
OkCupid on Trial - 4 Month Experiment - avlok
http://jonmillward.com/blog/attraction-dating/cupid-on-trial-a-4-month-online-dating-experiment/
======
goodside
Hi. I work at OkCupid.

I coud have saved you a lot of trouble. Your results confirm what all dating
web sites have always known, and which we've made no secret about: Nearly all
initial messages are sent by men.

This does not mean that the site is "better" for women than for men, relative
to any other form of heterosexual courtship. It's a deeply ingrained cultural,
and perhaps biological, norm that men make proposals and the women evaluate
them. If you went to a singles bar, you'd find that all drinks bought for
strangers were purchased by men for women.

As others have pointed out, the choice of different cities interferes with
what you were trying to demonstrate, though the effect size was so huge it was
difficult to _not_ confirm it despite the confounding factor.

~~~
wtvanhest
I just started using it after I moved to a new city. I have had some great
dates, and even met some friends who introduced me to their friends so I’m
certainly not complaining about the site, but I have two observations I would
love to have the understanding behind.

1st, what is the purpose of the green/yellow/red dot? To me, if I see a women
with a yellow or green dot I rarely if ever contact them. Also, the percentage
of women with red dots is ridiculous compared with the other colors. It
basically seems like a worthless indicator of anything and may even be harmful
since it causes people to select the red over the yellow etc.

As a guy, if I get messages from women and they are someone I may or may not
have contacted, I never respond to get my color back up to yellow. I can’t
keep it there long, and have to check using a fake profile, but feel like the
gamesmanship is worth it.

2nd, why say exactly when someone was online last? This encourages me to not
login random times since I don’t want people seeing that I am always checking
in. Even if I am bored somewhere, have nothing else to look at, I purposely
don’t go to the site to let it sit. You would generate more ad revenue, at
least from me if the site said, visited in last 48 hours or whatever.

FYI, for those trying the site, 2 things really surprised me. 1, the photo
selection tool, I can’t remember the name, was really useful as it let me pick
better photos of myself. 2, focusing on having a profile that was more about
stuff I was doing was better than a profile about who I am. (that may be me
specific).

~~~
ig1
You realize for someone to see that you're checking in all the time they'd
also have to be checking in all the time and stalking your profile ?

I don't know OKCs reasoning behind it but I can think of a bunch of arguments.
For example say you've messaged someone to rearrange a date and you want to
make sure they've logged in since you sent it, or say you want to catch them
online and want to know the best time, etc.

~~~
wtvanhest
I’m reacting to my thought process in viewing women’s profiles. If I visit a
profile just twice I have a pretty good idea that they are checking it every
day etc. If both times I visit they were online within the last 2 hours
(extreme example) I know they are checking it a lot.

While that information doesn’t really matter, I noticed that I sort of laugh
about it to myself and make assumptions about the person. If I am making
assumptions, women are making assumptions and if the environment is as highly
competitive as described, you really don’t want anything against you.

~~~
ig1
How often do you have a woman checking out your profile every day ?

~~~
wtvanhest
There is no way to know, but before I message someone I usually look at their
profile, wait at least a day, then read it carefully before messaging them.

In the beginning I would just message women right away, but after a few dates
that I could have avoided I decided to be more careful since there is no
reason to go out with someone you know will not work.

[by the way] I saw a comment you posted a few weeks ago and liked it so I went
to your old blog imranontech.com and read through a bunch of your articles.
Really good stuff.

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untog
For anyone not aware, OkCupid has a fantastic blog where they do all sorts of
statistical analysis on their members:

<http://blog.okcupid.com/>

It hasn't been updated in over a year. Downer. Getting bought by match.com has
clearly had an effect. I have the extremely dubious honour of having had my
profile featured on there once as being of "average attractiveness". People
still visit my profile to this day, despite me not used it in a few years. Now
_that's_ good long tail traffic.

Anecdotal evidence: all the girls I know on OkCupid have said that they are
harassed the second they turn on the IM system, so they have it turned off.
Not that it makes a huge difference- they get flooded with messages, varying
from the inane ("hey baby, what's up?") to the creepy.

Given the sheer amount of crap they have to deal with, I don't think for a
second that online dating is "easier" for women. Having to reject hundreds of
suitors might sound preferable to having to approach tens, but I doubt that it
really is.

