are more attractive. When compared with other methods of matchmaking – like pairing people based on shared interests and other variables they had in common – the results showed that the beauty-based method was significantly more effective.

“If a user approaches a partner recommended by [our engine], he/she will have a better chance of getting responses,” the researchers say. So far the attractiveness sorting formula is just a concept, but it's probably only a matter of time before a dating service seeking to be the next best thing turns it into a reality.