In The Case For An Older Woman, the OkCupid tackles a tricky topic, unrealistic expectations of male daters. In this case, mainly that men want to date much younger women. I’m going to point to a few choice quotes and leave it at that.

…Men between 22 and 30—nearly two-thirds of the male dating pool—focus almost exclusively on women younger than themselves. I’ll be investigating this phenomenon today, with gusto and charts. Ultimately, I’ll argue that they would be well-served to expand their search upwards, to women in their thirties and forties.

The median 30 year-old man spends as much time messaging teenage girls as he does women his own age. On the other hand, women only a few years older are largely neglected.

Except in their early to mid-twenties, when they apparently want nothing to do with younger guys (i.e. guys who are still in school?), women show an admirable openness to both reasonably younger and reasonably older men.

Either something very sad happens to a woman at 40, or something incredibly awesome happens at 39.

If you separate out the absolute best-looking women, almost all of whom are very young, and also remove the people you won’t realistically want to date (the worst-looking women), you find that everyone else’s attractiveness doesn’t change much with age.

…Women have more pursuers than men until age 26, but thereafter a man can expect many more potential dates than a woman of the same age. At the graph’s outer edge, at age 48, men are nearly twice as sought-after as women.

Check out The Shape of the Dating Pool, it’s an interactive widget, as are a few others. The Tides Of Longing, the Zone of Greatness, older-women-are-more-sexual pattern, this is great stuff! OKCupid is absolutely killing it with this research. Bows and applause all around for the team.

I could quote this article all day long, why we both save ourselves some time, go read The Case For An Older Woman.

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Great article about OKCupid in the New York Times, Looking for a Date? A Site Suggests You Check the Data.

In its fight against much bigger competitors like Match.com, PlentyOfFish and eHarmony, it has tried a number of marketing techniques, often with little success. But the blog, which OkCupid started in October, has helped get the company’s name out on other blogs and social networks. A post last month that set out to debunk conventional wisdom about profile pictures brought more than 750,000 visitors to the site and garnered 10,000 new member sign-ups, according to the company.

The research obviously took a lot of time and resources, but If this doesn’t once and for all show the dating industry that there is a huge upside to being more open and informative while helping members make the most out of the online dating experience, I don’t know what will. 750,000 visitors based on a blog post!

These days I am inundated with dating site social media spam clogging up Twitter with cloaked affiliate links and T&A photo enticements. This sort of lowest-common-denominator marketing will continue because it’s cheap traffic, but I like to think that sites taking more focused on branding and efficiently are the ones who will grow the most and succeed in the long run.

Someone should do a comparison between social media traffic results and generic dating site marketing like Adwords. It would be fascinating to see comparisons between cost and effectiveness.

The OKCupid article went viral primarily because it’s something people had never read about before. It was re-tweeted many times, and media attention begets more media attention. It wasn’t 101-level dating advice like “brush your teeth before a date” like so many dating site magazines publish (with a few exceptions, which I will be talking about in coming weeks.) The tone of the blog post was not that of an academic paper, which would never have gotten the same level of exposure.

Greg Waldorf, chief executive of eHarmony, which says it has more than 20 million registered users, was dismissive of the marketing power of OkCupid’s blog reports.

Of course he was. Waldorf’s quote is garden variety CEO-speak. I understand media quotes that position a brand against competitors, but that level of snarkiness in unnecessary. eHarmony clearly doesn’t understand the importance of great profile photos, which is inexplicable.

And what’s with the 20 million registered users comment? There are lawsuits brewing over statements like that. Shame on eHarmony and Match for using these irrelevant numbers in the media. They are both going to get spanked over these statements, just you wait and see. Monthly logins is a number I’d like to see used instead.

Eharmony doesn’t have to be concerned about OKCupid, but to be dismissive of the research is an indicator of just how out of touch eHarmony has become. The trend is toward openness and empowering singles, and that’s the polar opposite of how eHarmony works.

EHarmony doesn’t share anything. They are like the North Korea of the online dating industry. A big black box and a giant marketing machine. They have their top-5 position in the marketplace and will be there for many, many years to come. It’s imperative to understand how brilliantly eHarmony built the company, from the $100 million dollar early fundraising, to the commercials, and the fact that eHarmony is perfect for busy and lazy people who don’t feel like spending five hours a week on Match and need a lot of handholding.

