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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."
I had mostly positive experiences with online dating after my divorce. I met several women, some were romantic friends, some were regular friends and one just didn't work out at all.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
I always thought discrimination against religion and smoking were bidirectional. Religious people are more likely to not want to date non-religious types, than the other way around. Non-smokers will prefer to date non-smokers, but I doubt smokers have much of a preference. It would be interesting to see if there are characteristics that work in the opposite manner. Opposites attract, don't they? Guess not
I cannot believe geographical distance wasn't a factor. Who is going to date someone a two hours drive away? Then again, ignoring this probably helped in making the number of messages sent the best predictor for number of messages received, giving more false hope to quicktyping nerds. Bet the author was one.
blow your mind already
I disagree that online dating "is an easy, socially acceptable way to find partners for dates or relationships." The "stigma of desperation," as it is described in one of these papers, is still strong.
> none of the numbers seem all that surprising, except that 55% of active members are women
> (63% of all members were men).
"Members" are anyone who'se ever signed on for an account and not deleted it. They keep the numbers looking good by continuing to carry these. Not surprising, ISPs have done this for a long time. Men don't remain active members because they get so little response (ref. the original paper).
Women remain active more because they tend to keep coming back to the chat rooms, mostly with other women. They hang around just in case a guy comes along to try to chat with them. Then they'll all play hot chat with him, and afterwards fail to respond to him at about the same rate as in email.
I've been doing some research of my own. But I don't see anything surprising enough about it that makes it worth writing about. It's the same sort of behaviors I've seen since the time when BBSs started gaining general public members, prior to the spread of internet connection turning them into ISPs. I'm not surprised by the fact the article is new and the paper is 2 years old. I'm surprised that someone bothered to write a paper about something that's been going on for 15 years. On the other hand, it was a master's thesis. Very few academics care what master's students write about as long as the research is done halfway decent.
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
Did they confine their research to just Match.com? Because my experience with the greedy Match.com was poor. If you haven't paid, not only can you not send messages, you can't read messages others send to you. Even if those others have paid, you can't read their messages. When I was a paying member, I got one genuine unsolicited message which was from a woman who seemed nice but was more than twice my weight, and one genuine reply which was, sadly, negative. The rest of the messages I got were spams and scams. I wasn't doing as well as a 10% response rate, let alone the even higher numbers this research claims. Possibly it's because I refused to put down an income range. After I quit paying, I was still getting notices whenever someone sent me a message, but no info on who sent it or what the message was. A wink at least mentioned who. Damned if I was going to pay more just to find out it was another scam message. Now I think Match.com's lousy policies had a lot to do with the low response rate. It's not that all the women really were that rude, or swamped, it's that Match.com stinks. I get much better response rates on okcupid.
Intellectual Property is a monopolistic, selfish, and defective concept. It is "tyranny over the mind of man"
I've had much success with "internet dating", but it seems to depend on where I live. When I lived in Houston the girls were plentiful and fun. Living in Des Moines is a completely different story. The only ones I get replies from here are trollish freaks that probably couldn't get a date if they didn't post fake pictures of some model, or at least some hot chick from down the street. I'm still amazed at the enormous differences in both quality and quantity of women from the online world between the two cities.
You're nothing; like me.
Even if those others have paid, you can't read their messages.
I wonder if that was made clear to paying members, before you send them. Or before you join.
I was similarly disappointed when I tried out the system of eHarmony a year ago. I could understand not being able to initiate communications until becoming a paying member, but I was very surprised that I couldn't communicate back. Someone who could initiate with me would have to be a paying member. But to me this lessens the value of membership. Esp. if they aren't told when someone they're being matched up with isn't currently a member and as such cannot respond. Otherwise they're partly paying for the privilege of being tricked into helping the site recruit more members.
Attention zealots and haters: 00100 00100
I am just completing a research phd, and beleive me, it was very hard indeed.
The idea of doing a phd that had involved just learning the current state of the art didn't appeal at first, but they get you educated to the required level, and they're easier.
Doing original work is painful, stessful, and frankly scares the shit out of you at times. I'm lucky (well, I worked my ass off), I managed to acheive my stated goals. A 'book report' thesis, as you describe it is still hard, but you at least know it can be finished if you work hard enough.
I can certainly see why people do them. It has another huge advantage over research as well. My knowledge covers a very small domain at the moment, albeit to a very high level. I've now got to 'prove' that I can do other things because of acheiving so much in my current field, which is a problem I hadn't considered. A student who doesn't do original research doesn't have that problem to such an extent.
Whichever type you do, you still need to conduct research afterwards to stay current. After a while it all levels out.
Yup.
