Some On-Line Dating Tips

I have been through a couple of trips through the online dating world, one in 1995 which led to the standard goal (a longterm monogamous partnership) and one beginning in 2003 and ending who the heck knows when which may or may not lead to anything in particular. Here are some tips, written from a my perspective as a more or less typical middle-aged unattached man.

I am most familiar with Match.com — but I have also dabbled with EHarmony, PlentyOfFish.com, Friendster and others. Match.com has the most members; EHarmony has the strongest matchmaking methodology; Friendster is free and lots of fun (but generally speaking you can only contact friends of friends, so it's hard to break into the club unless you already know one or more well-connected members from real life.)

One extremely popular free site is PlentyOfFish.com. I learned of their existence through their ubiquitous Google AdSense/AdWords placements. I was reluctant to check them out because "free" dating sites typically either have no real members and/or are full of Russian and Chinese scammers. But it turns out that this is a real dating site full of real people. The operators make their money through "keyword arbitrage": they pay for one AdSense/AdWords click up front from someone else's site (maybe even mine) in the hopes that you will make more clicks as you browse their own site. (This is, by the way, similar to the original Match.combusiness model, although Match.com now relies on subscription fees.)

One gotcha heterosexual male members must watch out for on PlentyOfFish is that you will be unable to message women if you admit to looking for the main thing that you are looking for: if you choose the"Intimate Encounters" or "Sex" pulldowns, you will be banned by about 99% of the female members. (The PlentyOfFish database even tracks if you have EVER messaged someone looking for sex, and many women will ding you just for that.) Members of all genders should remember to click on the ad placements every so often to help keep the service going.

If you are willing to pay for an online dating service, Match.com is your best bet. It has the most members and the site is attractive and useable. It can be pretty expensive: the basic monthly rate is $35/month. It is only $18/month if you sign up for 6 months (and thus qualify for the Match.com 6 Month Guarantee .) And there are unadvertised discounts, if you are lucky. And, thanks to the cost (and other factors) the site has an inordinately high percentage of nonpaying members whose smiling profiles are on the site but who couldn't reply to you even if they wanted to. (And, to make things more frustrating, male heterosexual members in particular will find that it is difficult to elicit positive responses from even the paying members.) Many members create a free profile with Match.com and then take advantage of offers such as the Match.com 7-day Free Trial — but fail to find true love right away and their free profiles linger tantalizingly for months or even years.

In the past few years, Match.com rolled out a simple Member Spotlight feature which places bright red backgrounds around the profiles of (almost) any paying member who asks to be in the spotlight. If you see the red rectangle, you know this person is paying to play. (Not all paying members participate in the Member Spotlight program, however.) More recently, they have introduced the "Daily 5", where the match.com computer recommends 5 (or sometimes just 4) members to you. The "Daily 5" uses only a subset of the data in the profile: in particular the age, height and distance requirements are all excluded (although you do know where the other person lives, how old she is, and how tall she is.)

The scariest and bluntest service is AdultFriendFinder: they put out ads with slogans like "Meet real sex partners here!" I have taken the free tour. I haven't worked up the courage to venture much further. True.com is scary and blunt in a different way: its slogan is "We screen for felons and married people."

(Speaking of felons and married people, I am cosponsoring HB 1402, an act repealing the state's adultery laws, in the New Hampshire legislature this year— specifically, 2010. Adultery is currently just a misdemeanor, not a felony.)

One very intriguing new concept is that of Crazy Blind Date which matches people more or less randomly up for spur of the moment blind dates. You have to cut straight to the chase and go out and meet someone either today or the next day, and you can make only the most general stipulations beforehand about who and what the other person can or cannot be before you will deign to meet them. In the words of the site's creators "There are no profiles, pictures, winks, or instant messages. Instead, users simply enter the basics of what they're looking for in a date (age, gender, orientation, etc.) and when they're free." I haven't tried it myself yet. (As a 5-foot-6 50-plus man, I am not sure how well this service would work for me, since age and height are two of the few dimensions they let you filter on. I would be shocked if any female strangers would actually want to meet someone like me.)

