Types (Niche)

Ever wanted to get inside the minds of thousands of daters to see what makes everyone tick? Maybe that seems cool, or maybe you’d rather sit in a dentist’s chair for five hours, but either way – it does make you curious.

So it’s no surprise that OkCupid Co-Founder Christian Rudder has decided to harness the power of OkCupid’s user data and create a book that piques our curiosity. After all, we all watched with fascination as the dating site’s blog OkTrends revealed its latest research, informing us of what types of people we are attracted to, we’re doing wrong in our online dating profiles, or how to effectively message other users. Rudder found interesting trends in the details, helping us ask questions we didn’t even know to ask. For instance, why does the angle of the camera matter in a photo, or how you smile? Why is it preferable to write a less descriptive profile? Why is it more attractive to have a guitar in your hand than a tennis racket, or possess an unusually-shaped nose than to be considered average-looking? Or the million-dollar question: what do people lie about the most when they are online dating?

OkCupid has given us the sometimes surprising preferences of online daters, based on all of the data they mine from their thousands of users. Because of the site’s format of creative questions and answers, it’s allowed them to dig deeper than most.

OkTrends has been on hiatus since 2011, when Rudder started taking the information to compile it into a book, rather than just posting the information for free on their website. Rudder’s new book is called Dataclysm: Who We Are (When We Think No One’s Looking), which comes out on Sept. 9 and examines interactions for insights into whom and how we date.

For one of Dataclysm’s studies, Rudder analyzed how men and women approach attraction. It turns out that as women get older, they like older men. Men, on the other hand, consistently prefer younger and younger women. Men will message women close to their own age, but only up to a point. For example, men in their mid-40s rarely talk to women older than 30. “We have a lot of serial daters on the site—men who just keep dating women 10 years younger than they are,” Rudder told Business Week in a recent interview. “Eventually their tactics start to fail, and the young ladies they’re messaging begin rejecting them. The result is a lot of 40-year-old men and women who find it hard to get a date.”

OkCupid isn’t worried about user backlash for mining their personal data. Rudder recently wrote a post to address this issue, pointing out that all websites experiment on users, admitting that OkCupid once tested its matchmaking algorithm by telling users who were not suited for each other that they were a near-perfect match. “We got maybe five complaints,” Rudder told Business Week.

Since OkCupid users don’t pay for the site or its advice, does Rudder have an audience willing to buy his book? We’ll have to wait and see.

Check out our review of OkCupid for more information on this popular dating site.

Do people tend to speak up more about issues facing our society because of social media? Does everyone’s voice get heard? If you were to look at any Facebook feed, you’d probably say it’s a great tool for discussing issues and stating opinions. It’s given many people a voice, and the ability to craft a thought and publicize it.

But a recent study by Pew Research points to something else – namely, that people have quite the opposite reaction when it comes to social media: they are afraid to share their views. There is a tendency of people not to speak up about policy issues in public—or among their family, friends, and work colleagues—when they believe their own point of view is not widely shared. This tendency is called the “spiral of silence.”

Social media has only deepened this tendency, at least as Pew researched human behavior pre-Internet compared to what is taking place now. Facebook and Twitter especially seem to advocate for those who hold minority opinions to use their platforms to voice them, but many users haven’t.

Pew conducted a survey of 1,801 adults, focusing on one important public issue that most Americans had heard about: the Edward Snowden revelation about government surveillance of Americans’ phone and email records. Pew says they chose this issue because Americans were divided about the issue - whether Snowden’s leaks to the media were justified or whether the surveillance policy itself was a good or bad idea.

The research firm surveyed people’s opinions about the leaks, their willingness to talk about the revelations in either in-person or online settings, and their perceptions of the views of other people, both online and offline.

