Comparing the online dating services

I hope some of my previous posts over the last few weeks have piqued your interest in online dating.  Today I’ll explore some comparisons between the major dating services. 

These can be broken down into two major categories: 1) those that match you with other people and let each of you know about the match, and 2) those where you can browse and contact people you’re interested in.  EHarmony, Chemistry (a service owned by Match.com), and Perfect Match are examples of the first kind, and Match.com and Yahoo Personals are examples of the second kind (although I understand that Perfect Match has recently added a browsing option as well).

So which to choose?  A lot of people are members of several services.  I think this makes a lot of sense.  The cost isn’t that big an obstacle to most people, and I think the potential reward is worth the added cost.

First let me point out that EHarmony is a bit different than the other services.  First a practical matter.  The EHarmony personality inventory has hundreds of questions and will take hours to complete.  If this deters you, choose another service.  But if their methodology works, it’s a great investment of time.  After all, in the time you can spend on one bad date you can complete this inventory.

EHarmony bases its matches on theories it developed from observations of couples married for a long time.  Many people have logged on to EHarmony for the first time and been aghast at the matches they were sent.  This is because EHarmony purports to match purely on such things as personality and temperment.  Appearance, style, and similar things do not enter into their matching. 

It’s your job to select for those things.  And is it really that hard to log on, go through a few profiles and either click the delete button or the button that indicates you’re interested?   

Another interesting thing about EHarmony is that it is the only major online dating service that has more female members than male members.  This is a major attraction for guys who are tired of writing emails to girls on Match.com and Yahoo Personals and getting few replies. 

No one outside the EHarmony service actually knows if its methodology works.  They won’t divulge their methodology and they selectively release their results, which makes it impossible to evaluate.  But I suspect one thing is true about EHarmony members: if they go to all the trouble of completing the personality inventory and paying the fairly hefty fee, they’re likely to be very interested in a relationship.  They’re not likely to have created a profile on a whim.

This is not true with quite a few people who create profiles on other services.  You don’t have to pay to post a profile on Match.com or Yahoo Personals.  I’ve known quite a few women who created profiles and didn’t pay to join.  They can generally engage in very limited contact with people who contact them.  For example, on Yahoo Personals, nonmembers could use the flirty little one-liners, but couldn’t send messages.  This meant that another member might send them an email and they could reply only with a one-liner, which was not responsive to the email.  After awhile I became aware of this and sent my phone number to the nonmembers. 

This is especially annoying to guys because many women I’ve known adamantly refused to pay for a real membership.  Since they were hot women, lots of guys contacted them, but few got through.  Hmmm, this may have been a good thing, since I got through.

The major disadvantage of the systems that send you matches is volume.  You might get one match a month up to several a day.  But with the services that allow browsing, you can look at as many profiles and send as many messages as you would like.

I’ve noted a major annoyance with online dating: sending lots of emails and getting few replies.  I suspect that guys will have a far better response from the sites that send you matches rather than the sites that allow only browsing.  This is because of simple applied psychology: if an attractive woman on Match.com receives 2,000 emails a year (and I’m not making up this number), while an attractive woman on EHarmony receives 500 matches a year, only 400 of whom indicate an interest in her, she’ll be more likely to really look at those 400.  If you’re one of 2,000 emails a girl receives, your profile has to immediately show big value to the girl for her not to just delete it.

Elizabeth Wasserman wrote a good article in The Atlantic magazine about online dating.  Here’s the link:

http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200602u/online-dating

I’ll continue this comparison of online dating services later this week.

A Few More Thoughts On Online Dating

Her is another installment in my series on online dating.  First, why do people do it?  Efficiency.  You can contact way more single people spending two hours on dating sites than you can by going to a bar to meet them.  Plus, you can drill down to get someone with characteristics that are closer to what you would like. 

Female friends of mine complain that 1) online dating takes a lot of time, and 2) they meet a lot of undesireables.  As to the first objection, every kind of dating/meeting people takes a lot of time.  If you have very little time available go to a speed dating event.  But these events aren’t as common, outside the very biggest cities. 

As for the second objection, meeting a lot of undesireable guys, my friends have a point.  If they’re at a bar they see the guys and can just give the undesireable ones the cold shoulder, but some manage to slip through online.  They might lie about their height or articulateness.   Or their less-than-stellar grooming might not come through in their online pic. 

But the women can just set up brief “coffee meetings” to evaluate the guys.  I blogged several days about about these meetings and how much they resembled job interviews.

And in any event, the drawbacks of online dating are vastly outweighed by its benefits.   There is no other place where you can inspect so many people, and drill down for exactly what you want.  If the woman wants a 6′2″ guy with an athletic build, brown hair, blue eyes, and who works in a particular field, and who makes above a certain threshold of income, she can search and turn some of these guys up in minutes.

My next installment on online dating will come next week.

