Statistics

Just when you thought the good old days of OkTrends were gone, and you'd resigned yourself to a life without the pithy, humorous, occasionally scandalous insights of the blog, OkCupid has launched something new: The Deep End.

Yes, that long awaited moment has finally come. OkCupid is back to blogging and anyone with a love of dating and data is squirming with joy. To kick things off, The Deep End released The Hangover, a look back on the trends and lessons that 2015 left behind. Here are some of its most interesting insights:

The Fifty Shades Effect

In typical boundary-pushing OkCupid fashion, the report starts with Americans' sex lives. Oregon took the crown for most users looking for casual flings, followed by Washington. At the opposite end of the sexual spectrum, users in Utah, South Dakota, and Idaho were the most likely to be virgins. Across the board, OkCupid users are looking to explore their kinky sides. Fifty-eight percent indicated an interest in bondage in 2015, up 5% from the year before.

Emoji Extravaganza

Love them or hate them, emojis are here to stay. The two most popular emojis on OkCupid were simple smiley faces, with the top spot going to the little guy with eyebrows. Unsurprisingly on a dating site, the winky face also scored highly. It came in third, followed by the heart eyes emoji. Beyond the classic faces, users loved the cake, coffee and pizza emojis, as well as the see-no-evil monkey.

Read Between The Lines

When not expressing themselves in modern hieroglyphs, OkCupid users ventured into verbal territory (with varying degrees of success). The Deep End found that a message simply saying “hey” had an 84% chance of being ignored in 2015. Other words from the millennial lexicon exploded last year. Use of “bae” doubled in frequency from 2014 to 2015, while “fleek,” “dad bod,” and “ghosting” made their first appearances in 2015.

Top Of The Pops

Dating and pop culture collided in 2015 with one ubiquitous phrase: Netflix and chill. The once harmless combination of words took on a new meaning last year, and use of the phrase in OkCupid messages rose 5,357% as a result. In other pop culture news, Taylor Swift replaced Miley Cyrus as the most mentioned pop star, while Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part II and Avengers: Age of Ultron dominated the movie mentions.

Where will we be at the end of 2016? The Deep End predicts a world that is increasingly progressive, in which racial bias is a serious dealbreaker for daters and, if OkCupid users have their way, a Democrat is elected to the White House.

“What we don’t yet know,” the https://www.okcupid.com/deep-end/the-hangover concludes, “are all of the sexy and bizarre ways we’ll connect in the new year.”

It's the busiest time of year for online dating. The stretch between Christmas and Valentine's Day is peak season for tech savvy singles. Some are scoring big while others are striking out.

With any luck, you're in the first category. Your date card is so full it's practically become a full-time job. Things are looking up for 2016.

Or maybe not. Maybe you're in the second category, sending message after message into the ether and getting nothing back. That's no way to begin a new year. Fortunately, the folks at Zoosk have compiled some simple suggestions for changing your luck in their "7-Step Guide to Landing a Date."

Here are the highlights:

1. Suggest a date activity if you're really into the person. A recent survey of 3000 Zoosk members revealed that suggesting a movie date increases the response rate to your messages by 91 percent. Other compelling keywords include the beach (59 percent) and a park (39 percent).
2. Send messages in the morning if you're a man and in the evening if you're a woman. Men increase their chance of a response by 10 percent if they send messages between 9 am and 10 am. Women, on the other hand, are nocturnal creatures. Their messages are best sent between 10 pm and 11 pm.
3. Reply within 24 hours. The internet isn't exactly known for its patience. Of those surveyed by Zoosk, 94 percent said they expect a response within 24 hours. Playing too hard to get can easily backfire when more options are only a swipe away.
4. Highlight your individuality. What makes you unique? Your special characteristics are what separate you from the vast sea of singles online. Embrace your glasses, flaunt your tattoos. Just stay away from overtly sexual messages, which Zooskers give a digital thumbs down.
5. Watch the character count. Men aren't picky when it comes to message length, but women expect more effort. Forty percent of the female users Zoosk surveyed said they prefer messages that are longer than the 140 characters of a tweet.
6. Expect to send multiple messages. Establishing rapport online takes more than a single sitting. Around half of singles polled said they exchange five messages before meeting a new suitor in person.

What's step 7, you ask? Start adding dates to your calendar.

