General News

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.

At the beginning of this month it looks like one of the leading dating sites for big and beautiful singles, BBWPersonalsPlus.com changed their name and domain to MoreToLove.com. The main reason given for the name change is the owners Spark Networks, wanted to show that the dating site is not just about your body type. There are no new site upgrades or features that accompany this name change.

The first thing I thought of with the new name is that it is the same name as Fox's TV show which is a dating competition similar to "The Bachelor". On Fox's "More To Love", real plus sized women are trying to win the love of a regular guy. While the TV Show and the dating site are not owned by the same company or affiliated in anyway (as far as I know) I am sure Spark Networks is hoping for an increase in traffic whenever a season of the Fox TV show is on.

For more information on this dating site, read our More To Love review (which will soon be updated to reflect the new name change).

Facebook has a neat idea, The United States Gross National Happiness index.

It works by taking peoples status updates everyday and grouping them together to measure how happy or satisfied everyone is. This automated process (which removes all identities) looks for positive and negative keywords to determine how happy someone is. Here is a sample that looks back 6 months:



A quick look at the graph over the past year shows huge spikes on holidays when people are most happy. Christmas, then Thanksgiving and then Easter are the leading days when the most people are happy. On a weekly trend, obviously most people are the happiest on Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Mondays definitely are when people have the most negativity in their Facebook status updates.

For the full interactive graph, visit Facebook.

The Yahoo marketing department must of reviewed Yahoo Personals lately. There are no real graphic changes but the wording has been updated on the homepage. The first thing I notice was the new page title. A few months ago it was:

Find Singles with the Top Online Dating Site -- Yahoo! Personals

Short and sweet, with the dating site name at the end. This wouldn't have been my first choice but let's see if the new one is any better:

Canadian singles will be celebrating Thanksgiving this weekend and that can only mean one thing... 😉

eHarmony Canada is having a Free Communication Weekend! This means all members will be able to not only review matches for free but they can communicate with them as well. Trying out eHarmony.ca to be matched and talk to members has never been easier.

The last free weekend for eHarmony Canada members was held the Labour Day long weekend in September (see Story).

If you would like more information on this matchmaking service, check out our eHarmony review. User reviews and ratings of eHarmony are also available on this page.

The Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis found that from December 2007 till June 2009, employment of married people fell 3.1 percentage points, while people who are single, employment fell 4.8 percentage points. By August of this year the jobless rate for singles was 13.5 percent while married people was at 6.3 percent.

Experts explain that there are several factors that support the difference in the unemployment rate. Single people tend to have less work experience and education than married people. These traits are more valued to employers during a recession. Someone who is also married will more likely take a lower paid job to support their family than someone who is single and thinks the job is beneath them. Single men and women are also able to move back to their parents home more easily to save on rent if things become tight due to lack of employment.