General News

Popular online dating website OKCupid recently dug into its member base and asked the question: why are men not seeking women of their equal age or older? According to their post-Valentine’s Day blog entry, the typical user on their site aged 22-30 states age preferences for female matches to be younger. Now, that was worth a deeper look by their staff and what they found might surprise you.

OKCupid’s user base peaks at about 7 million users aged 24 and drops significantly as age increases. This could simply be a factor of OKCupid having developed into an online dating site that caters to a younger crowd or that membership over age 30 decreases because people in those age brackets are in relationships/married. So herein lies the question that OKCupid set out to answer: why are older women on the site having a more difficult time matching-up than their male counterparts?

It all comes down to age preferences stated in the male user’s online dating profile, they say.

While the male to female user ratio on OKCupid stays fairly balanced across the age brackets, men consistently indicate in their user profiles that they prefer dating younger women. While they do indicate that they are open to older women, it’s with much narrower limits. For example: OKCupid’s average 31-year-old male user sets his age range preference for women as 22 to 35 – a full nine years younger but a mere 4 years older. And here’s the shocker – as male age increases, age preferences toward younger women skew even further. They give the example of their median 42-year-old male user typically looking for women up to fifteen years younger but only three years their senior.

Interestingly enough, when OKCupid flipped the coin, they found women to be much more tolerant of age ranges. Women on the site typically message those younger and older than themselves with equal frequency. They also become more open to dating older men after age 29 according to messaging practices tracked on the site.

So with the skew in view, where does that leave men and women in the quest to find a match when age enters the equation? Check out the second installment of this article: OKCupid Says Men Are Looking for Older Women and Just Don’t Know It. For more information on the dating site, check out our review of OkCupid.

A yet to be released study from a Duke University researcher, analyzed 22,000 online daters and confirmed what the rest of us already know. Men prefer thin women and, women prefer tall financially secure men. I think what will be interesting about this study is the little details. Some reported examples of this in the study include, men prefer women with a body mass index of 18 or 19. This is on the very thin side since a women who is 5' 6" would need to weight about 115 pounds (I think women can blame the runway models for this). For the men, on average a guy who is 5' 9" needs to make $30,000 more than a man who is 5'10", just to be as successful with online dating.

We will report more interesting facts on this online dating study when it is released.

I was surprised at the statistics mentioned in an article I found on the Mail Online. According to a survey released by the Sky Real Lives of 742 women from the United Kingdom, 25 percent of women over the age of 35 said they have never had sex. On average 28 percent of women choose to abstain from sex with the highest being in Scotland at 38 percent. On the opposite side, 32 percent of women (in the Midlands) have sex at least once a week.

eHarmony is a privately held company, so unlike Match.com, which is publicly owned (you can by stock in it), they do not have to release any public financial statements. In Match.com's quarter 4, 2009 financial statement they reported $343 million in revenue for 2009 along with about 1.4 million subscribers per quarter (see Story).

Piper Jaffray's, Gene Munster, who is a senior research analyst that specializes in the internet, estimates that eHarmony earned about $250 million in revenue last year and has about 13 percent of market share in the dating industry. Muster also states that eHarmony is a natural acuisition target for companies like AOL, IAC (owners of Match.com) and Yahoo.

For more on the story, read CNBC and to find out what makes this such a popular dating service, read our review of eHarmony.

The month of February is Black History Month in both the United States and Canada (it is October in the UK). It is a tradition where we as a nation can remember and celebrate important events, history and people of African descent. A good place to start reading on the subject of Black History is Wikipedia.

For 2 of the most popular dating sites which specialize in connecting black singles you can read our BlackPeopleMeet.com review and our BlackSingles.com review.

Facebook released a study of its members this past week, compiling data from user status updates to come to some pretty interesting conclusions. And if you're wondering, no - Facebook doesn't sit there and read your status updates. Rather, they query the words used and apply them to a program that figures in the US Gross National Happiness Index. A "happiness index?" Makes me feel like The Weather Channel app on my iPhone isn't giving me all the sunny information!

While some Facebook users choose to not disclose their relationship status, of those that do, 30% of women and 40% of men are listed as "single." This means that whether you realize it or not, your next match might be waiting for you on Facebook! And just think - it's only a year until the next Valentine's Day. You could be in a match made in heaven by then.

The Facebook data reaffirms what people have known all along: those in committed relationships are happier than those who are single. But what about relationships versus marriage? Well, the news is in: those who are married are apparently happier than those just in relationships, says Facebook. Even more interesting are those on Facebook who respond that they are in an "open relationship." While that may seen like a heyday on the surface, the data report reveals that those in open relationships aren't really all that happy at all. Men in these types of relationships are less happy than their female counterparts with the same designation. Perhaps that's a case of "be careful what you ask for."

If you've never considered Facebook as an online dating source, why not tap-into the information that Facebook has published and maybe take a look at Zoosk. This Facebook application allows users to interact with singles on other social networks like MySpace, Hi5, Zoosk.com and more. With over 7 million users, you could do worse in expanding your online dating reach no? Search and socialize - who knows who's out there waiting for you with a status message that "clicks!"

For more information on the statistics in this article, check out the Facebook Data Team's note on Relationships and Happiness.