Christian Rudder is one of the co-founders of OkCupid and to this day he is still crunching numbers and digesting its data. Because of his insider access into the databases of a prolific online dating site, he is able to get his hands on information that very few social scientists can. In his new book, Dataclysm: Who We Are When We Think No One’s Looking, Rudder looks at the mathematics behind online dating and sheds light on some of his most startling conclusions.
New York Magazine was kind enough to reprint a excerpt from his book that looked at the efficacy of messaging. The data shows that shorter messages receive the highest rate of response and that taking your time to compose a message is helpful, but only to a certain point.
What was most interesting is that the research showed that copying and pasting a message is the most efficient way of communicating because the user will receive the highest proportion of messages replied to as it relates to the time spent composing the original message.
Sitewide, the copy-and-paste strategy underperforms from-scratch messaging by about 25 percent, but in terms of effort-in to results-out it always wins: measuring by replies received per unit effort, it’s many times more efficient to just send everyone roughly the same thing than to compose a new message each time.
To read the reprinted piece in New York Magazine, click HERE.
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