It turns out, people were less willing to discuss the Snowden-NSA story over social media than they were in person, with 86% willing to discuss in person versus only 42% of Facebook and Twitter users who were willing to post about it on those platforms. In addition, in both personal and online settings, people were more willing to share their views if they thought their audience agreed with them. For example, those who felt their co-workers agreed with them were about three times more likely to say they’d join a workplace conversation about the Snowden situation.

It is similar with Facebook users – those who thought their friends would agree with them were also more likely to post their opinion about the issue, but those who weren’t sure were less likely. Facebook and Twitter users were also less likely to share their opinions in person with friends, say over dinner, if they felt that their Facebook friends didn’t agree with them.

Many people might decide that sharing political viewpoints over Facebook or Twitter might alienate friends or colleagues. This is also a reason why people refrain from sharing information that is too personal. Regardless, the Pew study shows that Americans may be a lot less willing than we assumed to share their true feelings over social media.

SNAP Interactive has made its online dating site Are You Interested (AYI) a priority, and it looks like it’s paying off. The company announced that AYI has become the number one grossing application in US Lifestyle category in the Apple iTunes Store as of August.

The company hit other big milestones, too. In July, its mobile apps contributed to the highest percentage of total logins ever, at 38%. New mobile subscription transactions were up 57% year-to-date compared to the same period in 2013, and total mobile logins were up 33% YTD compared to the same period in 2013.

AYI began as a Facebook-based online dating site, and has since expanded to its service to develop its mobile platform. SNAP said that it has put a huge focus on mobile in the past year, specifically improving the user experience for iPad, iPhone, and Android phones. The goal was to create a seamless cross-platform experience for everyone, no matter what device they were using.

Mobile has become a crucial part of the online dating market, and its numbers are only going up. Traditional online dating sites have been developing and marketing their mobile platforms for this reason – many daters want more ease and accessibility - and don’t want to have to sit in front of their laptops when they can use their phones to connect with potential dates. Popular apps like Tinder, Hinge and Grindr have also created a new market of younger daters who find dating via phone apps to be the most convenient way to meet people.

Snap's Chief Executive Officer Clifford Lerner commented, "Mobile is the primary platform for an increasingly large segment of online dating users, and we were determined to create an excellent experience on all mobile platforms to take a leadership position in the market.  We're excited to be the #1 Top Grossing application in the US Lifestyle category in the Apple iTunes store.  It shows that iPhone users have really embraced the AYI app and user experience we worked so hard on.  We believe mobile is an important engine of growth in the online dating industry, and we're pleased to be one of the leading providers of online dating applications."

Snap's Chief Operating Officer Alex Harrington added, "Mobile is not only strategically important, but also a very lucrative platform for the Company.  In July 2014, approximately 52% of our user acquisitions occurred on mobile platforms, which helped diversify marketing sources and increase marketing efficiency."

SNAP Interactive hasn’t mentioned any future development plans for AYI. For more on this dating service you can read our Are You Interested review.

For the single women reading, how many lewd messages have you received on OkCupid in the past month? How many guys have stalked you over Tinder? If you answer “too many” for either one, you might be ready for a new kind of dating app called Siren.

Siren is an alternative to the typical dating apps like Tinder, where many men swipe right to have more women in their cue - meaning, they play the numbers. They make the first move, often approaching women in a way that makes them feel pressured, uncomfortable, or just plain creeped out. It’s become a kind of risky game for some women, where they aren’t sure if they will meet someone and feel safe. If they don’t, the whole dating app experience becomes tainted.

Like with online dating, Tinder seems to give females the advantage over males, at least in terms of your chances for getting a date.

Many guys complain that women have it better in the dating world because women can choose who they want to date, while guys are left saying "yes" to every woman's profile they view online or on an app like Tinder, just to improve their chances of meeting someone. (Women tend to be more picky, and say "no" to most men, probably because so many men just swipe right to everyone.) While online dating does seem skewed, apparently some tech geniuses have decided to make the odds work in the guys' favor.

