General News

OkTrends first online dating advice post was about the number of responses members of OkCupid see from first contact messages of different lengths (see Story). Their second advice article takes a look at what members should say in these messages to increase the likelihood of a response. OkCupid based it's data on over 500,000 first contact messages from their dating site. Here are a list of recommendations. Any statistic information given is based on the average reply rate of all messages of 32 percent.

1. Be Literate - Bad spelling, grammar and netspeak makes a terrible first impression. For example the average of messages who used words like "ya" only saw a reply rate of 7 percent. There are a few exceptions to the netspeak rule, most deal with showing emotion like "haha" or "lol".
2. Avoid Physical Compliments - This is the same for both genders. General comments like "cool" and "awesome" (38% reply rate) work well but physical comments will see a huge drop in replies. The average message with the word "beautiful" in it saw a drop in the rate of replies of 10%. The word "sexy" was even worse and saw a drop of 14% to only 18% of initial contact messages to ever see a reply.
3. Use an Unusual Greeting - A message with no traditional salutation saw a reply rate of 27%. Messages with the 3 top salutations of "hi", "hey" and "hello" all performed below average with "hi" doing the worse at 24%. The best response rate was with the salutation of "how's it going" with 54%.
4. Don’t try to take it Outside - Asking for email addresses, cell phone numbers or other off site communication in the first contact message saw all reply rates drop to almost 10%.
5. Bring up Specific Interests - Mentioning your specific interests or better yet, those of the person you are contacting, increases the chance of response to almost 50% in some cases.
6. If you’re a Guy, be Self-Effacing - Male message reply rates increased if they appeared unsure of themselves and used words like "sorry", "apologize", "awkward" and "probably". This is not true for women.
7. Consider Becoming an Atheist - Mentioning any religion helps increase the average response rate, but mentioning the fact that you are a "atheist" increased the response rate twice as much over the increase the leading religion of "Christian" saw. With the word "atheist" in your message, members saw a 42% response rate, "christian" saw a 36% response rate.

For more on this dating site, read our OkCupid reviews.

RewardingLove, a new online dating site with an exciting new matching system has launched, and they promise that they've resolved all the things that online daters complain about when it comes to dating. (And for a limited time, subscriptions are free so you can decide for yourself!)

I was able to sit down with the psychologist couple, the Drs. Bob & Alla Gordon, to discuss the site, its matching system, and what makes it different from everything else that's out there for singles. But first, here are the quick facts about the site:

ABOUT THE SITE

RewardingLove wants to be held to the highest standard by their members, so they're doing things to ensure their singles are treated well and given the best experience possible. To this end, they've eliminated some of the annoyances of other dating sites.

eHarmony in the United Kingdom launched in July 2008. It is just over a year later and they now have 400,000 members. For the first couple of months eHarmony was giving out free 90 day subscriptions to all new members (see Story), but beyond that they did not do a lot of marketing. According to Greg Waldorf, eHarmony's chief executive,

... last year's launch was deliberately "soft" so the company was not left in the awkward position of having lots of members of one sex signed-up without a sufficient number of the opposite sex to provide enough suitable matches.

For comparison, a competitor of eHarmony's in the United Kingdom, Match.com, has had 6.5 million singles signup as members since launch (a number of years ago).

Successful women like Loretta Talbot (a senior project manager at Wyeth), Sabina Ptacin (owner of two successful companies) and Sonia Sotomayor (Supreme Court Justice) all agree on one thing, being successful in your job and financially, is more of a handicap in the dating game. As men age and become more successful in their careers the opposite is true, their financial success is deemed a positive attribute and they become more desirable for women.

Women's work hours have increased steadily over the last 30 years, especially in the professional, technical and managerial positions. A 2004 Harvard study found that 17 percent of women working in these fields worked 50 hours or more a week. As women work more hours some things have to give and it usually is dating and romantic relationships.

Successful women also tend to be more assertive and decisive, traits that a lot of men are turned off by. This means successful women usually find themselves acting more submissive on a date than they normally would be in everyday life. In most social dating situations it is expected that the man will ask the woman out, pick the location of the date, and pick what wine is best for dinner.

A lot of successful women are now turning to online dating to find a compatible partner. In the last 2 years, the online dating service eHarmony has seen a 85 percent increase in women members who earn over $125,000 a year. Matchmakers and one on one dating coaches who can charge $50,000 or more have seen their revenue increase 8 percent since 2005 to around $260 million a year, with a lot of this business coming from successful women. The total dating industry annually earns $1.8 billion, according to Marketdata Enterprises.

For more on this story, read Forbes Woman. To find out why eHarmony is attracting so many successful women, read our review of eHarmony.

Touch and date - that's the way with the iPhone! Online dating has made the process of getting out and meeting new people easier than ever before. But dare we say the iPhone has made dating even easier? There are enough iPhone dating apps to fill a bucket and have it runneth over, but to help you save time, we've gone through the best of the best and made this short list for you to review. Some of the apps are free, some are affiliated with major online dating sites. Whatever your preference, use the following list to your advantage. Spend less time searching and more time meeting!

Match.com iPhone App
Designed to work hand-in-hand with your Match.com online dating account, this app is not only FREE, but it's very intuitive to use. While you cannot view all of the information you would generally view if you logged in on your computer, you can see pictures, read profiles, wink, save favorites and send messages. The interface is well-designed and they've recently added a new feature where you can search for other members of Match.com who are nearby and send them a message! Other cool features are the ability to take photos with your iPhone and instantly upload them to your Match.com profile and edit your profile information on the fly.

It looks like eHarmony has topped the 30 million member mark (unofficially). According to the Unofficial eHarmony Blog and their super sneaky technique of finding the total membership count, this milestone happened on September 10, 2009. To find out for yourself where eHarmony is at, you just have to check the JavaScript source code of the membership page.

To find out more about this dating service, check out our eHarmony reviews.