Eharmony’s empire is built on a matching system that nobody really understands outside of the company. It’s probably the best black-box compatibility system available and there is nothing any competitors can do about it. Except Chemistry, which is spending tens of millions of dollars to take the edgy/urban/alternative people away from eHarmony, with varying degrees of success.

I wish someone could compare eHarmony to Chemistry.com and Perfectmatch. In the meantime, the Catalyst Group in New York has done an exhaustive comparison of Match and eHarmony, A Usability Study of Online Dating  is the best review of two dating sites I’ve ever seen. Every dating industry executive should read the entire report.

Read a Usability Study of Online Dating

While I’m at it, I would also like to see IAC break out Match and Chemistry financials and to report each PeopleMedia property on it’s own. Hey, we can dream.

PlentyOfFish thinks I’ve got a crush on OKCupid, and it’s true. I will not hide the fact that I believe that OKCupid is hands-down the best introduction site for urban, sex-positive, educated, liberated and worldly singles. No other site even comes close.

In fact, I unsubscribed from PlentyOfFish today. Longtime readers know that I subscribe and unsubscribe from dating sites all the time, and this time it’s POF. I’ve been on numerous great OKCupid dates recently and for me, personally, POF just isn’t delivering. And it’s not like PlentyOfFish is going to change anytime soon, at least from the member perspective. So I’m out, at least for a while. I’m going to replace POF with Match.

Maybe I’ll re-join eHarmony, but I’ve been on that ride before, not expecting a different experience, but it’s good to go through the signup process every once in a while to see what’s changed.

Note: not belonging to a dating site doesn’t mean I ignore it. I have logins all over the place, and my favorite market research has always been pulling out the laptop with friends and having them log into their favorite sites and search and emailing people together.

One final bit about PlentyofFish before I sign off. I’m sure that people in the dating industry have discussed these topics ad nausea, but I ran into POF execs at iDate and wanted to clarify my thoughts.

For a handful of people up in Canada running an international site nearing 100 million monthly logins, their stratospheric grow is unprecedented and worthy of a business school case study someday.

As a business, POF is trying to break through to the next level. The company is doing everything it can to monetize the stupefying number of logins it receives each month. Word on the street is that in Canada POF is landing higher-class advertisers, which I don’t see when I log in here in Boston. Anything they can do to lessen the number of slutty ads will be a bonus for all users and raise revenue accordingly.

Problem is, the company is too small, not to mention the fact that reliance on advertising is never going to get them to that magical $30-$50 million in revenue. What was once a bragging right has become a hindrance. To begin with, they need to broaden the team. Five people can’t possibly build out the strategy and execution plan that gets a free dating site from $15 million to $30 million. Not being critical of management, just realistic of the efforts involved and how revenue growth tends to swell the ranks.

While I’m certainly an avid OKCupid fan, PlentyofFish has a much larger opportunity to grow, especially internationally. Markus and the team need to focus on evolving the definition of the company from “we’re popular” to “we’re successful,” and that is no small feat.

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Talk about starting the week off on a good note. Cyber Monday deals, preparing some exciting new reports for readers and to top it off OKCupid has released an iPhone application.

Team OKCupid did a great job at integrating just about every piece of website functionality on the iPhone. The home screen features recently updates profile. Chat window displays your bookmarked profiles, both online and off. Clicking on a profile brings up their profile page. Member chat features two tabs, essays and details. Profile display includes Message, Wink, Quiver, photos, ratings, send traditional message and the usual functionality available from the website. The messages tab displays, you guessed it, your messages, in chronological order. Search and matching based on criteria worked flawlessly.

Test taking is there, as is the ability to view my Stalkers (now called Visitors), viewing my profile and as an expected bonus, members can now upload photos taken on their iPhone. I took a photo of myself and it shows up on the website immediately, with a caption of “Uploaded from my iPhone.” I’d like to see the photo upload work on a timer as well, hunting for the shutter button while holding the lens facing me took a few tries, plenty of apps have a 3-2-1 countdown, with audibles to let you know when to stop moving around.

One thing I didn’t see was the ability to edit my profile on the iPhone. thats really not so much of a big deal to me. When I’m in major profile editing mode I’m at home in front of the big screen typing away on a real keyboard.

OKCupid has been growing steadily over the last few years. Sam and the team have done a terrific job improving the site. I used to say that Match was the gold standard that startups should emulate. People would tell me they took screenshots of Match, showed them to developers, and said, “Make it look and work like this.” These days, I’m not so sure. Match is certainly not sitting back on it’s laurels, it’s trying a few new features, mostly do-overs on features they tried and canned years ago, but OKCupid’s torrent of new features and refinements puts it right at the top of the class.

