7 ms·

OkCupid probably has a very good idea of how attractive a person is based on how many profile views and messages they get. I'd be very surprised if they aren't

by jules 14y ago

OkCupid probably has a very good idea of how attractive a person is based on how many profile views and messages they get. I'd be very surprised if they aren't using that data to match roughly equally attractive people. Perhaps they are even taking personal preferences into account with probabilistic matrix factorization that is often used for recommendation systems. Basically if person X shows interest in A, and person Y shows interest in A and in B, then this makes it more likely that person X will like B as well. Whether A and B are movies, products on Amazon or people on OkCupid, PMF can exploit this kind of data to match people to products or to other people. The biggest problem with algorithmic blind dating is probably not actual average quality of dates, but rather (perceived) risk of going on a bad date. People trust their friends a lot more than an algorithm.

shardling 14y ago
They definitely sort people into attractiveness tiers of some sort. You'll get a message mentioning that you're in the top half the first time their metrics indicate so, and it claims that this affects what members are presented/suggested to you. I'm not sure if this is based solely on the star ratings members can assign, or if they take other interactions into account. I wouldn't be surprised if they do more subtle things with the same data as well.
macchina 14y ago
>I'd be very surprised if they aren't using that data to match roughly equally attractive people. I can confirm this is true. Last year, as an experiment, I made a dummy account with a picture of former NFL quarterback Kyle Boller but the same profile/personality as me. His matches are significantly more attractive than mine. He also received this email a few weeks after registration: We just detected that you're now among the most attractive people on OkCupid. We learned this from clicks to your profile and reactions to you in Quickmatch and Quiver. Did you get a new haircut or something? Well, it's working! To celebrate, we've adjusted your OkCupid experience: You'll see more attractive people in your match results. This won't affect your match percentages, which are still based purely on your answers and desired match's answers. But we'll recommend more attractive people to you. You'll also appear more often to other attractive people. Sign in to see your newly-shuffled matches. Have fun, and don't let this go to your head
- darkxanthos 14y ago
  I thought everyone got that as a marketing gimmick since I received it too.
  - starpilot 14y ago
    Nope. I never got the email. Make a fake account with a generic ugly photo and that account will never get the email either. The attractiveness status can change BTW: http://www.quora.com/OkCupid/Is-being-one-of-the-most-attractive-people-on-OKCupid-a-permanent-status http://www.quora.com/OkCupid/Is-being-one-of-the-most-attrac.... It is a running record of how attractive you are compared to other users.
- artursapek 14y ago
  "You'll see more attractive people in your match results." Reading this email actually disturbed me. A computer program is telling you that you're attractive, and that it's going to hustle "more of the attractive people" to you. "the attractive people" I'm only 20 years old and still have plenty to learn about ladies and relationships, but I know I can do better than have a server cluster tell me who is "in my league" and who are "the attractive people." Holy shit.
  - windsurfer 14y ago
    I am 23 and I think it's pretty cool. It makes sure that the attractive people are not swamped with messages and driven off the site.
    - artursapek 14y ago
