The folks at OKCupid are absolutely amazing data-story tellers. I've thought about doing a dating startup (w/ some new & unique features), but these amazing folks at OKCupid make me think my time would be better spent elsewhere.
I recently signed up for eharmony. I was under the impression my 'message' to someone was an invite for them to talk back without paying.
That actually makes me feel slightly better. I have much, much higher success rates (and a much lower sample size) of approaching women 'IRL' as opposed to even getting a reply to a message on a dating site.
The benefit of the IRL approach is that it gives you an immediate opportunity to show positive qualities which don't always carry over very well into a dating website profile -- and you can leverage any physical attraction right off the bat.
See, the thing about dating sites is: women are in demand, men are not. When you're in a superior bargaining position, it's a lot easier to be picky. So women don't give a second thought about discarding profiles for even the most superficial reasons. Interacting in person gives you a chance to cut through that and sell your good qualities without having to pass a bunch of filters first.
Let's assume that people generally date about 6 months before deciding to get married and let's assume that the average engagement is another 6 months. Given that, there is something wrong if you are signed up for one of these websites and get married in the same year. 12.4 is small.
More likely that being a person unlikely to get married causes eharmony use, but it's true that spending time fixing one's self is probably more productive than spending time on a dating site.
OkCupid doesn't realize that folks who pay for dating sites are those who are serious about finding a long term relationship. okcupid, pof among others are filled with spam and folks who sign up just for fun. I was working on a dating site and may get back into coding it once I find some time. I've asked friends who use such sites and all of them said they would definitely pay. Some of them signed up for POF and refuse to use the service due the ugly gui or the fact that messages are met with auto replies.
Exactly the same story here. I knew one of the OkCupid employees from IRC and they encouraged me to sign up to check out their matching algorithm work, and two years later I am still with a girl I met on there and very happy.
I have paid for dating sites and not had any better luck than with okcupid or pof.
I hate pof because it's so F'ing ugly, but it's also bigger than okcupid. The main thing I have found on eharmony vs okcupid are the women I am 'matched with' are much more successful on average. lawyers, engineers, teachers, phd students, favorite hobby is 'travel'. On okcupid it's much more true to the real distribution for the area.
When someone is so exasperated / desperate that they are willing to pay real money to meet somebody - their level of motivation to get married is a factor or more above non payers, that's really what you're paying for.
The first problem I saw is that they think they fact that the average profile only lasts 6.5 months is a -bad- thing.
When you have a relationship, you don't NEED a dating site. This means people either find a match or give up in an average of 6.5 months.
The second thing I noticed was that they are very down on the dead profiles. I haven't used e-harmony, but I suspect there's a way to tell when the person last used the site. Simply don't message people who haven't logged in for months and you won't have to to worry about it.
Much more useful is the fact that they get 12-15k new customers daily. In 6.5 months, that's a LOT of people to look through. (Yeah, they mostly won't be in your area, but most of the dead accounts won't be, either.)
There is not a way to tell when someone has last used the site with eharmony. At least not immediately.
I live in Vermont and there were like ~50 women within 60 miles within 5 years of my age on either side that showed up as 'matches' for me to view/message.
If I go another 35~ miles to montreal, there are approximately infinite women to view/message.
If I expand my search to world-wide it's exactly infinite.
Anecdotal counterpoint: I know of at least 2 instances of people who have met on eHarmony, via paid accounts, and have proceeded to end up in very solid relationships.
I am also an eHarmony success story. Met my girlfriend there, we'll have been together for 8 months next week, already planning on moving in together next summer (we probably would have already if we hadn't both renewed leases right around the time we met).
With online dating in general, I think what you get out of it really comes down to what your attitude going in is. I saw sites like eHarmony and OKCupid as primarily ways to be introduced to more people. If I struck up a conversation with anyone, I'd ask to meet them fairly quickly, and would approach those dates with a pretty laid-back, no-obligation, "let's meet this person and see how we get along" attitude. Going in relaxed like that really takes a lot of the pressure off and makes it easier to just get to know someone.
I agree with your sentiment that you should consider the motivations of the author (in any writing really), but it seems like they've done a pretty fair job of analyzing the data.
I think the 12.4x marriage rate is slightly misleading, because if you don't use a dating site then presumably you don't have as much trouble meeting potential partners, and thus are more likely to get married anyway.
But they did round several figures to benefit the match.com, and the statistic is impressive regardless.
There are more reasons that speak against dating sites in general. I didn't know OKCupid, so I just spent the last hour trying it out ;-) Here's the deal:
Everybody, really everybody who's a member has something seriously wrong with them. Sometimes, it takes a while to figure out but I couldn't find ONE compatible person (the experience was similar with other dating sites I tried in the past). I'm certainly no exception myself: I'm fat and ugly, and this is no self-deprecating crap, I mean it. And the girls on there are all either fat and ugly as well, or they're religious fanatics, gold diggers, trolls, creepy athlete stalkers or other kinds of groupies, future axe murderers, offensive and off-putting in their profile text, not looking for anyone right now, or (the funniest kind) their profile is one big stream of complaints about how everybody wants her sooooo much and would people please stop sending her those yucky messages already.
Hey, I might get nothing in real life, but at least RL is not as degrading as working the fruitless treadmills that are dating sites. Interesting and hot people can get dates anytime and anywhere, no online presence needed. The rest of us are just screwed.
Your notion of everyone having 'something seriously wrong with them' holds true everywhere. It's a core tenet of what makes us human, it's not isolated to people on dating sites.
Have you never heard the phrase 'no one is perfect?'
