INTERVIEWS WITH USERS OF OKCUPID AND MATCH DATING SITES
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Katie Townsend
INFX 598
November 4, 2012
Interviews with Users of OkCupid and Match Dating Sites
Introduction and Methodology
This fieldwork consisted of three interviews all conducted via Skype. In person interviews
would have been preferable, but geographic locations made Skype the best option. Interviews
ranged from 50 – 70 minutes and the audio for each one was recorded and then transcribed.
The transcripts were then examined for common themes. The interviews were semi-structured,
but I did encourage participants to go off topic or bring up new topics. The questions for each
interview were essentially the same, but some answers prompted new questions.
Participants
Jennifer
Jennifer volunteered to be interviewed in response to a message I posted via Facebook
that I was looking for people who had experience with online dating. Jennifer is 37, works at a
design firm, and lives in a large city. Jennifer told me that she has a unique angle to online
dating because she is in a long-term committed relationship but they are polyamorous.
Consequently, this has implications for online dating because she has to both let people know
she is available, but also be up front about her relationship status. She has had an online dating
profile since 2009 on the site OkCupid, but has deactivated it on and off due to being busy or
not wanting to date outside her relationship at the time. Jennifer met her current partner, who
she is engaged to, while playing the online video game World of Warcraft. Therefore, online
dating is more of an activity in addition to her long-term relationship, which differs from some
online daters who are looking for a single partner. It appears to remove some of the pressure
because it is a complementary activity rather than a main focus.
Mary
Mary is a friend of a friend and was recommended to me as a person with online dating
experience. Mary is 28, works in web design, and also lives in a large city. She is not currently
using online dating, but had a profile with OkCupid once for approximately four months and then
a second time for only one month. Mary does not feel online dating is for her, but has not
completely ruled out trying it again in the future. Mary started using online dating because she
had moved to a city where she did not have many contacts and she was having difficulty
meeting people in other situations. She works at a small company, so finding someone at work
is not an option. She also self identifies as somewhat anti-social and indicated that she did not
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have a lot of social circles where she lives. Mary was interested in online dating as a way to find
a long-term relationship and because she wanted to get to know a person more before meeting
them in person and wanted a way to filter potential partners.
Carrie
Carrie was also referred to me by a friend. She is 34, a firefighter, and lives in a medium
sized city. Carrie dated online for two years using the site Match. She still has a profile, but it is
currently deactivated as she is in a relationship. However, she did not meet her current partner
online. Carrie chose online dating after she divorced and started feeling that she was always
dating the same type of man. She decided that if she wanted a change then she would need to
try something different. She also briefly tried the site Plenty of Fish after encouragement from a
friend, but removed her profile after one week. In that short time Carrie was overwhelmed by the
amount of people on the site and by being contacted by people who were clearly not a good
match. She also felt that Plenty of Fish had more people looking for casual sex and she was not
interested in that. Carrie went into online dating with an open mind and little expectation that she
would find someone. Carrie described her view of online dating as “a different tool to have fun
with” and a way to expand her social circle.
Findings
Even though all three participants approach online dating from different perspectives and
have different expectations, many common themes were apparent. This section discusses
some of the findings and similarities and differences of the participants. While the interviews
yielded considerable data, the main topics include profile information and representation of self,
filtering or vetting potential partners, searching for matches, mis/disinformation, meeting in
person, and managing information about others.
Profile Information and Representation of Self
All three participants agreed that writing a profile is time intensive and requires
evaluation of the information one provides. All three women were highly aware of safety
precautions and did not include personally identifiable information in their profiles. Additionally,
all three mentioned the difficulty involved in trying to describe yourself and wanting to come
across in the best possible light but also be honest about who you are. Both Jennifer and Carrie
mentioned thinking about how certain information would sound to prospective dates. Carrie had
friends review her profile to make sure she sounded fun, sexy, and authentic. In terms of the
profile being an accurate representation of self, Jennifer specifically liked OkCupid because she
felt that through the profile and questions she could represent herself how she wanted. Mary, on
the other hand, worried about being clever or having perfect answers and felt that the few
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paragraphs in her profile were inadequate. Carrie did not find the profile to be perfect but does
think it to be a good basis for one’s personality.
Filtering and Vetting
All three participants appreciated the ability to filter potential dates by key attributes. For
Mary, filtering was one of the main reasons she tried online dating. Filtering also played a key
role in Jennifer’s experience because of her polyamorous status. Being able to filter by lifestyle
or community made it easier for her to find people. Jennifer felt this was important because she
was concerned with being honest with people and making sure she did not interact with anyone
who was not interested in polyamory. Similarly, Carrie is a very tall woman and placed
significant importance on height and mentioned several times that she almost exclusively
filtered by height. Mary also valued the ability to filter but also felt it would be helpful if OkCupid
did a better job of filtering for her. She said that she could filter who she searched for but not
who contacted her.
Searching
As mentioned previously, all three participants valued the filtering feature especially in
regard to searching for potential matches. However, all three were also concerned about being
too specific and missing people they might be interested in. Both Mary and Carrie said they had
a basic idea of who they wanted but it is difficult to know in perfect detail exactly who you will
like. Consequently all three women had “deal breaker” attributes, but also allowed for some
chance or surprise.