A related new concept, which is a variation on the ancient calling-card rechnique, was decribed in an amusing July 22, 2010 New York Times article. Cheek'd and Flip Me! Dating are two startups which sell decks of cards with cute sayings on them along. Each card has an anonymous email address right below the cute saying. A guy (it would almost always be guys doing this, I should think) sees an attractive person, so he gets the card to that person and if he or she is interested, the online-dating process begins (followed perhaps by real-life dating.) If you hand out the cards, you have to pay $25 (per month for one service, per quarter for the other) to play. If you are the recipient, you can play for free. This is a boon for heterosexual men, because it means that women don't have to pay before responding. It also means that a guy can evaluate a woman's physical attractiveness right up front while she can verify that he is tall enough to meet her minimum height requirement.

I have had some luck (and more good luck than bad luck) meeting people through the computer game Second Life. But in my case, this is of limited Real Life value since my Second Life avatars are quite different (on the outside, at least) from my Real Life self. Also if (like many men and most women) it is important for you to find someone exactly your own age who lives in exactly the same place as yourself, then Second Life is problematic as a dating service: your new friends will turn out to be just about any age and live just about anyplace (or, anyplace with cheap broadband service, at any rate.) And let's not even get into the whole gender-identity issue...

And of course, there is always Facebook, which is not really designed as a dating site but which is a good way to peek into other people's lives.

I'm sorry eHarmony but that says Valves!!

[July 15, 2010] Paul Slamera of the Washington Post appeared on my local public radio station, NH Public Radio, on July 15, 2010 to speak about the recent decline in traffic on online dating sites. Even the industry-leading leading Match.com has experienced flat (at best) traffic in the past year. Other sites have actually declined. Reported revenues do not match the success being promoted in the services' press releases. One major service, Yahoo! Personals is actually going out of business. He compares the online dating industry to the oil industry during peak oil: there is still demand and there is still supply but the system is dipping into chaos as the supply of the basic ingredient become unreliable. In the case of online dating, the supply of dating partners is dwindling as people get fed up an/or look for free venues.

Slamera also mentions that sites designed for adulterous married people like DiscreetAdventures.com and MarriedSecrets.com are thriving while regular sites are declining. I think one reason regular dating sites are declining is because many single men who find themselves in the dating pool are recovering from monogamous relationships which failed— while the women tend to demand monogamy and emotional intimacy right up front. Those are two things which any sensible single man is going to be very hesitant to give a woman he doesn't know yet.

[Feb. 14, 2010] Just before Valentine's Day 2004, the Wall Street Journal ran an interesting article about Match.com and eHarmony. The article summarized a report by the Catalyst Group: this report was based on a small (16 people) and atypical sample (made up of persons who actually dated someone in the last month) but there are some interesting insights. Match.com was viewed more positively even though its matching technology was imprecise and some of its features were useless. The researchers found that the photos are especially important: both men and women look first at the pics to see if the other person is cute, then look for "deal breakers" in the profile before moving on to the more subtle signs of possible chemistry.

To read the article click on:

To read the report click on:

http://docstoc.com/docs/25205881

eHarmony and Match.com Usability Study

1. Pictures or No Pictures? Most women are reluctant to put their pictures on the web, for a variety of reasons. (Even though no one ever sees them, almost half of the profiles placed by women on Match.com, for example, lack photos.)

One common reason is that they are afraid someone will recognize them from real life. To some extent, this is a valid concern: local men are going to spot you at the Stop & Shop. They probably won't say anything to you, but they will try to scope you out. (This is something they would be doing even if they didn't recognize you, actually.) In most cases, they will think you look better in person than in the pictures. They will also think you are shorter: for some reason women always say they are taller than they really are. (Men do the same thing, but we have a good reason: women are obsessed with men's height.)

Match.com's PR people claim that profiles with photos get eight times more attention than those without. This fictitious arbitrary number is understated: the real number, if you could quantify such a thing, would be at least 20. Even if you beat the 20-1 odds against you, you will be at a competitive disadvantage (especially if you further protect your privacy by not saying anything of substance about yourself in your unillustrated profile.)