Follow Zook's seven rules and you'll set yourself for a 2016 that's brimming with romantic possibilities.

Looking to get the year started on a more romantic note? Now’s the perfect time to join online dating sites. According to Match.com and other notable online dating sites and apps, the biggest surge of new member signups happen between January 1^st and Valentine’s Day.

So, you have a lot of time to see who’s out there and try a new app.

This year, eHarmony reported a 21% increase in mobile registrations since the holidays began, and dating app Zoosk also expected a 20% jump in users the first two weeks of January. Grindr, a dating app for gay men, typically experiences a 30-50% increase in users over the holidays, and Match expects an increase of 60% in new members before Valentine’s Day. Most dating apps agree that this is the busiest time of year for them.

The desire to sign up for an online dating site now may be for personal reasons. Most people have spent the holidays together with family members, creating a sense of warmth and togetherness that some singles feel might be missing from their lives. For those who spent the holidays alone, this time of year can feel particularly isolating, which can provide inspiration for expanding social networks and dating. There’s also the plethora of Instagram photos of happy couples taking vacations together, not to mention the announcement of engagement or baby news over social media, which can also create the desire for more people to want to meet someone special. And what about New Year’s resolutions to date and meet more people?

It seems there’s something about this time of year that motivates people to try online dating – but perhaps it’s less about emotion and more about having the time off for the holidays. People have the opportunity to look at their personal lives and see what they could be doing when they have free time.

According to news website MarketWatch, there’s evidence that people tend to join online dating sites when they have time off work and want to look forward to something personal. So it makes sense that the biggest online dating membership surge the Sunday after New Year’s Eve, when most people are still enjoying the holiday break but know that work is about to start up again.

Interestingly, this theory holds true outside of the winter holidays. Some dating sites, including Zoosk, also saw a surge in new members during the U.S. government shutdown in 2013, when many people’s jobs were affected and they were prevented from going to work.

Regardless, this is the best time of year to join a dating website or download a dating app. More people are online now than ever, which means more opportunities. For more information on the popular dating services mentioned you can read our Match.com review and our eHarmony review.

Happy dating in 2016!

Unless you've been living in a galaxy far, far away, you know this month is all about Star Wars. The seventh installment of the sci-fi franchise will soon premiere and fans are going crazy waiting for the big day.

To pass the time until The Force Awakens hits big screens, Match.com has done a little research on single Star Wars fans around America.

It turns out the Force is especially strong with the western US. The region with the most mentions of Star Wars-related terms in their profiles was Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue in Washington. Cities in Texas, Colorado and Utah followed close behind. In the top nine, only one eastern city makes an appearance: Orlando-Kissimmee in Florida. Maybe east coast fans prefer Star Trek?

If you're a Han looking for your Leia, your best bet is to look in Colorado Springs, Colorado – the top city for single female Star Wars fans. Your next closest bets are Santa Rosa-Petaluma, California, and Salt Lake City, Utah. Ladies looking for a Luke-alike are most likely to find him in Orlando-Kissimmee, followed by Austin-Round Rock, Texas, and Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue.

Match.com's research didn't stop there. The company also found that Star Wars fans are more educated than the non-fan population. Sixty percent earned a degree beyond a bachelor's. They also showed an increased interest in martial arts, clocking in at twice as likely to be into karate than the average Match user.

Match continued its research into religion, politics and career choices. Star Wars fans were 2.2 times as likely to be atheist, agnostic, or spiritual but not religious, and 2.7 times as likely to be liberal or very liberal. As for their professional paths, they were 3 times as likely to work in technology, 2.5 times as likely to work in a creative field and 2 times as likely to work in government.

Speakiing of Star Trek, Match compared fans of the legendary TV series to Star Wars buffs. The results? Star Trek users were better educated and made more money. Star Trek users were also more likely to hold extreme political views (both right and left), and less likely to be moderate in their political leanings. On the other hand, Star Wars users were more likely to be into sports and less into gardening, politics and religion.

Time to start practicing your Star Wars pickup lines. Put your love life into hyper drive, and you could have a date for the opening night of The Force Awakens.

For more info on the online dating service which brought us this study you can read our Match.com.

Were you wondering who the most popular members were on Match.com this past year? Or maybe you were wondering the percentage of blonde to brunette daters, or what music most matches were listening to? Whatever your question, Match.com seems to have answers in their 2015 wrap-up.

