Statistics

Here are some dating statistics from the POF Blog. I believe these numbers are for 2011 and just concern the United States.

• There are 54 million singles
• Of those 10 percent (5.5 million) are currently using a dating service
• 2.6 million pay for the service leaving 2.9 million that do not.
• Overall 8.8 million have tried online dating

According to the US Census in 2009 there were 95.9 million unmarried people in the US. So I guess about 40 percent of those must be in some sort of common law relationship and just have not married. I believe that the 10 percent figure of people who use dating sites probably has not changed much over the last 5 years. The trick now for dating sites is to get the other 49 million to try online dating.

What effects does Facebook have on our romantic lives?

Online Dating University set out to find the answer, and produced a colorful infographic that shows us exactly what happens to our relationships when we live in public. Check it out here, via All Facebook.

Some interesting facts include:

• Approximately 60% of all Facebook users report a relationship status on their profile.
• The United States, South Africa, Iceland, the UK, and Canada are the five countries with the highest percentage of users reporting a relationship status.
• The average percentage of single Facebook users, by country, is 39%.
• Jordan is home to the largest percentage of Facebook users who list themselves as single on the site.
• The highest percentage of Facebook users who state that they're in a relationship of any kind (from "it's complicated" to "married") reside in Finland.
• Ghana has the greatest percentage of single male Facebook users, but women make up a greater percentage of Facebook's user base at large.
• As of December 2010, women outnumbered men on the site at a rate of 1.28 to 1.

2010, as it turns out, might not have been a great year for relationships. 37% of Facebook users changed their relationship status to "single" during the year, and 3% found themselves in relationships that were "complicated." 24% listed themselves as "in a relationship," while 5% became "engaged" and 31% were "married."

According to the infographic, documenting your love life on Facebook can have the following effects:

1. Overanalyzing. When you spend too much time on Facebook, you run the risk of becoming intensely aware of the activity on your love interest's profile. Over analyzing everything you see him or her post is likely to lead to feelings of insecurity.
2. Oversharing. What happens if you change your relationship status on Facebook but your partner doesn't? Publically recording every detail of your relationship can lead to unwanted confrontations and awkward moments, as well as public heartbreak if the relationship ends. Plus, future partners might not appreciate being privy to every detail of your past love affairs.
3. Unhealthy concern with the remarks of others. It's easy to become excessively concerned with the comments left by other people, and equally as easy to misinterpret harmless comments as competition. Unwarranted jealousy is a side effect of social networking for many Facebook users.
4. Constant reminders of lost love. Break ups are challenging at the best of times, but the access Facebook provides to your ex, and the constant reminders of his or her new life without you, makes the end of a relationship even more difficult.

How do you deal with these problems? Continue to Part II for Online Dating University's suggestions.

To find out more on how to use this social network as an online dating tool please read our review of Facebook.com.

A dating site for singles 50-plus called OurTime.com was launched the other day by People Media. People Media is owned by IAC which also owns the popular dating services Match.com and Chemistry.

OurTime.com launched with over 1 million profiles in its database. These profiles were gathered from some of IAC's existing dating sites that had singles which matched a number of criteria, including being over the age of 50. Combining all of these profiles into one dating site makes OurTime.com one of the larger services online to cater this niche.

Singles visiting OurTime.com can expect the members to be more interested in long-term relationships and companionship rather than marriage. Members tend also to be more traditional in their thinking and much happier with their personal lives when compared to someone younger.

For more on this story you can read the press release. At the moment we do not have a review of OurTime.com but for a similar dating service you should check out our Senior People Meet review.

Update: Our new review of OurTime.com is now available online.

Do all races prefer to date within their own ethnic group? And what does that mean for the dating world?

OkCupid's research into the racial bias and racial composition of its members found that white members of the online dating site prefer to message other white users. This preference might be intentional, or it might not. It might be caused by a racial bias - conscious or unconscious - or be a result of the fact that white members outnumber users of other ethnic backgrounds on the site. One thing, however, is clear from OkCupid's research: "Given equal choice, every race strongly prefers itself." The data looks like this:

Preference For Own Race vs. Random Individual Of Another Race

• Whites: 2.9x
• Blacks: 4.3x
• Latinos: 4.2x
• Asians: 11.5x

White members actually prefer themselves the least, in comparison to other ethnic groups, but they represent such a large percentage of the online dating population that it's impossible for white users to avoid connecting with other white users unless they are content with dating pools that are much, much smaller.

To see what would happen if circumstances were different, if another race outnumbered whites 19:1, the OkCupid team ran a simulation in which Asians were the dominant group, and all other users were in the minority. Under those circumstances, Asian users would send messages to other Asian users 98% percent of the time, and would also be the most popular message recipients for users of all other ethnic backgrounds (White senders: 74%, Latino senders: 71%, Black senders: 66%). Insularity, according to OkCupid's findings, is common across all cultures.

