That likely depends on where you live and what people you are seeking. In many areas OkCupid is good because a lot of interesting people sign up for it. It’s matching algorithm also allows you to search for people with similar personalities.
Generally, my experience has been that ease of access is negatively correlated with the overall positivity of my experience.
Pay sites seem to eliminate a lot of insincere people, where apps like Tinder (free and almost instant setup) attract many flaky people, making it almost unusable in my experience.
Then I would say that your analysis is correct: in my experience, Tinder and the like are more suited to the good looking, younger and fling-searching crowd, in your case you’d be better off with Match. com and eHarmony.
My experience is that pay sites are geared most towards signaling professionalism and (moderate) wealth—which is often shorthand for ‘adult’, and therefore useful. However, in my experience OKCupid has provided better signaling for intelligence and thoughtfulness, simply because it allows users to write commentary on any question you answer. Most users do not take advantage of this, but looking for ‘explained answers’ is one of the most useful metrics I have found on any dating site.
Why do you consider that link to be good? It’s a website that makes money by directing people to dating sides with affiliate programs and therefore doesn’t list free websites like OkCupid or Finya.
Payed websites not only mean that you pay money but also that you have people reading your messages and generally trying to manipulate you to spend money.
Your criticism of the linked site is valid. Nonetheless it does list the platforms with the largest number of customers.
I tried Okcupid and the number of people there seems to be quite small compared to these platforms (I did like the flexible site mechanics though). Actually I will try one or two of these paid services shortly.
One reason people might pay for such services is because paying signals that you are willing to invest in dating and by extension the partner. We will see.
A while ago I sat at the community camp in Berlin where the CEO of FriendScoot24 and the CEO of ElitePartner were in attendance.
That gave me an interesting perspective into how those sites work.
For them it’s important that you pay for the service. That means they have humans reading your messages to check that you don’t give the other person your email address in the first message.
They also allow you to write messages to people who can read your message but need to upgrade their account to actually read them.
Apart from that I don’t want to stop you from trying any of them as the invested money isn’t that big compared to the possible benefit.
Nonetheless it does list the platforms with the largest number of customers.
Customers, in the sense that people pay for the service. Not customers in the sense of users. Finya has a large amount of users in Germany.
On LW person recently wrote on his facebook feed that a while ago he reasoned that there were 1000 people in the world who fit his list of potential partners. Then he went on to reason that’s no problem because he can actually meet those people.
Multiple people I know in the German LW scene have talked about having OkCupid profiles while I don’t think anybody talked about having a profile on other sites.
Which is the best online dating site or dating app? Why?
OKCupid has way more people from geeky demographics than most other dating sites.
LessWrong meetups obviously. Unless you want to date irrational people. :D
That likely depends on where you live and what people you are seeking. In many areas OkCupid is good because a lot of interesting people sign up for it. It’s matching algorithm also allows you to search for people with similar personalities.
Surprisingly, I’ve had more success meeting nerdy types on Tinder than OkCupid.
I think this might be because there are more people on Tinder.
Are you good looking? What kind of relationship are you searching for? Where do you live?
I’m average. Monogamous. U.S.
I’m looking for more of a meta analysis, though.
Generally, my experience has been that ease of access is negatively correlated with the overall positivity of my experience.
Pay sites seem to eliminate a lot of insincere people, where apps like Tinder (free and almost instant setup) attract many flaky people, making it almost unusable in my experience.
Then I would say that your analysis is correct: in my experience, Tinder and the like are more suited to the good looking, younger and fling-searching crowd, in your case you’d be better off with Match. com and eHarmony.
My experience is that pay sites are geared most towards signaling professionalism and (moderate) wealth—which is often shorthand for ‘adult’, and therefore useful. However, in my experience OKCupid has provided better signaling for intelligence and thoughtfulness, simply because it allows users to write commentary on any question you answer. Most users do not take advantage of this, but looking for ‘explained answers’ is one of the most useful metrics I have found on any dating site.
That heavily depends on your country. For Germany see here.
Why do you consider that link to be good? It’s a website that makes money by directing people to dating sides with affiliate programs and therefore doesn’t list free websites like OkCupid or Finya.
Payed websites not only mean that you pay money but also that you have people reading your messages and generally trying to manipulate you to spend money.
Your criticism of the linked site is valid. Nonetheless it does list the platforms with the largest number of customers.
I tried Okcupid and the number of people there seems to be quite small compared to these platforms (I did like the flexible site mechanics though). Actually I will try one or two of these paid services shortly.
One reason people might pay for such services is because paying signals that you are willing to invest in dating and by extension the partner. We will see.
A while ago I sat at the community camp in Berlin where the CEO of FriendScoot24 and the CEO of ElitePartner were in attendance. That gave me an interesting perspective into how those sites work.
For them it’s important that you pay for the service. That means they have humans reading your messages to check that you don’t give the other person your email address in the first message. They also allow you to write messages to people who can read your message but need to upgrade their account to actually read them.
Apart from that I don’t want to stop you from trying any of them as the invested money isn’t that big compared to the possible benefit.
Customers, in the sense that people pay for the service. Not customers in the sense of users. Finya has a large amount of users in Germany.
On LW person recently wrote on his facebook feed that a while ago he reasoned that there were 1000 people in the world who fit his list of potential partners. Then he went on to reason that’s no problem because he can actually meet those people.
Multiple people I know in the German LW scene have talked about having OkCupid profiles while I don’t think anybody talked about having a profile on other sites.