Instead of manually going through all the matches Tinder sends his way, one techie decided that he could automate responses. According to website ValleyWag, former Microsoft developer Yuri de Souza details "how he reverse engineered Tinder to mass-like every girl on the network." He was sitting around one Sunday afternoon mindlessly swiping right on all of his female matches, hoping that one would swipe right back, when the idea struck him.

" [I] recalled my friend telling me how he would spend hours swiping right on Tinder just to accumulate as may matches as possible," de Souza told ValleyWag. "This had me thinking, why can't I reverse engineer Tinder and automate the swipes? After all, I'm pretty darn good at taking things apart!"

He was successful, and went to share his idea with other guys, only to find he wasn't the only one or even the first to try to game the system.

While it seems counter-intuitive to accept matches that you don't even see in the hopes of having more choice in who you want to date, this is the thinking behind guys looking to game the dating app system. (An article in New York Magazine last year naming the most successful online daters included a guy who admitted to saying "yes" to all women on Tinder to improve his chances, so this might have inspired a lot of guys to follow his lead.)

Other tech-savvy users have created shortcuts and automation to help them (and other guys) avoid the challenging task of looking through so many women's profiles. It turns out, people aren't even willing to spend the time to look at photos anymore, let alone read words in a profile.

What does this mean for dating? While it's understandable that guys are frustrated with their lack of choice (and womens' general avoidance of swiping right unless a man really intrigues her), is reverse-engineering the best way to meet a woman? Maybe apps like Tinder, fun and game-like as they are, are not the best avenue for many people. Instead of casting a large net and hoping to catch someone - anyone - why not try to focus on what you want? If you're putting it out there that you can't seem to meet a woman, then likely creating an automated way to say yes to everyone on Tinder isn't going to improve your game.

Maybe it's time to try another site or app that is more conducive to your search. Better yet, try something more old-fashioned. How about you approach a woman in person and ask her out? That will make you stand out from the Tinder crowd.

For more on this dating app please read our Tinder review.

Ashley Madison, the infamous dating website that makes its revenue from matching married people looking for affairs, has now admitted to spying on its own users.

A recent study published by the company was gathered from emails the sites’ users sent to each other under what they assumed was a condition of anonymity. According to a recent article in Time Magazine, Eric Anderson, a professor at the University of Winchester in England who conducted the study, claims that “women who seek extra-marital affairs usually still love their husbands and are cheating instead of divorcing, because they need more passion.”

“It is very clear that our model of having sex and love with just one other person for life has failed— and it has failed massively,” Anderson tells Time.

As it turns out, Ashlay Madison seems to have commissioned this study to boost its membership numbers - that is, to prove that almost every person in a monogomous relationship is looking to cheat, (and therefore should join their website). But for those who join the site on a strict condition of anonymity because they don’t want their partners to find out, this study is a direct infringement on their right to privacy.

So Ashley Madison is now in a tricky spot. Has it alienated its members, since now they know their emails are no longer strictly confidential, but subject to studies and read by a third party? Perhaps it was in the fine print when they joined the site, as most dating sites collect user information for the purposes of research. But most don’t analyze individual emails being sent back and forth between individual users.

As Time Magazine also points out, because of the nature of the dating site, and the fact that most of its members are being dishonest or lying by the mere fact that they are using the site for an extramarital affair, it calls into question the integrity of the data itself. Who knows what is true and what isn’t in each email? Who can say that anyone on the site is honest in any email they send to another site user?

According to Anderson, his data “included profile information that the women supplied when they signed up for the site (information not made available to other Ashley Madison users),” as well as information other users could see. “We also acquired all private message conversations that [users] had with men on the website for one month,” Anderson told Time.

The results of the study are still somewhat questionable. Anderson claims that in our sexualized culture, married folks could feel as if they are missing out when they are only having sex with one partner.

While this might be true for the users of Ashley Madison, it doesn't mean that it's applicable to the majority of married couples in the U.S.