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So the summary is that a longer message has a higher chance for a response, but it's more efficient to just spew out a lot of shorter messages and spam everyone
by imp 17y ago
So the summary is that a longer message has a higher chance for a response, but it's more efficient to just spew out a lot of shorter messages and spam everyone.
- steveklabnik 17y agoThis carries the implicit assumption that everyone you're messaging is equally important for you to get a date with.
- philwelch 17y agoOvercommitting to any one person based upon an OkCupid profile without even having messaged them seems like a fallacy too. It's probably best to narrow down a reasonably sized bucket of people to message, without too many hopes or priorities about which one you end up with.
- Dilpil 17y agoAt which point spending ten times as long on each message is probably still worth it.
- philwelch 17y agoDepending on the opportunity cost of your time, yes. Short introductory messages are, however, useful for screening out people. After that you can go long. Even with a narrowed down pool, you're wide enough that being able to message the entire pool rather than a subset should be the more effective option.
- alain94040 17y agocopy/paste? How does that study account for that? Messages could be very long but copied very quickly. Frankly, this is pretty close to link bait in my book (hot topic, no substance)
- steveklabnik 17y agoOh, I'm not saying that you should 'overcommit.' Just that 'spamming everyone' isn't really a great idea.
- taw 17y agoIt's a fair assumption by the time you're sending them the first message. After some chat you can differentiate between people you care about more and people you care about less, but from just photos and profile - not that much.
- miloshh 17y agoIt is assumed that longer messages take longer to compose. But that's only true if you're starting from scratch every time. You should instead write one good generic message and send it out to many people, only inserting one sentence to reflect on something specific to the particular profile.
- msluyter 17y agoI think (smart) women can usually deduce that you've done that, and tend to react negatively.
- seldo 17y agoYour assumption is that he is looking for smart women.
- dkarl 17y agoThe reaction you'll get is, "He's really slick at promoting himself." Most women will speak this sentence with a curled lip and a tone of disdain, but if you're looking for women who like a guy with an elevator pitch, this just might work.
- miloshh 17y agoI think that's unlikely, but it would be an interesting experiment to find out for sure.
- roundsquare 17y agoIf so, then maybe some middle ground will work. E.g. the more interested you are, the more you customize the message.
- taw 17y agoI tried this on okcupid and elsewhere, but short custom messages work far better than long generic ones.
- msluyter 17y agoYes, this was my first thought. If I was seriously stressed for time, then I'd agree with idea of optimizing for overall percentages. But if you really want to optimize the chances that a specific person will reply to you, then it seems as if longer is better. Still, I'd like to compare a short, witty, well-crafted, personally tailored message to a longer, more-generic one. (Not that that could be measured statistically...)
- roundsquare 17y agoOn that note, it'd be interesting to somehow mix this data in with (self reported) happiness of people who end up together. Not sure how... maybe happiness (1 - 10) vs length of original message.
- dkarl 17y agoLong, rambling messages inspire feelings of pity and guilt. The longer the message, the more likely the recipient will feel obligated to send a polite response. Also, when a woman sends a polite negative response to a man, he's likely to respond with, "Thanks for responding, good luck in your search!" That shouldn't count as "starting a conversation," but according to this blog post it does.