Online Dating Advice: Exactly What To Say In A First Message

http://blog.okcupid.com/index.php/2009/09/14/online-dating-advice-exactly-what-to-say-in-a-first-message/

by smokinn • 17 years ago

155 64 17 years ago

blog.okcupid.com

BRadmin• 17 years ago

part I is here:

http://blog.okcupid.com/index.php/2009/09/03/how-to-get-peop...

KonaB2• 17 years ago

Someone had to say this: how is this (even remotely) HN material? Let me guess: it's about "hacking" dating. Yeah, right. And rape is about hacking sex?

jonknee• 17 years ago

Data analysis and trending is topical to this audience. There are a lot of startups that could use techniques like this to increase return visits--instruct your users how to be more successful.

KonaB2• 17 years ago

That's an intelligent answer. Thanks for clarifying.

whimsy• 17 years ago

It also analyzes what sort of language people tend to be receptive to (at least on dating sites... possibly elsewhere, too).

This could be useful if you're trying to create a rapport with users on your own website (albeit through one way communication).

olliesaunders• 17 years ago

Don't hackers need love too?

flashingpumpkin• 17 years ago

funny. was just searching for this article a couple of hours ago but couldn't find it, and now it's popping up on the frontpage again.

physcab2• 17 years ago

I know they took precautions on protecting user privacy, but there is something a little bit unnerving about analyzing personal messages without written consent.

Herring• 17 years ago

You put your data on their server. Life is generally much clearer if you expect people to act according to their interests.

physcab2• 17 years ago

I don't mean to suggest that users don't. I'm just saying its a bit unnerving.

As a data scientist, one needs to constantly ask themselves ethical questions concerning that data they are working on. Just because it exists, doesn't mean you should munge on it. I know its quite the temptation, because it's what I currently do!

I prefer to create an outlet where users are willingly giving up that information to be analyzed. They can still act according to their interests, but at least they know what will become of their information.

tlrobinson2• 17 years ago

Sure most people don't read these things, but you agree to them when you sign up... http://www.okcupid.com/privacy#obtained

hughprime2• 17 years ago

Fascinating data. The reply rate for messages containing "how's it going?" is almost twice that of messages containing "hi". In fact, "how's it going?" is the only string mentioned (apart from "Zeus") that actually pushes the reply rate up above 50%.

tlrobinson2• 17 years ago

I wonder how well "How's it going Zeus?" would work.

jjs• 17 years ago

Probably too well.

That guy's married, and his wife's the jealous type!

ojbyrne• 17 years ago

I found it enjoyable how well the use of the word "sorry" did. Seems true to life ;-)

jadence• 17 years ago

Given that they measure "success" by response rate I'm not sure I put a whole lot of faith in the below quoted analyses. Perhaps the low "success" rate is because people reply w/ an outside service that OkCupid can't track?

"#4 – Don’t try to take it outside. Obviously, all successful OkCupid relationships outgrow our in-site messaging feature. But an offer to chat or of an email address right off the bat is a sure turn off. One of the things online dating has going for it is its relative anonymity, and if you start chipping away at that too early, you’ll scare the other person off."

dusklight• 17 years ago

given that okcupid doesn't charge for their services, it seems unlikely that a majority users are switching to out-of-site communications right away. There are no real incentives to do so.

TimothyFitz• 17 years ago

Switching to out-of-site has two big benefits: 1. OkCupid's chat system is horrible, and results in lots of missed messages. 2. An IM handle gives an easy way to ping people later, the other person is subscribing to be IM'd by you in the future.

JeffJenkins• 17 years ago

Having used the site, no one puts contact information in their profiles. And a request to use the built-in chat system right away is a pretty sure sign that I'm not going to want to talk to someone.

I'd bet that, to a point, there's a correlation between the volume of text sent and reply rate. However, that might just have to do with the fact that a longer message is more likely to reference specific things in the person's profile that they find interesting (for example, I replied to almost anyone who showed interest in the fact that I bake bread and like kites).

chaosmachine2• 17 years ago

Wow, atheist +42%, vegetarian +41%! I'm set :D

_cbsz2• 17 years ago

It's not +42%/+41%; it's 42%/41% average reply rate, whereas the overall average is 32%.

chaosmachine2• 17 years ago

Ah, you're right. Unusual graph format, would be helpful if they labeled the line.

dkarl• 17 years ago

Some girls get a hundred emails a week from guys looking for hookups. How are the numbers affected by those high-volume shameless creeps who spam every girl who looks easy to them? I suspect that physical compliments are a bad idea, but these numbers don't help confirm that. Saying a girl is "pretty" could actually help, yet score low in this analysis because it's a creep marker. There's no attempt at persuasive analysis here, just like in the other recent post that was featured on HN. Or did I miss the part where they explained that they targeted a certain subset of messages for analysis?

greendestiny• 17 years ago

It could be as simple as hot and sexy women get more messages and therefore reply to less as a percentage.

vaksel• 17 years ago

oh yeah the girls get spammed like crazy. They get like 500 emails a week. Hell a chick I know didn't even provide a picture and STILL got over 100 emails the first week.

smokinn• 17 years ago

She was probably featured in the "new users near you" email okcupid sends out. I imagine it trickled off after that though.

felideon4• 17 years ago

I wonder if "god" faired so poorly because it was in lowercase, as it fails the first advice: "Be literate." Christians are careful to use it as a proper noun, God. So if the word christian faired well, and god did not, it seems like it's a turn off because you're probably not really a Christian as opposed to the fact you mentioned God.

benatkin• 17 years ago

I doubt it. I'm willing to bet that they did a case-insensitive search. Not only does it make more sense for making these charts, it's also the default in SQL and in most full-text search tools.

felideon4• 17 years ago

Then the discrepancy baffles me.

blasdel• 17 years ago

Pretty sure all the comparisons are case-insensitive. Several are even explicitly stemmed for plurals.