Given the amount of updates to the OKCupid site, the incredibly insightful blog posts about member racism, first email best practices and the statistics behind photos, it’s clear that this free dating site is effectively distancing itself from the competition. There will be people who argue that features and mobile and member transparency are not the only criteria for a successful online dating site, but I think the entire online dating industry could learn much from OKCupid.

Read the feature list download the OKCupid iPhone app and let us know what you think.

Given the number of dating sites launching mobile applications, the question becomes if and when is PlentyofFish going to follow suite?

Related posts:

1. New OKCupid A-List Features
2. TigerMe Club for iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad on the iTunes App Store
3. How to Build an Online Dating iPhone Application

Getting online daters to stray out of their comfort zones and search for new people has always been a problem for dating sites. Usually, search is a set it and forget it situation, where users set their initial search criteria and then leave it like that forever. You see the same people, over and over and over again, and it gets tiring.

Some sites put a gallery of members on the home page. These are often hand-picked beauties that you have no chance with, but they are effective at getting you to send them an email. Online daters, especially women, love getting hundreds of emails every day on dating sites. What else could they possible have to do besides respond to your tender missive?

A year ago Match implemented the Daily 5, which put 5 new people in front of members they might not have necessarily come in contact with. It drove up traffic to some extent

PlentyofFish has always done a pretty good job at putting new people in front of me, albeit in a gallery style view which just has you clicking on the hottest people and ignoring the rest.

OKCupid’s Daily Quiver is awesome, predating many popular copycat features like Daily5. I use it all the time. Simple, straightforward and it plain works.

Over the weekend I was clued into the new OKCupid Ice Breakers feature, currently in beta. I found out about it when a an email showed up from someone asking me about snowboarding. I wrote them back and realized this was something new, the email was about snowboarding. Nothing about “Great profile”, or “sexy eyes” or “I want to be of making your acquaintance in the time that is of near.” (not that OKC has a scammer problem, it’s probably the cleanest dating site I’ve been on.)

When I finally saw the Ice Breakers link in the navigation I clicked it and was greeted with the attached photo. I cycled through a bunch of people, I don’t really want to talk to women about poker but I will entertain a brief conversation about biking, politics or if left-handed people are better lovers. What’s kind of cool is that you don’t get to see the person’s profile or photo. Seems like OKCupid took this from their Crazy Blind Date, which never really did it for me but kudos for Sam and the gang for trying something new.

It will be interesting to see if Ice Breakers increase the amount of member communication and result in more relationships. Check it out for yourself.

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Comments are back on, not sure what happened. Changed the primary font and fixed a few things in the sidebars, what do you think, easier to read, or not?

Surprised that Facebook allows this type of titillating advertising (this is SinglesNet?). I hate the redirect crap to intermediary urls. Tricking people like this drives me crazy, I don’t care if it brings a lot of traffic. Be a strong brand with a great value proposition and people will flock to you or suffer the consequences. Or just buy a lot of crap traffic and churn the hell out of your audience. Sadly, churn remains a primary shortcoming of the online dating market.

Had a good catchup call with Mark Brooks over at Online Personals Watch.

Happy 9th Birthday Boonex.

I received a press release stating that World Dating Partners Launched an affiliate program, but there is no mention of this on their blog, which hasn’t been updated since December 2008.

Dear OKCupid, my free month of being an A-List member is over, ahem, a little help please.

Related posts:

1. Online Dating Advertising Links
2. Online Dating Industry Links 10-14-09
3. Social Network Dating Ad Ban Is Affecting Online Dating Industry

One of my favorite dating sites, OKCupid, has started offering premium services to certain members. Because I am incredibly wealthy and good looking, I received a free monthlong upgrade to the OKCupid A-List. Actually, I was invited because, among other reasons, the OKCupid Staff Robot likes me. A silicon-driven artificial intelligence deemed me worthy of being a VIP on a dating site. Pinch me.

Being A-listed lets you:

• Browse without ads
• Search for matches with new, advanced features
• Attach private photos to messages
• Give awards to other users
• And about 12 other things.   

The A-List is a great for OKCupid to test out new features and get feedback from a small group of members. After a few uses, the features are growing on me, although I haven’t given out any awards yet.

