The Secret Science of Love at First Byte

By Amy Robach and Deborah Camiel

Online dating sites advertise groundbreaking technology and sophisticated formulas and state-of-the-art programming to help you find your true soul mate.

But does it work?

Though the technology found its own match with the rise of the Internet, the idea has been around for half a century. In 1965, a pair of University of Michigan undergrads found each other with the help of a primitive computer dating program.

Mina Jo Rosenbloom was in her junior year when she and Michael Linver, just admitted to medical school, became computer dating’s digital Adam and Eve. She didn’t have much faith that it would work. He came across a crazy ad for a dating service that used computers. Their mutual willingness to take a chance paid off.

Four and a half decades after they were hitched by an IBM mainframe, Michael and Mina Jo Linver are still married.

“That was the beginning of what turned out to be an incredible relationship for the rest of my life,” he said.

It was also the start of an industry designed to exploit a market: millions of singles eager – or desperate – to find a match. Punch cards and personal ads gave way to the first online dating sites, launched in the mid-90s. By 2001, industry revenues were just $40 million. Today, they’re approaching $2 billion.

With some 1,500 sites claiming they can match your personality type, your genes – even your facial structure - to potential mates, no company touts a “formula for success” as much as eHarmony, which owns 15 percent of the market.

The company says the goal is to help you find someone - like you.

Similarity is the thing that allows couples to understand each other better, said Gian Gonzaga, the company’s chief research scientist, who holds a Ph.D. in psychology from U.C. Berkeley. “We like to say that opposites attract and then later on they attack.”

Marriage-minded and straight-laced

At eHarmony, Gonzaga said he focuses on appealing to the marriage-minded and the straight-laced.

“We’ve always focused on long-term relationships,” he said. “That feels very unhip and very squarish. But really, when it comes down to it, our desire to find someone to connect with, to find a long-term relationship is a very deep part of our psyche.”

Long before the conversation turns to matrimony, finding your online match takes commitment. Subscribers fill out a compatibility survey with hundreds of questions and pay as much as $60 a month. The results, according to eHarmony’s claims, are striking.

“On average, 542 people a day got married after meeting on eHarmony,” said Gonzaga. “That’s about 5 percent of all of the newlyweds in the population. It’s almost 100,000 couples a year.”

Those numbers are hard to substantiate. But they do include Steve Caplette, who was overcome with emotion on the day he wed Sally Petruzello. For her part, it was love at first click.

“He was my first match,” she said. “You usually get seven people, and he was literally the first one that I opened up.”

Among other compatible traits, eHarmony found that Steve and Sally both tend to be more introverted, have strong anger management skills, and a sense of romance. eHarmony’s algorithm worked for Steve and Sally. But it’s not at all clear that kind of success is typical.

“I think it’s fair to say that we know a little, but we probably don’t know enough to have an algorithm that we think is really good,” said Dan Ariely, a professor of psychology and behavioral economics at Duke University. “If you look demographically it doesn’t look like they’re increasing the amount of marriages.

Ariely questions whether algorithms used by online dating sites actually work. His research was sparked by a profoundly personal understanding of the nature of human attraction. In his late teens, he was hospitalized for three years with a bad burn injury as he healed, he worried that his value in the dating market had plummeted.

“I knew my place in the social hierarchy before I got burned,” he said. “I knew which girls would date me in principle and which ones would not. And I started thinking about where do I fit in, where do I fit in now?

Ariely eventually fit in as an expert on human behavior. He studied thousands of online interactions, examining market value — what makes us attractive online. In men, the research shows, height and salary are key. Ariely said that a 5-foot, 9-inch tall man like himself would need to add another $40,000 a year to his annual income to hold the same attraction as another guy who stands 5’10".

Education also counts - for some online daters.

“More educated men are more desirable,” said Ariely. “For women, there’s no value for education. Women who are more educated don’t necessarily get any more attractive in online dating.”

For some singles, the idea of reducing romantic attraction to an algorithm may seem too simplistic. But Ariely says the problem is the simplistic way sites make us describe ourselves, using attributes that are easily searchable by computer but aren’t so useful in figuring out who we like or love.

“The (online) description is very skeleton-like,” he said. “We fill the gap in over-optimistic ways. And then you go and meet them for coffee, there’s a gap between what you built in your mind and between what they really are. And that gap causes tremendous disappointment.”