If you still feel you must run a photo-less profile, you will have more luck if you take the risk of contacting the men rather than waiting to be contacted. Of course, if you happen to be a lady you may feel that this is not very "lady-like." And, whatever your gender, if you make the first move you get more of the blame if the relationship ends awkwardly.

Even if a guy does enter into an email dialog with you, he will be imagining the ugliest woman he would still be willing to sleep with. This will in many ways not be such a bad thing if he eventually gets to see you in person (unless of course you really are that ugly.) However, until he gets to see what you look like, you run the risk of losing him to someone whose picture (and/or self) he actually has seen.

The dating services advise you not to include other people in your pictures. This is good advice, especially for women. The guys who read your profile will be jealous of the other guys in the photos: it doesn't matter if they're just coworkers, or just your brothers, or just your gay male buddies, or whatever. Any sensible man already knows there are going to be other men in your life: however, there's nothing to be gained by reminding him of this fact before you even have a relationship with him. Sometimes you will see pictures of people posing with celebrities of the opposite sex. I have considered dating women who have for one reason or another posed with Manny Ramirez, Martin Scorsese, Mitch Ryan, Ron Jeremy, Barack Obama and many others. Only once have I had any luck with the conversational gambit of asking the woman how she came to be posing with that oddly familiar looking man: that time, it turned out I had the wrong guy. I thought the mid-1960s snapshot showed a younger version of my new lady friend with a younger version of John Kerry: but, I mistook John Kerry for Dave Clark of the Dave Clark Five.

Putting kids in your photos, especially someone else's kids, is generally not a good idea. (Though not because being a single mother is a bad thing. Men like women who have kids, since moms tend to be more patient, more pragmatic, and less needy than childless women. Also, the existence of the kids proves that you will indeed, under the right circumstances, be willing to have sex.) Pets in photos are OK, as long as they don't come across as jealous or overly possessive. Pictures with no people at all in them are a no-no: peopleless pics of any sort are a sexual turnoff even when they are artistically interesting. (Oddly, professional artists rarely include slides of their work.)

Unless you only have one arm (which is a turnon for some people), it is rarely if ever a good idea to include a picture which shows only one arm. Show either two arms or zero. And all arms and/or hands in the picture should be your own. (What I am saying is, don't cut two-shots of yourself and your ex in half.)

In the movies, dating services pictures are always subjected to advanced Photoshop magic. In real life, the pictures are often pretty bad (blurry, unflattering, poorly lit, etc.) are rarely subjected to any manipulation at all — aside from cropping out the ex. And even then the ex usually remains as a disembodied hand on the lady's shoulder. There are some pretty simple tricks you can use to improve your photos without cheating: it is easy to blur things, sharpen things, adjust the color balance, etc. It's not even that hard to crop your ex's hand out of the shot! (Basically you can trim the picture along all four dimensions; you can crop your ex's body on one side of the shot and then get rid of his remaining hand out by cropping the other side of the photo.)

2. What to Say? You simply need to say a little bit about what type of a person you are. Try not to use any words you don't know how to spell. And even if you do know how to spell "monogamous," don't put it in your profile: you are talking to people who don't even know if they want to meet you for a cup of coffee yet! Monogamy is a lot to ask even of someone who is in love with you: it's much too much to demand from a total stranger. Also, a man who is predisposed towards having monogamous feelings towards a stranger is likely to also be a man who holds on a little too tight.

3. What are men looking for? Men are self-centered creatures who basically want four things from women: they want someone to sleep with, someone to laugh at his jokes (even the lame ones), someone who could be a good mother to his children (even if these are only hypothetical children) and someone who will take care of him (or at least, someone who won't impede his own efforts to take care of himself.) The rest of the stuff that women care about is of limited relevance to men. (Gay men want the same things as straight men, expect of course for #3: instead, a gay man wants a guy who could be a good uncle.) The ideal woman is the 50s porno ikon Bettie Page. (It is worth noting that she was not a young bimbo: in her heyday she was already in her mid-30s, was a college graduate and had already pursued several careers.)