Online Dating Is Like Applying For A Job

Some time ago it occurred to me that online dating was very much like applying for a job.  You create a profile in an attempt to sell yourself.  Your profile is like your resume.  You proofread your profile to make absolutely sure it conveys the best impression possible and contains no misspellings or typos.  Potential dates, like potential employers, will discard it if it contains any errors.

The next step is sending an email to potential dates.  You look at their profile and write an email that you hope will catch their interest and cause them to read your profile.  This email serves the same purpose as a cover letter that goes with your resume.  Your goal in writing the cover letter is to catch the employer’s interest and make him read  your resume.

Your next goal is to get a return email.  If things go well with the potential match, you will get to talk by phone.  This is like a telephone interview for a job.  It enables the interviewer to decide whether he wants to bring you in for a face-to-face interview.  In some cases potential dates insert a further level of review: the extended instant message interview.  This enables them to dispense with some people without expending the time for an actual meeting.

If this goes well, you get the all-important meeting with the date.  This is usually a half hour at the coffee shop.  At this meeting, which is very much like a job interview, you need to sell  yourself and convince the person that you are a good candidate, deserving of further consideration. 

You might get a second date, an evening date at a restaurant.  This corresponds to a call-back interview for a job.  This gives you another chance to demonstrate your suitability.  But instead of the experience, skills, and aptitude you need to show an potential employer, you must show your date a much broader array of things to convince her you are suitable.  She already knows from your profile your height, income, race, hair color, religion, smoking and drinking habits, and lots of other information about you. But now you must show her that you want the same things in life that she does, that you are compatible, that you have the level of ambition she considers suitable, etc.  Plus, you have to excite her. 

At this point about the only thing the job interview has that the dating process lacks is a list of references.  And I don’t think the day is too far off when women will want guys to submit a list of three references from girls you have previously dated. 

This process concludes by your getting the job (date) or not.  And even here there are similarities in letting you know the decision.  The polite employer will send you a letter indicating he is not hiring you.   Of course, lots of employers just don’t bother with this step.  Similarly, some dates send you a cordial email saying they don’t think the two of you are a good match.  But most just don’t pick up the phone when you call and don’t return your call.

And there’s another way that online dating is like applying for a job.  It takes a long time and it’s a great deal of work.  In fact, several job search experts tell us that looking for a job is like a part-time job itself.

Online dating: money, job, and education make a big difference

Well, money, job and education make a difference for women.  Not so much for guys. 

Last week I wrote my second installment in a series about online dating.  This series is based on material I found in an excellent research project addressing online dating.  This project looked at preferences of Match.com members in the San Diego and Boston areas.  The researchers were able to take a deep dive into Match.com’s computers in order to see what qualities men and women were attracted to, who they looked at, emailed with, etc.

If you’re interested in reading part or all of the study, it can be found here:

http://designogselvfremstillelse.files.wordpress.com/2007/10/dating1.pdf

Here are some more interesting conclusions.  Keep in mind these conclusions do not hold for every person:

Guys who earn more money do considerably better than women who earn more money.  p.22

Higher levels of education increase guys’ success, but not womens’.  To the contrary, women with a post-graduate degree incur a slight penalty. p. 22.

Men’s occupations make a difference, but women’s do not.   The following jobs are associated with the most success: law (77% premium), military (49% premium), and firemen (45% premium).  p. 22.  I’m surprised that doctors don’t command a greater premium here.  And I’m guessing that investment banking, while astonishingly lucrative, is not a well-enough-known profession to be on the radar screen of most of these women.

Another interesting finding is that women seem to have a strong preference for men with equivalent education levels or slightly above.  But they seem reluctant to go for guys with a great deal more education.  Men with a masters degree received far fewer first-contact emails from women with high-school degrees.  These women would go for guys with college degrees, but less so for guys with additional education.

Interestingly, this doesn’t work in reverse.  A man with a college or graduate degree does not seem to base his choices on a woman’s education.  p. 23. I’m guessing that’s because guys are so focused on looks that they largely relegate other attributes to the back seat.

Trying to figure out why these conclusions hold is fascinating.  Figuring out the guys’ motivations seems fairly easy.  Figuring out the women’s motivations for these preferences is more difficult.  Ladies, would any of you venture a guess as to the reason behind any of these preferences?

I’ll return with another installment soon.

It’s a violation of first-date etiquette to tell your date you want to tie him up

Articles about dating often contain advice on such questions as do you kiss goodnight or merely part with a brief hug on the first date.  Opinions seem to vary on this topic, so I don’t think it rises to a dating etiquette rule.  But I’m pretty sure it’s a violation of dating etiquette to ask your date whether you can tie him (or her) up on the first date.