      Imagine if "attractive people" walked around with body-guards who only let other "attractive people" with body-guards come up and talk to them. I can see the value in it for this website as a product, I think what really hit me was the way it's worded.
      - ahh 14y ago
quandrum 14y ago
> OkCupid probably has a very good idea of how attractive a person They do. They will tell you when they think you attractive. You get a message like "Congrats, you're in the top X% of attractiveness on OKC, we'll start showing you more attractive matches now." This is something only those attractive people know about.
jiggy2011 14y ago
OKC pictures can probably be a tad misleading since they are often taken with poor quality camera phones and people will deliberately try to take photos at more flattering angles. Also a lot of men will just spam these sites and send a message to every woman within X distance of them.
- danso 14y ago
  But there's several ways to dissect this data. For example, the number of unsolicited messages that a man gets and the number of followups (and perhaps, how fast those followup messages occur) is probably a good insight to how "attractive" he is. Now if you think its harder to determine this for females because the amount of noise that they get...then the computer can factor in the number of "attractive" men (as judged above) who fawn over you, either by messaging or stalky profile views. And of course, number of profile views (over time) and by repeat viewers (indicating the number of obsessed secret fans you have) is probably a good baseline to start from.
  - jiggy2011 14y ago
    This is true, but it depends how much more (or less) attractive one is made to look by their photos than how they actually look IRL.
    - nnnnni 14y ago
      There's also the classic myspace angle problem: http://www.officialdatingresource.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/10/a1.jpg http://www.officialdatingresource.com/wp-content/uploads/200... turns into http://www.officialdatingresource.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/10/a2.jpg http://www.officialdatingresource.com/wp-content/uploads/200...
      - jiggy2011 14y ago
        I did a similar experiment years back on hotornot years back. Took pictures of myself from various different angles and watched the scores after a few days. A self shot face picture got me about a 5-6. A side profile head shot got me about a 4 and a shot taken by a photographer friend with a good camera and my shirt half undone got me a 9.5 or something.
cwb71 14y ago
I know this is true, and it has always hurt my feelings a little bit. I tend to find the women OkC matches me with plain, average, or unattractive. So if their algorithms are correct, what does this say about me?
- dubfan 14y ago
  Women on OKCupid tend to rate men disproportionately low. There is an OKCupid blog post showing the distribution of the ratings they give men, and they are strongly skewed towards the lower end of the scale. This is one of the many reasons I don't use online dating sites.
  - graue 14y ago
    Since the algorithm is based on percentiles, if all women uniformly rate men lower than men rate women, how would it have any effect?
    - jaggederest 14y ago
      There's less dynamic range between ratings when they're all in the low end of the scale?
      - graue 14y ago
        Ok, that's true, and could potentially have the side effect that matches presented to women are more random (more noise in the data). Even then, it seems like the effect would be kinda weak, no? And no individual guy loses out, except possibly to someone who was just about as attractive as him anyway (and he's equally as likely to gain).
  - marvin 14y ago
    Yep. Here it is. As a guy who's by most empirical measures not in the top 50% of attractiveness in the first place, this makes me depressed about human nature. http://blog.okcupid.com/index.php/your-looks-and-online-dating/ http://blog.okcupid.com/index.php/your-looks-and-online-dati...