I've found success/insanity on okcupid as well.
She's a hairdresser, runs ubuntu, and is getting FiOS installed next week. She also doesn't care that I work insane hours, have an on-call schedule, am in CA a few weeks a month, and tend to be antisocial to just about everyone.
She even had t-shirts from thinkgeek from before we started dating.
Unfortunately, before her, I met a total whack job who after getting in a nasty fight with, threw razor blades at me while I was asleep (to prevent her from cutting herself, so she says).
YMMV.
I disable sigs...do you?
Between the cost, the frustration of usually never getting a message back...
On the dating sites I've been on, women definitely have the advantage here. I have never had to pay for an account, because I get enough interesting guys contacting me. I try to reply to every guy, including when it's negative. I think a lot of people don't delete their accounts after they're done and that could cause a lot of non-replies. It can be a pain though if you find someone, delete your account, then break-up and have to re-enter all your info into a new account. Some dating sites have an option where you can keep your account but just turn off your profile, which is nice.
"Dating" is a US anti-sex custom related to the introduction of the box-on-wheels y'all love so much. That custom is, sadly, also spreading with americanized culture. Fortunately, it is under attack in the US itself, and will hopefully die shortly.
Doubting the existence of evolution is like doubting the existence of China: It just shows that you're uninformed.
Having done online dating in the past my top criteria was religion - not what religion they were following per se, but what religion they were looking for. "Catholics seeking Catholics" seemed to be the most common requirment in my area on match.com. As someone who is Jewish, albeit barely practicing, I was forced to skip these profiles over. What really irked me were profiles seeking a "Christian, Muslim, Taoist, Atheist" etc. and they had to go out of their way to de-select the option of dating someone who was Jewish, rather than just select "All religions"
In all seriousness, True is a huge scam as a quick google will reveal. In fact, the only reason it is profitable is that it made money before all the bad reviews came out, and dumped it all into its MASSIVE online advertising budget. I'm seriously wondering how they are not under criminal investigations for fraud at this point. Any class actions against them yet?
I recommend all the geeks here try OkCupid. Its totally free, and your match percentage increases with the number of personality tests you take. And the best part is you can create your own tests for others to take. The one problem with it I encountered is that as I took more and more tests, and my pool of women I would supposedly like narrowed, I got to a point where the women in my area who were "matches" were either not of the sort I am attracted to, had other characteristics I did not want, or were absolutely great looking on paper except for already being in relationships. Seems a lot of non-single types hang out on there. But definitely worth a shot as its free.
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I'm still surprised that no one has caught on to the fact that of the top 10 dating sites right now, at least 4 of them employ the use of fake profiles and even pay employees to chat with their members in order to get them to pay for premium membership. I know, because i've seen it happening first hand.. why doesn't anyone catch on to this?
Ever recieve a flirt/wink from another rather attractive member, only to find he/she doesn't reply back when you message them? Or how about receiving large numbers of flirts/winks in a very short period of time when your member profile contains close to no information?
Do a test yourself. go to www.mate1.com, make a profile, but profile no personal infomation about yourself. wait a week and see what happens. odds are you'll be messaged by about 15 people who are all supposedly interested in you.
MABASPLOOM!
I can't speak for all dating sites, but I can tell you that at Match & yahoo there are no official fake profiles. But you have uncovered the real dirty secret of online dating: scammers. People in russia, nigeria etc create fake profiles with stolen credit cards. These profiles tend to be too good to be true, they then wink a lot of people (not too many, the sites look for this). When they hook someone they basically run the 419 scam on them. They chat enough to convince the guy they are legit, then spring some sort of old fashion advanced payment routine, often its money for a plane ticket.
The "disappearing good profiles" are caused by these scammers. The scammers do you what you noticed, they post a profile that is too good to be true and then start winking. Its not a lure to get you signed up for the site. The profiles disappear because they've been deleted by admins. It isn't a conspiracy to get your money I PROMISE.
Sig removed because it was obnoxious
Wow. MatchMaker.com gave like 3 weeks free with full access (if you uploaded a picture). And I found that 3 weeks was about the amount of time that it took to go through all the women in my area (20 mile radius). So I didn't have to pay. I just used up my 3 weeks. If I wasn't dating anyone a couple months later, I created a new account and gave it another go. I did have a problem with few responses per message sent, but I think that is pretty common for men everywhere. I'd say the ratio was about 1:7.
But that was 6 years ago (I married someone from the site). I'm not sure what matchmaker.com is like now. I'm sure they got tired of people like me taking advantage and tightened things up.
-matthew
"THERE IS NO JUSTICE, THERE IS ONLY ME." -Death