Awards are kind of funny, why would a woman I don’t even know take three minutes to write something nice about me and give me an award? Are awards given to you by people who think you deserve one but don’t want to date you?

To tell the truth I didn’t notice the lack of ads. I have ad blockers in Firefox and barely pay attention to them and it was a surprise to learn that ads were indeed non-existent.

The new search features are nothing special, just the usual additional search criteria, although I appreciate how the selectors are at the top of the page. there are some neat criteria though. The “Order results by” selector starts with “Grey Goo” and ends with “Totally Random.”

No doubt people are going to abuse the unfiltered photo sharing feature, but thats an easy way to catch the weirdos and kick them off the system. Plus, I like attaching a candid photo and attaching it to emails, bed head and all, it feels more immediate and real.

Several months ago, PlentyOfFish launched it’s Serious Member paid feature. Read PlentyOfFish Starts Charging Premium Membership Fees and How to Ask For An Upgrade for the details. There was lots of backlash/discussion about the offering in the POF forums.

Same goes for the A-List forum thread at OKCupid. A user makes a great point:

it’s not features that A-List members want to pay for in the first place. The currency of online dating sites is not the ability to do things like attach photos and so forth. The currency of online dating sites is visibility.   

Spot on from the users perspective and has launched a spirited debate. I need to spend more time with the A-List features but for now I’m liking almost all of them. We’ll see if it actually affects member success rates and efficiency.

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Article about OKCupid in Gelf Magazine – The Love Theorem.

OKCupid has launched a Firefox toolbar which keeps you logged into Instant Messaging and alerts you when people you are talking with appear online. I like this a lot. Userplane did this for years but now that it’s in Firefox, I’m all over this.

Moving to t he bottom of the browser, we have the OkCupid IM controls, which appear at the bottom of the browser when you’re on the website. Slick implementation, only improvement I can think of is to have the IM session start automatically with the person who’s profile you’re browsing. As for the toolbar, the only thing I don’t like is that there is no way to go to the person’s profile.

Plentyoffish recently removed IM and Markus says Uk and AU traffic experienced a double-digit increase. Can this be directly attributed to the removal of IM or are their other reasons why traffic jumped?

I empathize with women using IM on dating sites. There *must* be privacy controls to filter who is able to IM you. Without them, it’s a giant perv-fest and woman will either turn off the feature or leave the site for good.

Related posts:

1. WorldFriends selects Vivox for Instant messaging
2. Are Dating Site Instant Messaging and Chat About to End?
3. Userplane Adds Live Two-Player Games To Instant Messaging

Happy Cinco de Mayo. Let us bow to the gods of Patrone today, in moderation, please. I’m going to try and meet up with Sam Yagan at OKCupid today. Sam recently sent me this Sprint ad which ran in the NYT, USA Today, WSJ, etc. Check out the last item on the phone. That’s a great product mention.

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Sam Yagan from OKCupid was on the Today Show in a segment about the supposed recession-driven online dating uptick. Perhaps the current growth in online dating will erase some of the remaining stigma, of which there still remains plenty. But will it grow the market enough to insulate online dating site traffic won’t crater as a result of an economic rebound?

Sam is easily one of the nicest, most genuine people in the online dating space. We could all learn a lot from him and how he runs his business. Surprise, I actually enjoyed listening to the two dating experts on the show. Usually I yell at the screen listening to dating pundits. Probably like some people yell at the screen reading this blog.

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OKCupid has gone through a redesign. I like the new recent activity tabs, makes it easy to see what others are up to. Many forward-looking dating sites are implementing activity streams. If you know what a Facebook wall is, that’s basically what dating sites are beginning to offer.

I checked out the forum, there is a lot of activity there, but I couldn’t find a decent description of what’s changed in recent weeks. Calling Sam Yagan, what’s the story?

With the redesign, OKCupid has clearly taken over the young-n-hip dating site award from FastCupid. Look at the comparison between OKCupid and Fastcupid. Fastcupid has been stuck at the same traffic level for years now. Penthouse is obviously not treating it like a first-class site in their network, which is shame. Back in the Day, Fastcupid, when it was part of SpringStreet Networks, was the best dating site out there, bar none. They were way ahead of the majority of dating sites in terms of functionality for years. Not enough marketing dollars spent and traffic-driving partnerships forged = existing in the dead zone.
The internet dating industry is lives and dies by traffic. If you can’t afford it or don’t understand the intricacies of Internet marketing, don’t bother playing the game, you’re wasting your money and other people’s time.

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