Online Dating

The New York Times seems to be covering a number of dating topics recently. In this article they looked at the marketing of the science behind online dating. A professor of psychology, Jeffrey Lohr is quoted several times in the article. He released a research paper recently which looked into some of the claims from the more popular dating sites (see Story). In summary of his research, Professor Lohr stated:

It seems to me that everybody is marketing their product far beyond the available evidence. There is none to very little effectiveness in the matching process.

The one person he did have praise for is Dr. Helen Fisher of the anthropology department at Rutgers. She helped Chemistry.com create their profile questions and matching system. Dr. Fisher based her work for Chemistry on her own published and peer reviewed research about how love and matchmaking works. Unlike Chemistry, most dating sites have very little science that has been published to back up the claims of their service and matchmaking system.

People Media's CEO Josh Meyers and VP of Marketing Ron Worthy attended the Beverly Hills iDate 2009 conference recently and answered a few questions regarding their company's dating services. Some of these questions included:

• The importance of the iDate conference?
• What are the latest online dating trends?
• How is safety maintained on your dating sites?

In their answers Josh and Ron referred to how People Media's group of dating sites have seen a 55 percent increase in unique visitors when compared to last year. They also talked a bit about BlackPeopleMeet (BPM) and how The Steve Harvey morning radio show partnership came about. When asked about how they maintain safety on their dating sites, they made a comparison to how a dance club would work. Like a club, they look at a number of factors right from the start when members signup, and the monitoring continues while they are using the site. If anything misleading is detected then the account is closed. They also rely on other members as well to report potential scammers.

I have oodles and oodles of files of horrible online dating pictures that I use as examples for my clients. Let’s say I’ve seen every mistake in the book. Of course, this is great news for you because you don’t have to make those mistakes now! Here are things to avoid in your online dating profile pictures:

1) Old pictures. If you are 5 years older or 10+ pounds heavier/lighter now, you need new pictures. Nobody wants a “surprise!” on a date when the person they meet doesn’t match the person they thought they found attractive online.

2) Fuzzy pictures. Get a good camera and be sure your photos are clear.

3) Webcam pictures. I don’t care how state of the art your webcam is, it does not take good pictures. The colors are washed out and the lighting is awful.

A news website from Ontario, Canada published an article about a couple of peoples experiences on a some of the more popular dating sites. The ChristianCafe received positive praise from an online dater named Peter. He met his wife Helga, through the Christian dating service back in February of 2008. They have been happily married now for 3 months.

In early 2008 Peter lived in Ontario and Helga lived in Alberta. Peter was keeping his searches for a partner limited to the province of Ontario, though Helga was searching in neighboring provinces. Helga first contacted Peter via instant message. After a few emails and phone conversations they both realized the other person was special. In the beginning, everyday Peter would log into ChristianCafe to read Helga's messages. After about a month, Peter flew to Edmonton to meet Helga in person for the first time, at a local cafe. Things went well with Peter and Helga for the couple of days that he visited and it became a regular occurrence for Peter to fly to Edmonton. In April of 2009, Peter married Helga and they decided to stay in Edmonton.

For more on the story, read Northern Life and to find out what makes this dating site a great place for singles, read our review of ChristianCafe.com.

In Taiwan at the National Sun Yat-Sen University, a new study has found that when online daters are presented with more choices in matches, they have less of a chance in finding love. The study calls it cognitive overload, since singles made poorer decisions in partner choices, when presented with a larger list of suitors. The researchers found, the longer the list of potential partners, the less selective a person became and the less time they actually spent evaluating each dating profile.

For more on the story, read the New York Daily News.

Listen up, guys. Even though you’re going to be doing most of the legwork when it comes to online dating, you still need to have an awesome dating profile to convince those ladies to write you a return email!

Here are the biggest mistakes men make and how to avoid them:

1) Horrible pictures.

I’ll go into this in depth in another article. The short version? Smile. Keep your shirt on. Don’t post pictures of yourself drinking or in the middle of a gaggle of women (or worse, strippers). Post the types of pictures you wouldn’t mind your grandmother seeing. Nice, clean, respectable, a little fun, but nothing crazy.

2) Not long enough.

Size matters, guys. If your dating profile just makes the minimum character length to be accepted into the system, it doesn’t say enough about you to make a woman interested in getting to know you better.