_cbsz2• 17 years ago

Compare "Oh, hey, I see you're a Christian too." and "I hope we can grow and enjoy God's love together.". The latter seems to connote much more devotion than the former. I would bet that "God" is more likely to be used in a devoted sense than "Christian". I would further bet that the devoted can find each other at church and/or devoted language from a man to a woman in the first contact doesn't come off well. (Disclaimer: poster is an atheist who was raised Christian but does not intend to bash religion in this particular post.)

lucumo2• 17 years ago

Might also be because of things like "god damnit, ur hot". I got the feeling that they didn't really look into confounding variables, like common sentences that trigger multiple rules.

felideon4• 17 years ago

I agree with "I hope we can grow and enjoy God's love together." being a little freaky to tell someone online.

Batsu• 17 years ago

"God" is also sprinkled fairly liberally around some common phrases. "Oh my God" comes to mind, shouldn't be hard to think of a dozen others on your own.

I can't stay if these conditions are accounted for, of course.

roundsquare6• 17 years ago

I wonder how well mentioning religion to a person who puts religion on their profile vs mentioning to someone who doesn't compares. They say "Christin" doesn't help as much as atheist, but I would bet that people who put "Christian" in their profile respond more...

khafra• 17 years ago

On their first post on this subject, I asked if they were going to do some response modelling based not only on the message, but on profile features like spirituality, math ability, desire for love, etc.

No reply, unfortunately.

alxp2• 17 years ago

OKCupid seems to attract a hipper crowd more likely to not be religious, compared with eHarmony which has a pretty clear Christian vibe to it which would likely attract users who would reply more readily to 'god' than 'atheist'.

noodle2• 17 years ago

"how's it going. in your profile, you mention zombie metal bands. they're pretty awesome."

rimantas• 17 years ago

atheist zombies

hellweaver666• 17 years ago

that only applies if you want to pick up a Reddit user ;)

roundsquare6• 17 years ago

atheist vegetarian zombies??

bbsabelli• 17 years ago

Interesting. And predicatable?

I suspect that incorporating the second date conversion rates would skew this data significantly since vegetarian atheists are rarely alike.

Goladus• 17 years ago

This is really only marginally useful information. Interesting, but not as practical as it seems.

The writers' profile does not seem to have been taken into consideration. Rarely does anyone respond without first checking out the profile of the person who just sent the message. Is saying "hi" really a problem, or is it more that people who typically say "hi" also have a boring profile?

Also, getting a single response doesn't mean much. You might say "sorry" and a woman might respond "that's ok" but when you try to continue the conversation it'll go nowhere. Real life dating advice doesn't discourage saying sorry because you'll get ignored, it's discouraged because it makes you boring and lower status. If you can do it without falling into that trap, it works in real life. (Accidentally bump into her shopping cart and say "sorry" and then smile and change the subject)

My okc stats are: 26 attempts to initiate contact, 9 responses. 1 live meeting and 2 open threads(1 fresh, 1 getting stale)). I don't have numbers for people who tried to iniate with me, except that I've met at least 3 others.

So that means while I get a 35% response rate there's only an 11% meet rate after that (though it may be 22% soon). So 4% total. While getting a little feedback feels good and can be useful, a few polite responses is not generally what a user's goal is. How many messages result in meetings, that's what I want to know.

roundsquare6• 17 years ago

Not just that, but are people who start with "How's it going" generally writing better? There are a number of ways this data can be misleading... many of which fall under "correlation vs causation."

xiaoma2• 17 years ago

HN is the last place I expected to see online dating tips.

jrockway• 17 years ago

And yet, it's the first place were I expect to see "HN is the last place I expected to see..." posts.

xiaoma2• 17 years ago

Think of those posts as an immune response. Without it, the content of the articles and quality of the comments quickly matches that of Digg.com. Without enough of it, you get Reddit.

eru• 17 years ago

"Scientifically, this is because it’s a little evil sounding."

biohacker42• 17 years ago

Can someone explain to me why this is still not dead, while the link to 50 Lectures on Brain Anatomy and Development, Neuroscience, and Psychology is dead?

silverlake• 17 years ago

I just concocted a message on okcupid with almost all these phrases and I got a reply in 30 minutes. It works.

jules• 17 years ago

This data can be misleading. Girls probably get way more messasges and guys send more messages. The reply rate for messages sent by a man is probably much lower than for messages sent by a woman.

A man in more likely to call a woman "pretty" than the other way around. Thus the reply rate for "You're pretty" is low (30%, the average rate is 32%). But the reply rate for man-to-woman messages is 27%. So saying "you're pretty" probably helps.

clistctrl• 17 years ago

I met my current girlfriend on OKC (dating for a bit over a year), its a great site :)

dgreensp• 17 years ago

Interesting data, but lots of fallacies in the analysis. Correlation/causation is just a start.

Online Dating Advice: Exactly What To Say In A First Message

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