Your Looks and Your Inbox

http://blog.okcupid.com/index.php/2009/11/17/your-looks-and-online-dating/

I saw some great articles come out of the OKCupid’s OKTrends blogs the other day. some of it was controversial and some of it was downright obvious. My favorite was the one about you”looks and your inbox. The only problem was the persons “looks” can only be determined by the photo that they decide to upload to the website. If a attractive person decides to upload an unattractive photo then what do they expect? We have had many clients who have admitted that they did not really like the photos that they started out with on the dating sites and were still surprised that they got so little mail in their inbox?

What I really want to see is a good study on the effects of quality photos on online dating. If a person uploads the very best photo of themselves, and i mean a legitimate photo, not a retouched monstrosity how well will they do thann if they uploaded a crappy photo of themselves. Now that would be a study worth doing.

Here is my comment about the study ….

Why is everyone acting like this is such a big surprise? Spend 5 seconds with an online dating site and what do they show you? Photos? row after row of photos of people that are supposed to meet your criteria. it makes perfect sense.

What doesn’t make sense is the fact that many people pretend that their photo does not matter. I mean come on …Online dating is the ultimate in self promotion. First impressions matter, and they matter most in online dating …and how do you make a great first impression? with a great dating Profile photos. How much more simple could it be? yeeeesh!

if you don’t care enough to put a good photo of yourself online then you must not really care about it all that much. Who wants to date someone that can’t even muster the energy to portray themselves in the best light?

A better study would be, take the same person with a great photo from one of the pro dating profile places like datingheadshots and then take the same person with their regular crappy snapshot and see which photo generates the most responses. that’s the study I’m looking for …not one that essentially boils down to the quality of the photo that someone decides to post.

Tags: Blog, Dating, OkCupid, Personals, Relationships

This entry was posted on Monday, November 23rd, 2009 at 6:20 pm and is filed under Dating, Online Dating, Online Dating Sites, Photography. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.