Last year I was matched with a woman using an online dating service.  It was one of those services that matched couples up itself rather than letting users browse and email those people who interested them.  After several less-than-happy first dates I was excited.  This woman seemed so normal.  I know that doesn’t sound like high praise, but after a bit of a streak dating women who didn’t seem so normal, encountering someone normal was cause for joy.

She seemed completely normal and friendly over the phone.  She had a good job that required regular interacting with a lots of professional people.  In fact, having a presentable appearance and a good personality are job requirements in that field.   In addition, she coached cheerleaders in her spare time.

We made a date for dinner.  We met at the restaurant, had a great dinner with good wine and fun conversation.  We enjoyed it so much that we walked to a nearby martini bar.  Things continued to go very well.  We spent some time there and then left.   The drinks had lowered her inhibitions.  We left the bar and found our way to a park bench, where we kissed.

Then she looked me in the eye and posed a question that took me by surprise.  She asked, “are you dominant or submissive?”  I answered “dominant”.   She repeated the question, and told me she wanted to tie me up. 

I was not comfortable being tied up, and even less comfortable being tied up by someone I had met only a few hours before (notwithstanding her pleasant and cheerful mien), so I politely told her no.  Things got a little less happy after that, but we continued to talk.  She asked what happened when two dominants got together.  I responded that I didn’t know. 

We parted company and never saw each other again.

More Insights Into Online Dating Preferences

Last week I wrote a post discussing a few things revealed in a sophisticated analysis of online dating

http://designogselvfremstillelse.files.wordpress.com/2007/10/dating1.pdf

As promised, here is another installment addressing some of the interesting findings.  Some people lie about their height.  They’re called men.  Many of them take considerable liberties at rounding up.  A guy who is 5′10″ will claim he is 6′ tall.  He does this because more women are interested in guys who are at least 6′ tall.   By the way, the reason the researchers are pretty sure quite a few guys are lying about their height is that no sample group of guys are so uniformly tall, with the exception of NBA players or Masai tribesmen.

And women lie about their body build and weight.  This is because more guys are interested in slender women.  So it seems each of us has a pretty good idea of what the other sex wants, and we tailor our profiles to match that.  I should note that many people aren’t lying on their profiles.  In some cases it would be silly to lie.  A guy who claimed to be 6′ tall is not going to be well-received when he shows up on a first date and seems to be 5′7″.  This sort of blatant and obvious misrepresentation is not a good way to start off a relationship.

Another point is that men are much more receptive to women who email them first than women are to men who email them first.  The median man gets a return email from the median woman 40% of the time, while the median woman gets a reply 70% of the time.  pp. 17-18.    We would expect this, because the online dating service which was studied had more men than women (55%/45%), which means that more men are chasing fewer women, and also because women are generally choosier.

Consistent with this point is that women receive four times as many first-contact emails as men receive. p. 19.

Online dating is mostly a woman’s world.  Tune in later for more installments.

 

Fascinating Research into Online Dating

Some time ago I read a fascinating study about online dating preferences.  It was done by Dan Ariely and two other researchers.  You can read it here.  The conclusions are written in plain English, although be warned that some of the material is highly technical statistical stuff.

http://designogselvfremstillelse.files.wordpress.com/2007/10/dating1.pdf

The researchers were able to get Match.com information for two markets: San Diego and Boston.  They were able to determine who clicked on whose profiles, how long they stayed there, who they contacted, and many other things.

There are so many interesting items the study mentions, that I’ll write several  posts on it.  But I’ll mention a few highlights here.  Here are online dating tips for both men and women:

Men:

Be good-looking.  Be tall.  Be fairly large/muscular. Make quite a bit of money.  Be socially adept.  Create an engaging profile.  Be reasonably well-educated. 

Women:

Be good-looking.  Be slender.  Don’t have short hair or gray hair.

Both Men and Women:

Send out lots of emails to people who are in your league.

More later.

Online Dating

I’m always shocked when I hear from my female friends that they are reluctant to enter the online dating world.  I don’t think their reluctance stems from the stigma once attached to online dating (if you have to resort to online dating you’re a loser; this perception is certainly not true and probably never was true).

They give many different responses.  Here are just a few:

It’s too much trouble.   It does involve quite a bit of time and sometimes trouble, but I think it’s worth the time if you’re looking to date, find a relationship, etc.  A serious effort might involve taking several hours to create a profile and then committing half an hour a day to communicating.

There are lots of creeps and losers online.  That’s some truth to this claim as well.  You can find creeps nearly anywhere.  But I think you can also find guys you might be interested in.  The time and trouble mentioned above results from winnowing out the ones you know you wouldn’t like to date.

But now for the good part (good at least for women) - an attractive woman is in huge demand in the world of online dating.  You will find advantageous male/female ratios.  I think most services have something like 60% male membership, 40% female membership.  EHarmony seems to be the only exception (I’m not familiar with the male/female ratio at Chemistry, a site owned by Match.com but operated much like EHarmony).