Ladies will find that the men who are likely to be interested in you are generally older, shorter, and less financially secure than the ideal guy you have in mind. Yeah, I am well aware that this sucks. On the other hand, men will find that the attractive women are just as likely to respond positively to them as the not-so-attractive ones. (I have three theories to explain this. The first is that attractive women have more experience with men and hence are more confident about reciprocating men's usually fumbling advances. The second is that guys make more of an effort when they think the woman is a hottie than when they think she is merely acceptable. The third is that sexual attraction actually is a sign of spiritual compatibility.)

4. What are women looking for? I don't know. If I knew, I probably wouldn't be writing this article.

5. How does the process work? Basically, you email a person for a while and then, unless one or both parties lose interest, you eventually meet them in real life. Online dating services take three main approaches. The least popular, though highest-tech approach, is the social networking model (used in Friendster) where you scope out your friend's friends. The most common is the classic dating service model (used in Match.com) where you fill out a questionnaire and then it is up to you to fossick through a huge pile of other people's answers, hoping to strike gold.

Finally, there is the matchmaking model (used in Eharmony) where you are subjected to a lengthy personality test. The dating service's database server acts like an old-fashioned yenta and gives you a short list of (ostensibly, scientifically selected) prospective mates. It still up to you to decide if you want to date any given individual, and if you run through the list of prospects, the computer will draw up a new list. However, the computer will first try to make you feel guilty for not pairing off with any of the previous prospects. The most interesting aspect of this approach is that the matchmaking software, rather than the customers, decides what criteria to apply. This generally means that you are more likely to end up finding someone who might actually be interested in you.

For casual dating the first two approaches are probably better, though the third approach works better if you specifically want to find a mate as soon as possible (though there are still the traditional offline approaches to finding a mate as well.... but that's beyond the scope of this article.)

What's the ideal age to find a mate? A woman thinks a man should be exactly the same age as her. A man thinks a woman should be half his age plus 15 years. (Hence a 16-year-old boy will lust after 23-year-old girls and a 60-year-old man will lust after 45-year-old women.) This means that 30 is the ideal age to be looking for love. Unless of course, you are currently some other age, in which case whatever age you are right now is the ideal age to be looking for love!
How old should you claim to be? If you are a woman who is not sure how old she should admit to being, try claiming to be 37. One of the standard factoids which each generation of men passes on to the next is that a woman's sexual peak takes place at age 37. If you are a man who is not sure how old he should say he is, try claiming to be 34 (i.e., just old enough to meet a 37-year-old woman's minimum age requirement.) An even better thing to do is to simply give your real age.
If you're a woman who is older than maybe 25 at the most, you might wanna stop blathering on about how you're not just a booty call. Lady, at some point, no one expects you to be a virgin anymore (especially if you've already been married and/or had kids.) Not only that, men (even the virtuous ones) are looking to find women who actually enjoy having sex. Moreover, they're looking to avoid women who will ration out the nookie in the smallest possible portions at the highest possible price. It's worth noting, by the way, that men are actually rather fond of their booty calls: as you can see from the fact that all the most heartfelt rock and roll love songs are about chicks the singer loved and left behind on the road.
Women's age specs tend to filter out the guys who will be the most interested in them. If you stick to the standard plus or minus three year range, you're filtering out a lot of possible lovers. The older men are the ones who will think you are a young babe. The younger men will think you are a sophisticated older women.
Men think young babes and sophisticated old ladies are even more fascinating than the women their own age. The fascination with young girls is easily explained on simplistic biological grounds (although older women love to come up with much more complicated explanations.) Men are biologically capable of being fathers throughout their adult lives, whereas women are most fertile when they are in their 20s and can't have babies at all past some point in early middle age.
The fascination with older ladies has a more subtle explanation: a boy's earliest sexual and romantic crushes tend to be on his teachers and his friends' moms (as documented in numerous rock and roll songs.) Even during the college years, the most interesting and most self-assured women in a young man's social universe are the female professors, grad students, etc.— which makes them sexier from the guy's perspective than the girls his own age. These love-objects are typically women in their late 20s on up— and they are also a decade or more older than the boys.
Women in their 40s (and even 30s) need to bear in mind that men in their 30s and even older are going to be much more interested in marrying someone of child-bearing age. Younger guys are good for friendship and (if you are willing to admit being a sexual being yourself) sex— but getting them to marry you is going to be extremely difficult (although it does happen on occasion.) Your odds of marriage are much better with someone older than yourself, even though he has probably been married one or more times already.