That doesn’t make for an auspicious start, especially since, according to Ariely, setting up each of those cups of coffee takes an average six hours of online drudgery.

’Tyranny of choice’

To solve the paralyzing problem of too many possibilities, which scientists call “the tyranny of choice,” online matchmaker eHarmony doesn’t let you browse its database. They let their computers do the searching and sorting for you.

“Imagine you walk into a stadium, and you see tens of thousands of people and you say, ’I wish I could go on a date tonight,” said Joseph Essas, eHarmony’s technology chief. “So you look at all those tens of thousands of people, what are you going to do? It’s overwhelming.”

Instead, eHarmony’s algorithm doles out just a few matches per customer per day. Then it’s your turn. Computers are not good with emotions and feelings, said Essas. But they’re very good at finding needles in a haystack.

And eHarmony claims to have a big haystack – but it’s not exactly clear just how big. At one point the company claimed some 40 million registered users. Some industry analysts say the pool of active users is more like 750,000.

A percentage of the daters who appear on eHarmony—and other dating sites—are not even paying subscribers, leading one critic to say that many users are, “flirting into the void.” Still, eHarmony is doing a number of things well, according to Dan Ariely.

“First of all, they have this million-question survey,” he said. “By doing that they basically kind of separate the serious people from the non-serious people. On top of that they create this belief in their algorithm. And they say, ‘look, we have some magic potion here.’ “

That may have a self-fulfilling effect on customers, but it hasn’t convinced Ariely that online dating companies are using hard science.

“The truth is, we’re very far away, in the science part, from understanding how this works,” he said.

For some, the proof is in the pudding. After forty-four years of marriage, three children, and six grandchildren, Michael and Mina Jo Linver are still grateful for that mainframe with a heart.

“The rest is the magic, the mystic kind of elements that attract people to each other,” said Michael. “And that’s something that I don’t think any computer can really do. It just either happens or it doesn’t.

Online Dating for Nerds

By Sarah Jacobsson Purewal and Alex Wawro, PCWorld

Valentine’s Day is just around the corner—and if you’re without a special someone, online dating might sound like a viable option.

Armed with nothing but our shining personalities and sexy photos, the PCWorld team took a look at some of the Web’s best (and geekiest) dating Websites. In order to test them, we created a female profile (Sarah) and a male one (Alex), and sent out some messages to see what would come back to us. Here’s what we found.

Geek2Geek

Who you can expect to find: Geeks galore!

How much it’ll cost you: The site has three tiers of membership, ranging from free to $31/month.

Geek 2 Geek calls itself “the best place on the net to meet geeks.” It boasts over 200,000 members, growing by about 6000 members each month. Its three levels of membership—free, “silver,” and “gold”—allows different levels of communication. While a free membership lets you browse unlimited profiles and receive unlimited messages, you can’t send any out (except to paid gold members) until you upgrade to a silver account.

Geek 2 Geek does have a matchmaking service. Signing up is quick and easy, and you don’t have to answer all of the questions right away (though you certainly can). A picture is also not a profile requirement. Matchmaking questions include everything from “type of sense of humor” to “areas of interest,” and similar geeks are delivered to your “My Matches” inbox.

As for whether you’ll actually find geeks on this site, well, a quick look-through says yes. It helps, of course, that the “areas of interest” are all geek-oriented, and include options like “online gaming,” “Star Trek,” “Tolkien,” and “Monty Python.” The site itself is decently easy to navigate, though it’s rather busy-looking (it looks a lot like a Web hosting site that’s trying to sell you something) and not as conducive to browsing as some of the other sites we reviewed.

Sarah’s take: This site isn’t really limited to geeks—it looks like just about everyone is on here. That makes me think a lot of the profiles are probably outdated and/or not being used. Plus, it takes way too much information to complete your profile.

Alex’s take: Yeah, “geek” in this case seems synonymous with “anyone who owns a computer.” That’s not necessarily a bad thing, and neither is the surplus of seduction toys like video, quizzes, and live chat; just know that Geek 2 Geek is a full-on social network, not just a dating service.

OtakuBooty

Who you can expect to find: Fans of anime, manga, gaming, and cosplay.

How much it’ll cost you: Sign-up and browsing are free, but full features (including messaging options) start at $4/year.