~~~
DrJ
if anything, I wish they would update the blog. News from some inside sources
says that they are so over extended (running too lean?) that it takes them
weeks to get new stuff started (that aren't in the pipe line).

~~~
KingMob
I wonder if it's one of the consequences of writing it in C++. Seems like that
would hurt developer velocity relative to other sites.

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jacques_chester
I don't know if any of this strikes me as particularly new. Every new female
account on any dating site gets absolutely _hammered_ with messages in the
first few hours.

What's missing from a lot of discussions is simple supply and demand. I was on
OKCupid for a few weeks and paid the $10 for the creepy stalker upgrade. Out
of curiosity I started comparing male and female profiles in my city.

In Perth, Australia, for profiles above a 90% match to mine, there were 8 male
profiles for every female profile.

For profiles averaging five stars, there were 8.5 male profiles for every
female profile.

Supply and demand means that the females on the site can really hold out for
more. I suspect that this means that the distribution of actual dating
activity will be wildly uneven -- the 1% or 2% of males who are really very
attractive will clean up almost the entire female pool's attention. And the
50% of females who are above average will have their pick of the top 25% of
the male pool.

Perth is not necessarily a good sample, as this town already has a lopsided
male:female ratio. But every city I looked at had the same phenomenon. If I
turned attractiveness up to maximum and only went to high matches, males
_always_ greatly outnumbered females.

I've given consideration to setting up a dating website in a niche market, but
that particular niche market will have an _even more lopsided_ male-centric
demographic. I've been seriously wondering about just letting men and women
know up front what the current ratios are. The theory being that it will deter
some men and encourage some women. Alternatively I might try bar tactics: men
pay at the door, women drink for free. Again to deter male users and encourage
female users.

Basically it is men who are using these sites, not women. And until someone
cracks the code on that, it's going to be a fairly one-sided experience.

~~~
BadassFractal
For ccomparison, it would have been extremely interesting to host this
experiment in Eastern European countries such as Russia. Due to alcoholism and
many other issues, quality women there outnumber quality men and have to deal
with competition that is much more alike that for men in the West.

~~~
entropyneur
As someone who lives in Eastern Europe (Belarus) and has been a heavy and
analytical user of dating websites (in fact there is only one in the Russian-
speaking part of the Internet) I can say this:

1\. Your assumption is false (it's the same as saying "due to obesity and
other problems in the US quality men outnumber quality women").

2\. Your conclusion is definitely false. The situation is exactly the same as
elsewhere: the demand from men is many times higher than the supply of women.

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jsnk
>The fact that the first stage of online dating is so heavily stacked in
women’s favour doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s any easier for them,
compared to men, to reach the end goal of pure love or perfect sex.

Of course, men have it harder than women in the mating game. This conclusion
seems like a white lie the author created for women.

No one is looking for _perfect_ mate. Both men and women choose their partners
from whoever is available. If women got 20 times more messages than men do,
then women's pool of mates to select is 20 times larger than that of men.

And even if some people happen to hold the notion of _perfect_ mate, women
still has a better chance of finding the perfect mate than men do.

With exception of special cases (maybe alpha males or older women), women on
the average have is so much easier when it comes to finding their partner.

~~~
nostrademons
You're familiar with the Stable Marriage Algorithm, right? The math doesn't
bear you out:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stable_marriage_problem>

It's been proven that the algorithm is optimal for the _initiators_ of
proposals, i.e. men in contemporary Western culture, although women can hack
this by asking guys out themselves.

The confusion is because you've artificially restricted the universe to a
subset of its true size. Women's pool of mates to select from isn't 20 times
larger than men, because men have _already_ done a round of selection in
deciding who to message. You don't actually message every single girl you see
on OKCupid, do you? If you're fat or ugly as a woman, you're basically screwed
(or rather, not screwed) in the mating game, because you become invisible to
most men.