This insularity, Christian Rudder notes, becomes especially clear when you take a look at cities with larger non-white user bases. As their numbers increase, members of minority populations tend to become increasingly inward-looking. In the 150 cities with the most black users, black members send 2.5% more messages to each other for every 1% increase in the black population. In Baltimore, for instance, 1 out of every 5 users is black, but half of the messages from black users are sent to other black users - a rate that is more than twice what would be expected.

The hypothetical scenarios Rudder and OkCupid created for this experiment will not be hypothetical for much longer, and soon much of this data is likely to become reality. According to the Census Bureau, white people will no longer be the majority in the United States by approximately the year 2050, although that projection doesn't necessarily mean we have a post-racial future to look forward to. Even with increased equality amongst races, OkCupid's research indicates that "people still like to date someone who looks like they do," so that "even when white people aren't the majority, society will be as divided as ever."

When we left off, Christian Rudder and the OkCupid research team were tackling a unique question: What if there weren't so many white people?

The online dating world - and, in fact, the Internet at large - is dominated by white users, who make up the largest percentage of both OkCupid members (74%) and message recipients on the site (89%). After gathering and analyzing data based on 82 million messages sent on OkCupid, the researchers rearranged their findings to create an artificial environment in which the online dating world was not dominated by white members. The numbers of average monthly messages received, per person, changed across the board:

• For white members the number decreased, though not significantly.
• For Latinos, the number increased and surpassed the number for whites.
• For Asians the number skyrocketed, placing them ahead of all other ethnic groups when it came to the number of messages received per month.
• For black members the number also increased, though not quite enough to overtake the users of other ethnic backgrounds.

Age played a role, but a relatively minor one. Asians proved to be the most popular users regardless of the age of the message senders, receiving at least 30% - but often more - of the messages on OkCupid. Latinos also maintained a consistent level of popularity, hovering around 25% for all users aged 18-50. White members saw a decrease in popularity as senders aged, beginning at 25% for 18 year old users and steadily dropping to 15% for 50 year old users. The popularity of black members, in contrast, rose as senders aged.

Next, Rudder put together a fascinating chart that must be experienced to really be understood. The graph, called "Who People Are Messaging" takes a look at the relationship between "racial bias" and "racial composition." Each factor can be adjusted to show what the graph would look like under current conditions, as well as how the chart changes when racial bias no longer exists and racial composition is equal. Rudder also breaks the results down into graphs based on messaging preferences by age, in a racially-balanced world.

But as interesting as graphs, charts, and numbers can be, eventually we have to get back to reality and ask: What does all of this look like in the real world?

"The kind of messaging imbalance that currently exists has observable effects on how people think about race and dating," writes Rudder. "Search for 'interracial couple' on a stock photo site: you'll find a rainbow of Asians, Latinos, Blacks, and Indians, all hanging out with their white significant others." And if you enter "Why do ______ [insert non-white race of your choice here] women like..." into Google, it autocompletes with "white men."

Despite OkCupid's findings indicating that Asians are the most desired racial group in the country, white members are still dominating online dating sites simply because there is a greater number of them, and they seem to prefer to date within their ethnic group...which brings up the question for next time: Do all races prefer to date within their own ethnic group? And what does that mean for the dating world?

The OkTrends blog has already taken a look at "How Your Race Affects The Messages You Get" and "The REAL 'Stuff White People Like,'" and now the OkCupid research team is at it again, this time taking on the subject of race by examining race relations in America and asking the question: What if there weren't so many white people?

"Since most thinking about race hinges on the fact that one particular race predominates," writes Christian Rudder, "what if, using statistical models, you could make that predominance disappear?" Currently, white members receive more messages than non-white members on OkCupid, though it is unclear if this is an indication of their "popularity" or their population. If the world - or at least the users of OkCupid - were more racially balanced, would that statistic change?

To find out, OkCupid ran a study based on 82 million messages sent by members over the course of the last few months. The researchers found that OkCupid is actually less white than the rest of the Internet in America, but they were unable to make direct group-to-group comparisons because Quantcast, the media measurement service that provides their demographics, doesn't provide multiracial data. White members made up 74% of the OkCupid population, followed by:

Other: 13%

Latino: 5%

Black/Asian: 4% each (a tie)

White members also received the vast - and I mean vast - majority of messages sent on the site (a gigantic 89%!). In fact, white members were the most popular message recipients regardless of the senders' ethnicity.

After gathering the basic data, the OkCupid team experimented with their findings, using Asian users as an example. They found that Asian members sent 3 times as many messages to white members as they did to other Asian people. The breakdown:

White: 71%

Asian: 23%

Latino: 5%

Black: 2%

Taking into account the fact that white members outnumber Asian members 19:1, however, the findings can be viewed differently. Rudder rearranges all the ratios from the study and, via a little math wizardry, comes to the conclusion that, if there were an equal number of Asian people and white people on the site, Asian users would actually overwhelmingly prefer to message other Asians. In a world in which the population was not dominated by white folks, in which every user had a completely equal chose, the average number of monthly messages each ethnic group received would be very different.

...but you'll have to tune in next time to find out the details!