If a fairly attractive woman posts a profile with a picture, she will be covered up with responses from guys.  I’ve dated several attractive women I met online and they have almost all told me the same story: they get thousands of emails and expressions of interest each year.  And they’re not the drop-dead gorgeous women either.  Well, one of them was.  But I digress.

Chemistry even has an ad that implicitly refers to this male/female percentage.  The ad says something like, “Oops, we made a mistake.  We conducted a marketing campaign aimed at women and we got too many women members.”  The ad, targeted to guys, might as well come out and say, “Join Chemistry and you’ll have a good chance that a woman will write you back.”

This male/female imbalance means that women acquire a great deal of selection power.  An attractive woman has hordes of guys interested in her.  She will notice right off the bat that many of these guys aren’t ones she’ll be interested in.  But some will be.  So she’ll have lots of high-quality guys who have shown an interest in her. 

This will make her very selective.  The way the dating services are set up, she can either respond to the guys who swamp her inbox or she can search herself.

And this selectivity won’t be confined only to the initial stages of deciding who she wants to go out with.  If she goes out with a guy two or three times and is iffy about him, she knows she can easily go back to her computer and order up another batch of guys.

So girls, if you’re on the fence about online dating, you should take the plunge.  Create a profile this weekend, post a pic, and you’ll be dating in a few weeks.  You might even have a significant other by the Christmas season.

One Secret to Dating Success: NOT Dating American Girls

As I’ve mentioned before, I truly prefer dating non-American women.  As of this writing, I’ve dated two Eastern Europeans, two Russians, two Germans, a Swede, an Israeli, and a Canadian.  While none of those girls were absolutely perfect mentally, they were certainly more feminine, more conscientious about their bodies, and more straightforward than the Americans I’ve dated.  I’ve basically been dating non-Americans exclusively the last few years.

Well, I’ve recently started making contact with a normal American girl who happens to be mega-hot.  By “contact” I mean through the Internet.  I still haven’t met her in person (she lives a few hours away).  We were just “friends” for a while, but MySpace messages turned into e-mail messages which turned into chats and now phone calls and text messages.  Flirtation has been a big part of this.  This all sounds great, but…

…I’m now being reminded why I basically date non-Americans.  She plays games.  She admits to playing games.  She talks about other guys, which is something I generally don’t care about, but she seems to do it at inappropriate times.  She reverts from being charming to being bitchy in a split second.  She has no idea what she wants in a guy.  She seems to mull relationships from some kind of logical formula, instead of letting her heart be her guide.

Ugh.

I guess I can’t bitch too loudly about that last point, because the “logical formula” thing is what I do. I am always thinking about what degree of attraction and what degree of sense of humor and what degree of intelligence and I need to be happy.  So I guess I am being somewhat hypocritical.  And maybe that is why so many of us are still single.  We’re thinking too much.

Regardless, I think I’m going back to the international dating thing pronto.

Should You Marry A Russian Woman?

You had to have been living in a Ted Kazinski type hut in the Montana wilderness, without access to television, the Internet, or magazines not to have a pretty good idea that there are a lot of beautiful Russian women. Here’s a bit of an article in slate by Anne Applebaum for those who doubt this:

Where Did All Those Gorgeous Russians Come From?

There was a particular historical moment, round about 1995 or so, when anyone entering a well-appointed drawing room, dining room, or restaurant in London was sure to encounter a beautiful Russian woman. Though the word beautiful doesn’t really capture the phenomenon. The women I’m remembering were extraordinarily, unbelievably, stunningly gorgeous.

http://www.slate.com/id/2182947/

A great many attractive Russian women would like to get married to guys outside Russia. For an interesting movie concerning this, take a look at “Two Brothers and a Bride”. The question is, should you consider dating/marrying one of these women?

When confronted with this topic, American women will, almost to a woman, really, really hate this idea. If you even bring it up in front of one of them, you will usually get one or all of the following responses:

1. The Russian women are only in this to get to the US. They will treat you badly, divorce you, slip you a mickey and cut out one of your kidneys to sell it on the black market, etc.

2. You must want to control one of these docile women. Note that responses one and two here are mutually exclusive. Either the Russian woman is conniving and ruthless or she is a passive victim; she’s unlikely to be both.

3. You must be such a loser that American women wouldn’t date you so you have to get a Russian woman.

As evidence for argument number one, they sometimes point to Lorena Bobbit and some friend of a friend who married a Russian girl. And they often issue a blanket generalization about Russian women (generally without ever having known one).

I’m familiar with these responses because one of my friends dated Russian girls he met online. I would occasionally mention the subject to female acquiantences. That is a mistake I no longer make. In fact, bringing this up to the vast majority of American women is very much like saying to a United Auto Worker’s Union guy, “How about those Honda Accords? They last forever and almost never break down!”