That's why I tell girls on the OKCupid Reddit that messaging guys can only
help them. Once in a blue moon (as in once every month or two), I get an
unsolicited message on OKC. A majority of the time, I don't reply. The thing
is, I would never have messaged these girls to begin with, while occasionally
I'll take a chance on a first date if their personality seems interesting, so
they've only helped themselves.

It's also worth remembering that there are subsequent rounds of selection too.
If women receive (on average) 20x more messages than men, it must mean that
men send (on average) 20x more messages than women, since each message has
exactly one sender and recipient. They're only going to end up with one
girlfriend. So if those girls respond to their favorite guys, many of them
will be culled out after the first date, third date, whenever. I've been on I
think 16 first dates off OKCupid. I asked only about 3 of them out for a
second date. Some (several?) of the remaining 13 probably were not interested
in me anyway, but that's still a sizeable number of girls who did not get who
they want.

~~~
yummyfajitas
You are misinterpreting the stable marriage problem. Among other things, the
stable marriage algorithm guarantees that at each discrete time instant, each
man and each woman is engaged to someone.

Reality doesn't have this constraint.

~~~
roel_v
No, but rounding gender distribution off to 50/50 and assuming that
polygamists are a rounding error, there are an equal amount of male and female
singles. Or did I miss your point?

~~~
yummyfajitas
You did.

In a real life discrete time instant (e.g., an evening at the bar), most women
will choose to go home alone rather than accept a second best partner. In the
stable marriage algorithm, not a single woman will.

I.e., the stable marriage algorithm is a poor model for reality.

~~~
roel_v
But the case at hand wasn't talking about a time span that short, either. When
you look at it in the long run, I'd say that both men and women have an equal
likelihood of selecting a mate who is not the optimum for all qualities they
look for. (i.e., to use less Greenspan-eque language, that I think that both
men and woman will in the end "settle" for someone if they can't find someone
who they'd consider "perfect" rather than remain alone).

However, come to think of it, I guess a prerequisite would be that there are
an equal amount of men and women in the pool; which I think is so, I seem to
remember from one of the okcupid analysis posts that the majority of profiles
are male. Then again, on the whole, there _are_ roughly the same amount of
both, so I'm not so sure about your statement that "the stable marriage
algorithm is a poor model for reality"; maybe for dating sites, but on the
whole?

~~~
klipt
> I seem to remember from one of the okcupid analysis posts that the majority
> of profiles are male.

This is a significant factor. If you run a stable marriage algorithm with 400
men and 200 women:

Men less attractive than the median will remain ummatched.

A 50th percentile man will be matched to a 0th percentile woman.

A 60th percentile man will be matched to a 20th percentile woman.

A 70th percentile man will be matched to a 40th percentile woman.

An 80th percentile man will be matched to a 60th percentile woman.

A 90th percentile man will be matched to an 80th percentile woman.

In other words, all men below the 100th percentile will end up dating way
below their "league".

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erehweb
Whenever there's an experiment, we have to weigh the costs against the
benefits.

Benefits here seem slight - we relearn that women, and pretty women in
particular, get more messages than men.

Costs are non-trivial - about 1000 people deceived. Admittedly a minor
deception, but experimental subjects normally get some protection, and a
minute of time wasted by each translates to 16 hours overall. I'm presuming he
got consent to use all the photos in his experiment and on the site, but he's
silent on that. At least we have a thousand small disappointments.

Experiments involving deceiving people can be useful (e.g. ones investigating
whether employers / landlords discriminate), but this one doesn't seem to rise
to that level.

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dude_anon123
In other news, gay people don't even exist. Seriously, if you are going to
attempt this type of "study" gay people are a perfect group, as you can mostly
control for gender bias.

~~~
teuobk
It's an interesting question: what determines how many messages a gay guy
receives? What type of guys are most likely to send the initial message?

