Battle of the Dating Sites: Match vs OkCupid

Now that I’ve been officially single for five months, I have learned a bit about the ins and outs of a few popular dating sites. Below is some of what I learned.

The first thing is, there are two main choices for those who are interested in finding dates online. Match.com the corporate giant and category leader, is the first. I had tried this one out last summer and what I found was that I sent out far more emails than I ever got back. Is that because the women are getting too many offers? Or that the women aren’t my type?

At any rate, it was frustrating–you put yourself out there, send out this query, this lame attempt at gaining their attention and then…nothing. Frustrating. I notice that a majority of Match women like kayaks, walking on the beach (“anything by water”) and biking. So far, not a great Match, for me anyway.

Then I discovered a free site called Okcupid.com. This site has many more women on it who actually reply to emails. It’s as if they aren’t getting as many emails so mine seems to pique interest. They have a clever method of having participants answer questions, sometimes hundreds of questions and weigh each one. This gives a profile that they compare against the women you want to date, providing percentages ‘match’ ‘friend’ or strangely, ‘enemy.’

One trend I noticed is that no woman ever says she keeps her promises all of the time. “whenever possible,” is the common reply. And these women, too, like their kayaks and bikes. And nearly every one has been to graduate school, for some reason.

I spent time masquerading as a woman to size up the other men on the site. More than a few put down ‘married’ as their status. Married? And how many women do they think are gonna want to watch football with them?

Match.com costs $59 for three months. OKCupid is free.

It’s all fun and I hope to soon be finished with this dating and settle into a new relationship. Actually, cutting off the dating site emails is always more fun than continuing to search, so I look forward to that day.