The Internet lets people search billions of Web pages in a fraction of a second and instantaneously tap information around the globe. One thing it couldn’t do: Find Brian Wolf a girlfriend.
Wolf was one of the 25 million Americans who visit online dating sites annually, lured by the industry’s promise that there’s someone out there for everyone. Four years and three dating sites later, he hadn’t found a match. His profile–which said that he likes to travel and play basketball and is looking for a long-term relationship–found few takers.
“It’s like 95 percent of these girls didn’t like me,” said the 30-year-old marketing manager for a Chicago-area food manufacturer. “That’s not a great feeling.”
It’s no exaggeration to say that online dating has revolutionized the world of relationships since it took off a decade ago. Now, with growth slowing, sites are looking for new ways to stand out. One increasingly popular strategy: Letting users rate each other, either based on their profiles alone or on the experiences of a first date.
Members of engage.com can review people after one date for politeness and honesty. Consumating.com users give one another “thumbs up” or “thumbs down” depending on how clever their profiles are. JDate.com encourages members to talk about their dates on a message board, inviting them to share stories of “best dates, worst dates” as well as “turn-ons, turn-offs.”
The result is an emerging caste system, where highly rated daters see a lot of action, and others are deemed undateable. The online romance industry doesn’t talk about the folks in the latter category, but they’re out there. They’re singles with seemingly innocent attributes that are setting off digital flags signaling they’re unfit to date, or maybe just slightly less fit than others.
A forgetful dater who fails to return an e-mail on engage.com, for instance, could be branded as rude. Simply living in the wrong ZIP Code can push unlucky members of JDate to the bottom of the queue.
Even at sites that haven’t adopted a ratings approach, a growing cliquishness, combined with the viral nature of the Web, means an offhand comment to one person can come back to haunt you when you meet someone else just a few weeks later.
Ranking is everything
This is changing the way some online daters behave. For Sarah Schoomer, it’s meant focusing as much on trying to boost her ranking as on searching for a soulmate.
After trying other sites that failed to find her a match, Schoomer thought she’d give consumating.com a shot. She had attended a party the site’s members threw in San Francisco and liked the people she met there. The site also seemed cooler than others, with its quirky ratings feature and offbeat questions that encourage sardonic responses.
The 32-year-old doctoral student in clinical psychology spent hours filling out her profile. But not long after her profile went up, the lines were silent.
The site posts each member’s popularity score, which changes based on positive comments from other users, and then ranks them accordingly. Schoomer, who had received few plugs from her fellow Consumaters, was ranked close to 6,000–far too low to break into the “Local Hotties” section that highlights top singles.
She tried to get more involved in the site–not only would she make more friends that way, but she heard that members could boost their popularity and score “points” by sending each other notes.
Soon, she was logging eight hours a day on the site, trying to up her score by being more visible in message boards and sending strangers clever notes. Meanwhile, her laundry, exercise routine and sleep were suffering.
Then, a couple of weeks ago, she took drastic action: a plea to the site’s 20,000 members. “I’m just a little too concerned with my standing,” she wrote on one of the message boards, describing how she wanted to bust into the top 500 most popular.
Since many Consumating daters expect points to be reciprocated, they doled them out to her liberally, and within days, she’d climbed to No. 343. “It’s all thanks to you” a grateful Schoomer later wrote.
Now, her profile pops up on more searches, and she shares more than 100 “tags”–key words that describe her interests and personality–with the thousands of other users on the site. She’s seen a rise in inquiries from potential friends and suitors, and in one recent week, kissed three guys she met through the site. Her confidence is riding high, she said. “I’m pretty cute.”
After coming this far, Schoomer said she now worries that she could get so caught up in the popularity game that her true match could look right past her–or vice versa.
“It does make me stop before posting something and wonder, ‘Am I being authentic, or am I just saying something provocative?’ “
The undateables
The majority of undateables are hardly what most people would consider poor prospects. They’re not liars or criminals, but eligible single men and women who are being sidelined by the system. They’re hitting the wrong note by listing hobbies that scream shut-in–fantasy football for men, scrapbooking for women–or by including shots with their heads obscured by skydiving helmets.
