Wednesday, May 30, 2012

OkCupid research: Do Online Dating Platforms Help Those Who Need Them Most?

The USD2 billion online dating industry promises the possibility of a priceless product: romantic love. Associate Professor Mikolaj Piskorski investigates whether these sites are helping the lonely—or just making life easier for young singles who are popular already.
Key concepts include:
• Researchers studied a random sample of 500,000 OKCupid members, focusing on two important stages of forming a relationship: spotting a potential mate, and initiating contact.
• Older, shorter, and relatively overweight men tended to view more profiles than their younger, taller, slimmer counterparts. However, those who were most likely to view lots of profiles were least likely to initiate contact with an e-mail message.
• Some of the features on OKCupid helped users to overcome the normative restrictions of the offline world, while others only served to help those who really needed the least help.

Please remember: People often report partner preferences that are not compatible with their choices in real life. (FORGET Behavioural recommender systems or other system that learns your preferences)

Dr. Piskorski had previously written the (useless) paper "eHarmony" last July 2008.


It seems C-level dating executives do not pay attention to new and fresh research.
Here is a list of the most interesting scientific studies relevant to the Online dating industry for you to consider reading.


Latest Research in Theories of Romantic Relationships Development shows: compatibility is all about a high level on personality* similarity* between prospective mates for long term mating with commitment.
*personality measured with a normative test.
*similarity: there are different ways to calculate similarity, it depends on how mathematically is defined.

WorldWide, there are over 5,000 online dating sites but no one is using the 16PF5 (or similar test) to assess personality of its members.
Without offering the NORMATIVE16PF5 (or similar test measuring exactly the 16 personality factors) for serious dating, it will be impossible to innovate and revolutionize the Online Dating Industry
All other proposals are .............. NOISE

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