If you dwell in New York City, you might be surprised to learn that despite the hectic pace and its legendary status for casual relationships and ambitious and independent singles (thanks to tv shows like Girls and Sex and the City), New York City is the number one place where Match.com members want kids! Commitment and family in New York City is possible and a goal for a lot of daters, so lesson learned here: don’t let the stereotypes rule your life.

If on the other hand, you are looking for the jet set life and want to be with a doctor or lawyer, head to Durham, North Carolina or Washington, D.C. respectively.

It also appears that despite the tech-savvy iPhone users among us, Android users are becoming more likely to try online dating. In 2015, 29% more Android users joined Match.com vs. iPhone users.

This past year marked a big year for the LGBT community, with the Supreme Court ruling that marriage between same-sex couples was legal across the country. Plus, notable celebrity and former Olympic Champion Caitlyn Jenner came out to the world, making transgender rights a topic of discussion. In the online dating world, half a million members of the LGBT community joined Match in 2015.

Following are some additional highlights:

• Since we are in for a long year of political maneuvering in 2016, Match.com decided to see the Hilarys vs. the Donalds who signed up for online dating this past year. As it turns out, there are more Donalds who are members of Match. (We’ll see how this plays out in the elections.)
• Game of Thrones was the most-mentioned TV show on Match this year. (No big surprise – though fans of The Walking Dead will be pleased their show came in second.)
• The most-mentioned celebrities included Drake at #1, Taylor Swift, Beyonce and then the Kardashians.
• The most mentioned trendy words of 2015 were “swag” (coming in at #1), “bae” (because who doesn’t want to find their bae?), and “Netflix and chill” (to which I can relate).
• Most trending newsworthy topics discussed on Match include transgender, Donald Trump, and marijuana. 
• The most popular foods mentioned were sushi (coming in at #1), tacos and ramen. Delicious.
• Two times more brunettes joined than blondes.
• Last but not least, Match revealed its two most popular daters – Leonora from New York, NY and Gabriel from Los Angeles.

To find out more about this dating service you can read our review of Match.com. Happy dating!

Practically every business is expected to have a social media presence in 2015. When your business is a digital one, that pressure doubles. When your target audience is millennials, it triples. Dating services are all about helping people make social connections, but how socially savvy are they on their own profiles?

Digiday used proprietary data from two social media analytics firms, Unmetric and Socialbakers, to pit seven dating apps against each other in the battle for most effective social media strategy. Tinder, OkCupid, Hinge, Match.com, Zoosk, Coffee Meets Bagel and Bumble were put to the test in several different categories.

Number Of Fans

With over 13 million million Facebook likes, Zoosk has the largest social media fan base. Match and Tinder follow with over 827,000 and 369,000 fans, respectively. Twitter shows similar stats. Zoosk has the most followers by far at over 350,000. Match comes in second, with 65,000, and Tinder in third, with over 56,000.

Although Tinder currently has the smallest fan base, it's also the most rapidly growing. The game-changing dating app saw its fan base grow 228 percent between January and October 2015.

Geographical Popularity

Tinder, Hinge, OkCupid, Match and Zoosk all have an international crop of users, but Tinder and Zoosk are the most diverse on social. In fact, the majority of Zoosk's Facebook fans are international.

Other services proved to be particularly popular in specific countries. Hinge is big in India, while Match is favored by Canadians and Tinder has won over Brazilian singles.

Engagement Level

Zoosk is the most prolific poster on social media. The company published 226 posts between January and October, and received the most likes and comments. Despite Zoosk's high volume, Tinder took the top spot for highest average engagement and most posts shared by fans.

Bumble is a relative newcomer to the dating world, but already it's showing promise on social. The app saw over 3,000 interactions with fans on Facebook between July and October. The numbers are expected to grow.

Number Of Fan Posts And Mentions

Match.com's users are the most likely to talk about it on Facebook. More than 9,000 messages were posted to Match's wall between January and October. Hinge and Coffee Meets Bagel come next. Neither Tinder nor OkCupid had user posts on their Facebook walls. Their page settings most likely do not allow it.

Tinder leads the number of mentions on Twitter, perhaps because Twitter's audience skews younger than Facebook and Tinder attracts a similarly youthful user base. The app is followed by Zoosk and Match.com, which come in second and third with around 8,000 and 2,000 mentions apiece.