Engage.com spokeswoman Trish McDermott said while some daters may feel bruised by a bad review, the rankings are cumulative, so singles can improve their scores as they continue to date.
McDermott said the majority of daters on the site receive high rankings, and feedback can help singles improve their dating behavior by holding them accountable for their actions online.
“On most dating sites, your behavior isn’t even tracked,” she said. “There’s no consequences for the behavioral choices you make.”
Todd Hollis, a 38-year-old Pittsburgh lawyer, said he was filled with hope about a new relationship last spring when a family member called, directing him to dontdatehimgirl.com, a site where women post names of men to warn other women off. The site included anonymous allegations that he has a sexually transmitted disease and is a poor dresser (Hollis denies both).
His first thought when he logged on: Everyone in the city will be able to see this. Later, he told the woman he was dating about the mention; the relationship fizzled.
Over the summer, Hollis said he investigated the sources of the accusation. He is now suing several women who allegedly posted the claims as well as the owner of the site, Tasha Joseph, for defamation, hoping to claim at least $50,000.
Joseph said she is not legally responsible for the content of posts that others write, adding that men who are targeted can log on and post a rebuttal.
Hollis said before he asks women out now, he warns them that they might see some unpleasant hits on a Web search of his name. That’s not much of an introduction, he said, and it often scares dates away.
“It’s made me very notorious in the eyes of many women,” he said.
A love go-getter
As for Brian Wolf, the Chicago marketing manager, he said the best solution for his undateability was to take matters into his own hands.
This spring, he launched settleforbrian.com. Wolf said his site is what major online dating services would be if everyone were honest. Though he writes on the site that his nose is big and he doesn’t want kids, he also touts his sense of humor and good job: “I’m by no means perfect, but you could also do a lot worse. … In the end, you’d probably be happier with me than chasing the dream of Mr. Right.”
The upfront technique appears to be working. So far, settleforbrian.com has netted more than 88,000 visitors in just over three months, according to the site. He has received about 600 e-mails, gone on three dates, and said he’s feeling more hopeful about his love life than he ever has before.
“I’m going to keep this up until I meet the right girl.”
CROWDED OUT
Low ratings aren’t the only problem for online daters. Overcrowding is an issue too.
With many sites allowing members to post for free–many charge fees only when daters try to contact each other–singles can get lost.
Julia Gliner, a 28-year-old administrator for a New York City venture capital firm, joined JDate last winter and was confused when she couldn’t find her profile anywhere on the site soon after. When she called customer service, she was told her Upper West Side ZIP Code was so crowded with single women, it might take days for her picture to emerge.
Gliner’s profile finally appeared a few days later–she followed the site’s advice and logged on repeatedly to show up in the “most active” search–but by then her confidence had dimmed. “I was thinking, ‘Wow, there’s a lot of competition out there,’ ” she said. While she went on some dates, she didn’t find a boyfriend and quit after two months.
Gail Laguna, a spokeswoman for Spark Networks, which owns JDate, said the site posts all new profiles within 24 hours, but Gliner may have missed it initially and, in the following days, the queue could have easily filled to the 500-woman capacity, thus bumping her profile from the standard search. “It’s tricky because New York is our biggest market,” she said. “You can get lost online as easily as you can offline.”
HOW TO WIN THE DATING GAME
Veteran online daters and consultants who help people write their profiles say there are ways to avoid the scourge of undateability.
Update often. On many sites, recently updated profiles appear higher in search results, so it’s a good idea to tinker with them often. Savvy users of AOL’s personals service, for instance, make frequent and sometimes gratuitous changes to their listings, switching their favorite hobby or ideal first date.
Choose wisely. Photographs can be a minefield. A picture of yourself surrounded by friends is a big mistake–one of them could be more attractive than you.
Be creative. Sometimes daters kill their chances with profiles that state the obvious–people who say they like to go out for dinner or fix a cozy meal at home, for instance, are simply characterizing the eating habits of most Americans.
Don’t oversell. Others go too far in trying to please: Dating experts say women who talk too much about working out can inadvertently end up sounding like gym rats, and men who overstate their love of golf can lead a woman to believe that they’ll never be around on weekends.
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