The main function of any dating service is to select the most suitable match for a person. But no site or application will work until you take it seriously and spend time creating a detailed profile. After all, this is your calling card, and it’s on that basis that anyone’s first impression of you is formed.
Since the dawn of dating sites, a lot of research studies and surveys have already been conducted to determine which factors most influence success in online dating. Some of the most interesting of them we’d like to share with you today.
How a profile photo can affect online dating success
In early December 2022, writer and traveler Max Woolf published data from a large research project on passport-photo.online to find out how a profile photo can affect online dating success. The results were very interesting.
It turned out that there are three categories of photos that turn off most users:
- photos from strange angles
- overly heavily edited photos
- photos of a person smoking or vaping
If you have pictures like this in your profile, we advise you to remove them and not publish them again so as not to alienate other people.
Among many interesting statistics, these are especially relevant:
- About 31% of users of dating sites and apps do not update their profile photo within the first year.
- 15% of men take pictures with other people’s pets to get more attention.
- Professional photos increase the number of matches by an average of 49%.
- 73% of users hope that drastic photo retouching will be banned by dating services.
- 89% of respondents said they had at least once met a person offline who was completely different to their profile photo.
All this tells us one thing: you should definitely not completely trust photos on dating sites and apps. In reality, a person can look completely different. But how, in this case, can you make new acquaintances and not be deceived?
Use online video chat!
If you’re really set on finding a great match and understand that you cannot completely rely on profile photos, online video chat may be the best solution for you. Here you immediately communicate with a person via video, and see and hear them. Therefore, you can more objectively assess their appearance and not worry that in real life the person will look completely different.
On anonymous video chat services like Chatspin, Chatrandom or CooMeet, users do not have regular profiles. This is actually a plus, because even with determination it is very difficult to create a false image that the person doesn’t resemble at all in real life. Online video chat allows you to get to know your chat partner much better in just a couple of minutes of communication than in many hours of texting.
On the other hand, you should understand that with video chats, there is no question of pre-selecting partners. You cannot study a person’s profile and decide whether you want to communicate with them or not. The system just connects you with a random person and you immediately start getting acquainted. Of course, at any time you can end communication and switch to the next person, but that’s still not the same as looking for a potential partner on classic dating sites.
Online video chat takes much less time and can be a really promising platform for those who are looking for new friends or dreaming of meeting their love. Be sure to try this dating format if you haven’t before. It’s worth it!
What else do the research findings say?
In October 2022, Newsweek released online dating surveys with more than 1,200 participants. The purpose of these studies was to determine how much the content of a profile on a dating site influences other users and what elements of it become decisive when choosing a potential partner. Some of the results are very interesting:
- Most of the respondents agreed that original and non-standard profiles look more attractive. Participants rated sense of humor and intelligence highly, which can be judged by looking at a person’s profile. For example, the presence of metaphors in the account description immediately increased interest in it in the eyes of other users.
- Profiles with comprehensive and accurate information about a person were found the most attractive. Conversely, accounts with vague and generalized wording seem less attractive, and in some cases even repulsive.
- The attractiveness of a profile was affected not only by the quality of information, but also by its quantity. The more detail a person includes, the more confidence they inspire. Conversely, if they are limited to short, vague phrases, this only provokes distrust.
Of course, a sample of 1200 people does not allow us to form a truly objective picture of modern dating or the impact of filling profiles on dating success. But even these results are very revealing.
Watch out for overly attractive profiles: they can be a trap
Unfortunately, dating sites and apps are extremely fertile ground for all kinds of internet scammers and swindlers. And during the Covid-19 pandemic and mass quarantine, the situation only worsened. Hackers are very skillful at attracting the attention of gullible users, creating fake but very realistic and attractive profiles in order to ingratiate themselves with someone and then steal money from them.
Recently, the Pew Research Center published the results of its own study on this issue. Participants were asked if they had experienced lies and deceit on dating services. And if so, why do they think people lie about themselves? The results are as follows:
- 71% of people lie about themselves in order to appear more attractive to others.
- 50% lie for fraudulent purposes.
- 25% create fake profiles to spy on others.
- 18% seek to gain access to other people’s confidential information in this way.
We want to emphasize that fraud in modern web dating is an extremely serious problem, the scale of which should not be underestimated. If you have a suspicion that your new acquaintance is a scammer, we advise you to be especially careful. And even if there are no such suspicions, this is no reason to relax and assume that this person is reliable and has no bad intentions.
Here we can again return to the online video chat format.. Communication takes place via video, which does not give scammers the opportunity to mislead you so easily, meaning this format is in most cases safer and more reliable. But online video chat isn’t perfect either. Your safety on the Web is entirely in your own hands. Stay vigilant, carefully study the profiles of new acquaintances, communicate via video, take your time with the first real meeting, and do not be overly gullible. Otherwise, someone is very likely to take advantage of you.