In the first four months I was on OKCupid, I got unsolicited messages from
about 115 guys. In the same period, I sent unsolicited messages to about 10
guys, of which 7 elicited responses. My sense is that my numbers are higher
than if I were a straight guy, but I have no idea how they compare to
"typical" for gay guys.

~~~
tibbon
I'm a straight guy, but I've had a lot of experiences observing how some of my
gay male friends are able to date online and offline.

From what I've casually observed (which lines up with your guess) is that it
is relatively easier for gay men to find others to meet/hookup with on almost
any website (OkCupid, Grinder, Manhunt, etc) and also in real life.

One of my friends, who was not exceptionally attractive, witty or any other
specific characteristic (let's say he's a 5/10) was able to get guys over to
his apartment using Manhunt faster than I was able to get a pizza delivered.
Not exaggerating a bit.

I have to wonder however, if the primary thing here is that its more equal
2-way attention. Men are actively looking for men, and men are actively
looking for me. Whereas for heterosexual relationships it appears to be men
looking for women, and women not looking for men.

If I remember right, OkCupid did some stuff on non-heterosexual relationships
and it was interesting. I'll have to dig for that.

------
Breefield
I was totally with this up until:

 _I then herded our collection of fake people...to five different US cities,
where they would be allocated in pairs. The best looking man and woman in one
city, second best boy and girl in another, and so on._

So the control is lost, even though care was taken to give them similar
usernames.

In my experience OkCupid is drastically different in different cities. I feel
that the attractiveness scale is completely useless when the profile gender
pairs were seeded into different cities.

I actually stopped reading at that point though, so perhaps there was more to
learn, but that was kind of an ender for me.

~~~
Terretta
Because of the matching system, two profiles with identical answers would have
shown up identically ranked, therefore obvious to any searchers. So they would
have been flagged.

And any variation in answers or questions answered would have matched
different personalities, throwing off stats.

Had to be done.

------
continuations
Interestingly the SECOND BEST looking woman got far more messages than the
best looking woman, both in US and UK.

I wondered why.

~~~
jacques_chester
Learned helplessness.

Most men stop contacting the most attractive female profiles because they
never hear back.

~~~
BadassFractal
It's also because most men believe that they have no chance with a 9 or a 10.
Why bother messaging someone who they believe is vastly out of their league?

Some men are great at hacking the system and ignoring a woman's physical
attractiveness, thus scoring really desirable mates. Others instead implicitly
follow the rules of thumb that psychology discovered a while ago, according to
which an attractive person is much more likely to be with another attractive
person.

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personlurking
"If they are hot, the girls can pick and choose which men they interact with."

There was a video on Youtube on dating and game theory where 5 women and 5 men
were given a number which corresponded to their attractiveness. Basically,
those who were 5's, when accepted into the 8's group were made more attractive
in the eyes of the opposite sex, even if they were still 5's physically.
Conversely, those who were 10's got the pick of the litter and had to do the
least work to find a mate.

~~~
pmiller2
Do you happen to have the link?

~~~
personlurking
I searched for it but couldn't recall the search terms. I tried a few to see
if I got a bite but nada. I originally saw it a year or two ago.

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sophacles
It may be an artifact of the different city problem in data collection, but
assuming it wasn't, I find it interesting that the woman who was 'second most
attractive' got significantly more messages than the 'most attractive'. To me
this suggests interesting game theoretical stuff going on here. Does anyone
know any good research/math on strategies that would optimize for this
phenomenon?

e.g. I can see a thought process happening along the lines of "she is too good
looking for me, I won't try, rejection sucks. I'll try this slightly less
attractive woman who probably isn't hit up as often because my chances will be
better, because everyone is hitting up the really good looking woman". Of
course if most men follow this, you get the discrepancy I noted.

~~~
allenwlee
I was not surprised due to this study that I read recently where You see
similar nonlinearities [http://dienekes.blogspot.com/2009/09/physical-
attractiveness...](http://dienekes.blogspot.com/2009/09/physical-
attractiveness-and.html)

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richardv
Curious as to why you tried to control the experiment as much as you could,
but then decided to move all of the profiles into different cities?

They should of been located in the same city. How do we not know that LA girls
and guys are more loose, and Boston women don't even use online dating.

~~~
dalore
Problem is that the profiles in the same city would all show up as similar
users with similar names and with the profiles matching exactly. People would
easily tell that they are fake and not send any message.

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eternalban
_"[...] the largely undifferentiated onslaught of male attention [...]"_

The algorithm.

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eqdw
THIS JUST IN: man spends 4 months confirming what everyone already knows