All three interviewees were also satisfied with the search options available on both
OkCupid and Match. Jennifer did have some trouble in the past when she lived in California
because a search with the word poly would yield people who went to Cal Poly rather than
people who were polyamorous. More advanced or Boolean searching would have been helpful
in this instance. Mary did not have any problems with the general search on OkCupid, but did
prefer the Quick Search feature, which allows users to browse photos and a profile summary
and then rate each person. A rating of 4 or 5 stars is then shared with the person. Mary liked
this method of searching because photos helped her better evaluate the person, and she felt
that the rating was less of a commitment then sending a message to someone.
Mis/Disinformation
Fortunately, mis/disinformation was not common for the three participants. All of them
were generally trusting that people were accurately representing themselves. Jennifer gave an
example of a profile that she connected with and upon reaching the end of the writing she found
out that it was part of a role-playing activity. She was disappointed and felt it was an improper
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use of the site. Carrie described this concept more as people embellishing or talking up their
situation. She had a date with a man who turned out different in person in that he lived with his
mother and did not have a job. With all three interviews I got the sense that people understand
that everybody tries to make themselves sound as attractive as possible, but people are honest
for the most part.
Meeting in Person
The stories from participants about meeting dates in person was one of the most
enjoyable parts of the interviews. All of the participants had a sense of humor about dates that
went poorly and I got a sense that a bad date here and there is inevitable. Jennifer shared a
story about a meeting a man who turned out to be so anxious in person that he was literally in a
cold sweat and this negatively impacted the entire date. Carrie also had an awkward experience
where the man was chatty online but extremely shy in person. None of the interviewees spent a
lot of time emailing or chatting online before meeting in person, so they did not have much
experience with being surprised or disappointed in who the person actually was. Mary ended up
going on several dates and dating one man for over two months. With the man that she dated
for two months she noticed that her initial impression of him from his profile changed after
spending more time with him. Additionally, Mary mentioned that several of her dates felt forced
or artificial and she also felt that after the initial excitement with her two-month relationship it felt
like she was trying to hard to like him. Carrie had the most positive experience and described all
of her dates as a really good time. She continues to be friends with a few of the people she met
who did not work out romantically.
Managing Information
One particularly interesting finding was the need for managing the information learned
about others in the process of online dating. Based on my interviews there are two aspects of
this. The first is having so much information about someone such as likes and dislikes in
advance of a date. In Jennifer’s experience having this information commonly made
conversation during a date more difficult because she already knew the person’s favorite book
or movie etc. On the other hand, Carrie thought that knowing this information made
conversation easier and provided more topics for discussion during a date.
The second aspect of managing information came up in Mary’s interview. She noted that
many times while browsing profiles of men she was interested in or emailing with she felt like
she was working on a school project as it required remembering so much information and
studying the profiles. Mary felt a lot of pressure to always refer to some aspect of the profile
when writing an email and before dates she would study the persons profile so that she knew
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what to talk about. She also said she had a hard time keeping facts about each person straight.
Carrie also identified with this, and said that she managed this by taking notes about each
person. Carrie preferred notes over revisiting profiles because a user can see who looks at their
profile so Carrie was worried about coming across as odd or obsessive by constantly reviewing
a person’s profile.
Summary and Recommendations
While this research was small in scope it still provides some valuable considerations for
further study and implications for information professionals. My primary recommendation
addresses the difficulty the participants had in managing information about other people on
online dating sites. Users can of course find their own ways of organizing this information, but a
feature that helps users organize, evaluate, and annotate their matches would be valuable. This
could be part of a specific system or dating site. Additionally, after discussing this concept with
another classmate we thought that a stand-alone app, similar to Evernote that organized
information across dating sites would be particularly helpful especially since so many people
use multiple dating sites. This could also be useful on dates since the information could easily
be accessible on a mobile device.
Related to managing information is the concept of filtering. All participants were happy
with the ability to filter prospective matches while searching or browsing, but Mary indicated that
she felt there was not a filter for her. Carrie used the blocking feature on Match to limit who
contacted her, but this was mostly in response to men from out of area. And also mentioned
getting a surprising amount of messages from people interested in casual sex or from people
with low match percentages. While it may be difficult to balance being open to chance and
restricting who contacts you, it would be worthwhile to examine possible solutions as all three
women felt a substantial portion of their matches were off.
Another take away from this research is in light of Jennifer’s response to the question of
online dating improvements. Jennifer feels that there is a trend back toward offline dating and
she would like to see better integration of online and offline dating. This is being partially
achieved with virtual dating services, however there is still more that can be done. Many sites
could benefit from features that provide a more in depth experience or allow for a more nuanced
representation of individuals. This concept is mentioned in Bosker (2012) in relation to the
increase in people using social media sites for online dating because they can better replicate
what it is like to get to know someone offline.
Mary also commented on this issue in that her favorite feature of OkCupid was the
mobile app because when she got an email through the site it displayed on her phone similarly
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to a text message. She liked that she did not have to give her phone number to someone but
still felt like she was interacting in a way that integrated more into her everyday communication
habits. Additionally, the mobile app was a convenient way for her to check in during the day and
get notifications. Therefore, more research is needed on how to more seamlessly incorporate
online dating practices into a person’s schedule and communication preferences.
References
Bosker, B. (2012, October 12). You Had Me @ LOL: Finding Your Soul Mate on Social Sites.
Huffington Post. Retrieved October 16, 2012, from
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/12/social-
networks_n_1955496.html?icid=maing-
grid7%7Cmaing9%7Cdl11%7Csec1_lnk2%26pLid%3D219800
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