by jules 14y ago

shardling 14y ago

They definitely sort people into attractiveness tiers of some sort. You'll get a message mentioning that you're in the top half the first time their metrics indicate so, and it claims that this affects what members are presented/suggested to you. I'm not sure if this is based solely on the star ratings members can assign, or if they take other interactions into account. I wouldn't be surprised if they do more subtle things with the same data as well.

macchina 14y ago

>I'd be very surprised if they aren't using that data to match roughly equally attractive people. I can confirm this is true. Last year, as an experiment, I made a dummy account with a picture of former NFL quarterback Kyle Boller but the same profile/personality as me. His matches are significantly more attractive than mine. He also received this email a few weeks after registration: We just detected that you're now among the most attractive people on OkCupid. We learned this from clicks to your profile and reactions to you in Quickmatch and Quiver. Did you get a new haircut or something? Well, it's working! To celebrate, we've adjusted your OkCupid experience: You'll see more attractive people in your match results. This won't affect your match percentages, which are still based purely on your answers and desired match's answers. But we'll recommend more attractive people to you. You'll also appear more often to other attractive people. Sign in to see your newly-shuffled matches. Have fun, and don't let this go to your head

darkxanthos 14y ago
I thought everyone got that as a marketing gimmick since I received it too.
- starpilot 14y ago
  Nope. I never got the email. Make a fake account with a generic ugly photo and that account will never get the email either. The attractiveness status can change BTW: http://www.quora.com/OkCupid/Is-being-one-of-the-most-attractive-people-on-OKCupid-a-permanent-status http://www.quora.com/OkCupid/Is-being-one-of-the-most-attrac.... It is a running record of how attractive you are compared to other users.
artursapek 14y ago
"You'll see more attractive people in your match results." Reading this email actually disturbed me. A computer program is telling you that you're attractive, and that it's going to hustle "more of the attractive people" to you. "the attractive people" I'm only 20 years old and still have plenty to learn about ladies and relationships, but I know I can do better than have a server cluster tell me who is "in my league" and who are "the attractive people." Holy shit.
- windsurfer 14y ago
  I am 23 and I think it's pretty cool. It makes sure that the attractive people are not swamped with messages and driven off the site.
  - artursapek 14y ago
    Imagine if "attractive people" walked around with body-guards who only let other "attractive people" with body-guards come up and talk to them. I can see the value in it for this website as a product, I think what really hit me was the way it's worded.
    - ahh 14y ago

quandrum 14y ago

> OkCupid probably has a very good idea of how attractive a person They do. They will tell you when they think you attractive. You get a message like "Congrats, you're in the top X% of attractiveness on OKC, we'll start showing you more attractive matches now." This is something only those attractive people know about.

jiggy2011 14y ago

OKC pictures can probably be a tad misleading since they are often taken with poor quality camera phones and people will deliberately try to take photos at more flattering angles. Also a lot of men will just spam these sites and send a message to every woman within X distance of them.

danso 14y ago
But there's several ways to dissect this data. For example, the number of unsolicited messages that a man gets and the number of followups (and perhaps, how fast those followup messages occur) is probably a good insight to how "attractive" he is. Now if you think its harder to determine this for females because the amount of noise that they get...then the computer can factor in the number of "attractive" men (as judged above) who fawn over you, either by messaging or stalky profile views. And of course, number of profile views (over time) and by repeat viewers (indicating the number of obsessed secret fans you have) is probably a good baseline to start from.
- jiggy2011 14y ago
  This is true, but it depends how much more (or less) attractive one is made to look by their photos than how they actually look IRL.
  - nnnnni 14y ago
    There's also the classic myspace angle problem: http://www.officialdatingresource.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/10/a1.jpg http://www.officialdatingresource.com/wp-content/uploads/200... turns into http://www.officialdatingresource.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/10/a2.jpg http://www.officialdatingresource.com/wp-content/uploads/200...
    - jiggy2011 14y ago
      I did a similar experiment years back on hotornot years back. Took pictures of myself from various different angles and watched the scores after a few days. A self shot face picture got me about a 5-6. A side profile head shot got me about a 4 and a shot taken by a photographer friend with a good camera and my shirt half undone got me a 9.5 or something.

cwb71 14y ago

I know this is true, and it has always hurt my feelings a little bit. I tend to find the women OkC matches me with plain, average, or unattractive. So if their algorithms are correct, what does this say about me?

dubfan 14y ago
Women on OKCupid tend to rate men disproportionately low. There is an OKCupid blog post showing the distribution of the ratings they give men, and they are strongly skewed towards the lower end of the scale. This is one of the many reasons I don't use online dating sites.
- graue 14y ago
  Since the algorithm is based on percentiles, if all women uniformly rate men lower than men rate women, how would it have any effect?
  - jaggederest 14y ago
    There's less dynamic range between ratings when they're all in the low end of the scale?
    - graue 14y ago
      Ok, that's true, and could potentially have the side effect that matches presented to women are more random (more noise in the data). Even then, it seems like the effect would be kinda weak, no? And no individual guy loses out, except possibly to someone who was just about as attractive as him anyway (and he's equally as likely to gain).
- marvin 14y ago
  Yep. Here it is. As a guy who's by most empirical measures not in the top 50% of attractiveness in the first place, this makes me depressed about human nature. http://blog.okcupid.com/index.php/your-looks-and-online-dating/ http://blog.okcupid.com/index.php/your-looks-and-online-dati...