A few nitpicky points:

Don't specifically mention your age in your profile text unless you are prepared to go back and update the reference each year when your birthday comes around again. It looks silly if you describe yourself as a "44-year-old single mom" when the header info says you're 46.
Putting pictures of your kids in the profile is not a great idea, but if you must do it, make sure that each individual child is roughly the same age in every shot. If you are seen posing with a school-aged (or younger) child whom you are also posing with on his or her wedding day, that's a dead giveaway that at least some of the pictures are old.
You will have better luck if the specs for who you want to meet are set wide enough to match someone who might actually be interested in you. Men make things harder for themselves by asking for women who are much younger than them. (She may not be too young for you, but you might be too old for her.) In addition to demanding tall rich men who live within a 20-mile radius, women tend to set very narrow age requirements. I see lots of specs like "man, age 38-42." Before you set a spec that narrow, you might want to consider these questions:
I see lots of profiles where the person talks about his or her love of travel, and then turns around and specifies that their prospective dates must live within a ridiculously short distance. 10 miles is not at all uncommon, even in a city like New York which is more than 10 miles wide. (The extreme example was a man listed as living in "Madison Square, NY" which meant he lived in Manhattan's Chelsea neighborhood, halfway between Midtown Manhattan and the West Village. His specified radius was 3 miles— not even far enough to reach Morningside Heights! And yet he still said he loves to travel.)
It is OK to brag about your travels a little, but don't overdo it. I know you have fond memories of that pristine beach in Sri Lanka and that little trattoria in Palermo. But your next first date is probably going to be at the coffee shop at your local Barnes & Noble.
Those little webcams which you mount on top of your monitor take lousy pictures, especially at low light levels. You only have a few thousand pixels to work with in the first place, and at low light levels most of the pixels are used up by noise. If you must use a webcam, for God's sake, light the shot--- preferably with warm light (i.e., incadescent bulbs, candles, sunlight, etc.) as opposed to cold light (fluorescent bulbs, the glare from the computer screen, etc.) Even with good lighting, the typical webcam angle from the top of your monitor (and about 2 or 3 feet from your forehead) does not produce flattering imagery. Try standing up and moving back so the camera can get a shot of at least the top half of your body, preferably a shot taken from below forehead level. (If need be, try standing on a stack of phonebooks or whatever to make yourself taller.) Or if you are really bold, point the webcam at your bed and sit on it (the bed, not the webcam!)

Speaking of pictures... use sexy pictures, or at least minimally appealing pictures. And only use pictures of yourself (just yourself, not anyone else! And unless you are a professional artist, no artsy landscapes.)

There is a rather well-known regional artist from my region (New England) in my dating pool. I know her from real life: I don't think she finds me very interesting, and we are not a match— but I can say with confidence that she would be well worth going out with if she takes an interest in you. I will use her as a sample of a very good (but not dauntingly great) profile picture.

Her profile does have shots of her posing in front of her landscapes, but notice that the sample picture below is all about her, not the paintings. It doesn't do her justice but she looks nice— and she is wearing a pink blouse, which is good. She is also smiling pleasantly but not grinning maniacally. That's also good. (BTW, she has no slides of her work in her profile.) The wall behind her illustrates two points which get overlooked a lot.

The background should ideally tell a story about you: in this case we see that she is an artist posing in front of some of her work, i.e., gorgeous pastels of tidal scenes. The blouse even harmonizes with the palette of the paintings.
There is no such color as white: what we think of as "white" is a just very light shade of some other color. About 75% of the pics on dating sites are taken in front of white walls. The camera tends to darken large areas of white, usually to a pretty boring grey. In this case, some of the whites turn into blue (in the shadows) or yellow (where a spotlight beam and/or the sun evidently is hitting the wall.) And some of it is a dingy grey: it's OK to have a little of that grey off to one side, but a whole frameful of that ubiquitous grey would be very bad.