Chris Higgins
Online Dating Site Reveals Rules for “First Contact” Derived From Data
by Chris Higgins - September 18, 2009 - 5:10 PM

Okay, so I’ve been on an online date or two. (And by that, I mean a date that occurs in the “real world” arising from first contact on an online dating site.) I’m currently dating a very nice lady I met via OkCupid, a quirky dating site that’s most notable because it’s free (although there is lately a no-ads paid option, but they are surprisingly non-pushy about it). The site is also notable because its person-matching system is dependent on questions submitted by the community of users, and the mathematical algorithm they use to derive matches is made public. This is nerdy, nerdy stuff indeed — it appears to be a dating site for nerds, run by nerds. (Compare this to market leaders like eHarmony, which are very expensive and very proprietary — free, nerdy, and open begins to sound pretty cool.)

So OkCupid recently published their study of 500,000 “first contacts” between potential daters that occur on the site, in the form of brief emails sent on the site from one party to another. OkCupid writes:

Our program looked at keywords and phrases, how they affected reply rates, and what trends were statistically significant. The result: a set of rules for what you should and shouldn’t say when introducing yourself online. This is the second post of our statistical investigation into the optimal online dating message; a note about how we protected user privacy is here.

So I won’t spoil the results (read the study here), but I will quote Rule #6 in its entirety:

#6 – If you’re a guy, be self-effacing.

Awkward, sorry, apologize, kinda, and probably all made male messages more successful, yet none of them except sorry affects female messages. As we mentioned before, pretty, no doubt because of its adverbial meaning of “to a fair degree; moderately” also helps male messages. A lot of real-world dating advice tells men to be more confident, but apparently hemming and hawing a little works well online.

Self Effacement Chart

It could be that appearing unsure makes the writer seem more vulnerable and less threatening. It could be that women like guys who write mumbly. But either way: men should be careful not to let the appearance of vulnerability become the appearance of sweaty desperation: please is on the negative list (22% reply rate), and in fact it is the only word that is actually worse for you than its netspeak equivalent (pls, 23%)!

Read the rest and also check out the OkCupid blog for some very frank, and very interesting, discussion of statistics as applied to online dating.

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Comments (11)

  1. I met my husband through match.com – internet dating has lost its former stigma and is a great way to meet people. while i have opinions about free vs. non-free sites, which i won’t go into, i think that sites like e-harmony that REJECT people are unacceptable. Sending an email to someone brave enough to try and find someone online and saying that they are unmatchable is just plain wrong and an ego blow people don’t need.

    posted by Skye on 9-18-2009 at 5:56 pm

  2. I met my boyfriend on Okcupid, and I can second that it’s a nerdier site than most, something which made it a good fit for the both of us. This study is good stuff to know. Thanks, Chris.

    posted by nutmeag on 9-18-2009 at 6:26 pm

  3. I met my boyfriend on match.com. He was the first date I went on, and I dated a few others to make sure I wasn’t just glad to be dating again…I quickly found that, although I got lucky (we’ve had a great relationship for 2 years) the majority of guys on match are there to meet a number of girls to hook up with, while the women are looking for more. I’ve since discovered that even HE wasn’t looking for something long term at the time. It’s funny that even though I had a positive experience, I have a jilted opinion of dating sites. I probably wouldn’t recommend them to most people. I will say the thing I like about Match, especially over eharmony, was the ability to browse the profiles and choose for myself who I wanted to talk to. I didn’t like the idea of having a selective group of people chosen for me, regardless of how that decision was made. Granted, there weren’t as many choices even two years ago.

    posted by esdls on 9-18-2009 at 6:53 pm

  4. I have noticed with OkCupid, the algorithms are very accurate, so long as there is enough data to support the percentages. If you’re on the site, and notice the **% match, friend, and enemy percentages, it all varies on how much information is usable. It’s not hard to get a 100% match if a woman writes ‘video games’ on her profile and answers maybe three questions. The site can only compare with what it has been given.

    posted by Steven on 9-18-2009 at 9:12 pm

  5. Did anyone else find it odd that there is a Match.com ad below this story?

    posted by Lindsey on 9-18-2009 at 11:05 pm

  6. I met my husband on the Onion personals. It was perfect for finding someone with a similar sense of humor and because of that we get along very well.

    My advice is that you exchange quite a few messages and phone calls before you set up a date. We ended up doing so more because of his business travel schedule at the time but it made our first date much less awkward.

    posted by Lesley on 9-19-2009 at 6:04 am

  7. I met my fiance on OkCupid; we’re getting married 3 weeks from today. :) Needless to say, I’m quite a fan of their site and matching system!

    posted by Krie on 9-19-2009 at 8:59 am

  8. I met my boyfriend on the craigslist personals, which require a little more wariness and careful selection on the part of the searcher. The fact that they are free and unstructured in their format makes these ads attractive to sleazeballs, but also to people who want to find love online without paying a subscription fee. We’ve been together more than 3 years and he sent me this article, warning me that I should not go back to our early email correspondence and analyze it, because we are “exceptional.” (He’s very confident–not really the type to write emails full of humble words like awkward and apologize!)

    posted by MM on 9-19-2009 at 1:29 pm

  9. My boyfriend and I met through a Facebook application. It was a goofy “flirt” app where you could send one of 15 or so “flirt messages” to a person (either from your school, town, or state). He sent me a flirt and then an immediate message (we went to the same college. My first thought was “who is this creep?” but I checked out his profile and noticed we are both Packer fans (going to school in Ohio, that’s rare). I replied to his message, we talked via IM for a few days, and then met within a week. We’ve been going out for almost a year and a half, and we moved into a place in S. Florida over the summer.

    Gotta love technology.

    posted by Amy on 9-20-2009 at 3:42 pm

  10. I met my husband through Yahoo personals, and I definitely agree with everything on the OK Cupid list. I used literacy as the sorting mechanism – if the guy couldn’t string together a coherent sentence, I hit delete. My husband’s first message to me was some nerdy fact about geckos’ feet, and I was hooked :)

    posted by Leah on 9-21-2009 at 1:33 pm

  11. It’s so refreshing to hear all of these stories of successful relationships coming out of online meetings – I met my boyfriend on plentyoffish.com and even though I know it’s somewhat more socially acceptable these days, I often feel like I’m the only one! I got messages from dozens of guys (95% of whom I never got back to because of unsavory or idiotic-sounding profiles), but he was the only one that I contacted – we’ve been together for a year and half now.

    posted by Robyn on 1-22-2010 at 6:09 pm

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