A Quantitative Analysis of Online Dating

imjustatomato writes "Never before has something so human and primitive as dating been reducible to such discrete values. A study analyzes the data of an online dating service. When do you like someone like yourself? Among online dating members, "marital status" and "wants children" are the two most influential characteristics to match. Other interesting findings are: men initiate 73.3% of messages, but their initiations are 17.9% less likely to be reciprocated; 78.2% of messages are never responded to."

Comments

This surprises me not one bit.

[Anonymous Coward]

I think it's fair to say that there's a lot of factors at play here:

1. Communication. Email (and other text-based mediums) miss out on several communication cues. Tone of voice, body language, etc. are important to figure out exactly what is meant. I can write something and mean it in one way, but that doesn't mean the person at the other end will read it that way - they could just as easily (especially if they're having a bad day) cast it in a negative tone in their mind.
2. Expectations. Wouldn't surprise me in the slightest to find out that men (and women!) online are looking for the "perfect partner". Newsflash, people: there's no such thing. Everybody has their flaws. Doesn't matter who they are.
3. Appearances (which comes in with expectations, I suppose.) If you're not 'beautiful', you're evidently not worth knowing. Dig a little deeper, people. There's more to beauty than stick figures like you see in those fashion magazines ...

My experiences with online dating? I've met five, maybe six, people that way. One's a decent friend still. One, it's too early to tell (but my feeling is "nothing more than friendship".) The rest, I haven't seen much of beyond the early meetings.

All in all, my Quest for Non Single Status shall henceforth be conducted off the computer. Between the cost, the frustration of usually never getting a message back (I'd rather hear "thanks, but I don't think it'd work out" than never hear back at all - at least then it's a clean break), and generally getting out and about in the real world a bit more than when I was a teenager, I think I'll be much happier for it. Do I need somebody? Hell no. Do I want somebody? Yes. But I'd rather be single than with the wrong person.

my observation

[aliscool]

I recently spent two months on Match.com and by and am pleased with the end results... I am dating someone I met on there.
You really have a hard time weeding through the mass amounts of spam email (I realize you are looking for someone in Virginia, but Montana is only 6 hours away), the obvious scammers mostly with .ru email addresses. The old I need a visa and it costs 600 American dollars thing.
Also there are a fair amount of women that fall into the FREAK category.

I would disagree with this point made in the paper "Among online dating members, "marital status" and "wants children" are the two most influential characteristics to match."
From my limited experience on Match, I think the most important thing women were looking for was income range. I initially had that on my profile and got swamped with replies, after hiding that bit they slowed way down.

Re:Not quite surprised here

[CosmeticLobotamy]

If you'rea nerd you tend to look at things (everything) logically, if you take that approach to having children, there really is no logical reason to do so in this day and age.

If you can say that, then you can say there's no logical reason to have sex or play baseball or create wealth. Some people want kids, others don't. There's no logic there. There's logic in not having them if you can't afford them, but that's pretty much it, I think.

Re:Not quite surprised here

[Aris Katsaris]

If you take emotion out of the equation, then there's no point in doing anything at all, given how happiness and unhappiness, satisfaction and dissatisfaction, are all emotions. Being inert as a rock is logical when there's no boredom or other emotion to make you desire activity -- letting civilization collapse is as "logical" as the opposite, when there's no emotion that makes one desire its continuation. Logic is only a method used to achieve end goals you've already set; logic is absolutely meaningless without *emotion* first setting what those goals should be.

Re:RTFA?

[ObsessiveMathsFreak]

Anyhow, none of the numbers seem all that surprising, except that 55% of active members are women

No, no, no, no. We're talking about the internet here. You must add a qualifier. 55% of active members say that they're women.