OtakuBooty is part online dating and part social networking. The name comes from a Japanese slang term for “nerd” (okay, it’s more of a derogatory term), and focuses on a less traditional type of geek—the anime/manga/Japan-fan type.

Signing up is free, and you can receive unlimited free messages—you just can’t see who sent them until you sign up for a paid membership. Luckily, paid membership is only $4 per month or $15 per year, and allows you full access to the site.

OtakuBooty keeps the nerd factor alive throughout the site: On the initial sign-up page, required fields are marked with an invincibility star; on the payment page there’s a bogus “send ham” option for a “recurring ham subscription.”

Unfortunately, this epic nerdiness carries over to the site’s layout. OtakuBooty is sort of like the Android OS—a little too rough around the edges. The good news is that this will probably scare off the ungeeky types who are unwilling to deal with anything less than a perfect user interface. The bad news is that there are just so many tabs. The site looks a lot like a bad wiki—and hey, there’s even a site wiki.

As for the types of users you’ll find, well, they’re definitely nerds. And they’re all a little weird. Case in point: Last time we checked, a “featured member” on the front page had three moustaches descending down his face (just sit there for a moment and imagine that).

Sarah’s take: OtakuBooty’s user interface is awful. It really is. It might deter the nongeeks from signing up, but it’ll also deter the geeks. It’s impossible to navigate the site—I couldn’t even contact OtakuBooty, because I couldn’t find their contact page.

Alex’s take: I’m not into otaku culture, but I really wanted to like OtakuBooty. Sure the wiki-like layout is ugly, but I found its quirky style endearing, and the news, deals, and quasi-legal torrent sections are handy if you’re passionate about anime. If you’re not, you should probably join me in giving this site a pass.

Cupidtino

Who you can expect to find: Around 30,000 Apple fans.

How much it’ll cost you: Free to browse profiles and send messages; $4.79/month to read messages sent to you.

Cupidtino describes itself as the first (and only) “Mac-inspired” dating site. That’s right—if you love Apple products and the people who love Apple products, this site is for you. (The name is a play on “Cupertino,” where Apple has its headquarters.) The philosophy behind this dating site is that people who like Apple products often have a lot in common—they tend to be creative types, such as designers, musicians, and writers, and more likely to be compatible with other creative types.

Cupidtino is quick and easy to get started with, providing you have a Mac or an iOS-capable device (yes, the site is designed for Apple fans, and is best accessed from Apple devices). Basic profile information (such as your birthday) is required, but a picture isn’t necessary to start browsing Apple fans right away. You can browse profiles and send messages for free, but in order to read messages sent to you, you’ll need to pay a minor subscription fee of $4.79 per month—the same price as a Venti Mocha Lite in the Cupertino Starbucks.

The Cupidtino Website is simple and features lots of white space and clean lines (similar to Apple products). This makes it generally easy to navigate, though the site does lack the ability to narrow searches by zip codes or cities. One thing to note is that the people—both men and women—on Cupidtino tend to be a little more skilled with their Mac’s photobooth. The profile pictures on this site are clear, crisp, and artistically rendered, making everyone look more attractive in a hipstery, artistic sort of way.

Sarah’s take: Is it just me, or do people’s photos look fantastic on this site? It’s either all the white space or the fact that Apple fans really are more creative types, but dang. Unfortunately, it’s not terribly active. I got only a couple of messages in the week or so I was around.

Alex’s take: This place is great! It’s so clean and simple, with all these cute little icons and big beautiful pictures. There aren’t any bells and whistles beyond a basic profile search, but that’s really all you need. Well, that and an Apple device. I didn’t get many messages during the week, either—perhaps I betrayed my PC proclivities.

Sweet on Geeks

Who you can expect to find: Geeks, especially girl geeks.

How much it’ll cost you: You can see people’s profiles for free, but if you want to send a message, it’ll cost you $5/month for a full membership.

Sweet on Geeks’ tagline is “a space where gray matters.” The site’s owner, Joyce Dales, created the geek-specific dating site in 2007—she was inspired to do so by her own story, in which she met a geek online and noted that it was hard to find geeks on the Internet (of all places!). The 27,000-member site is particularly balanced in the male-to-female ratio, unlike a lot of places on the Internet, and Dales makes sure she actively markets the site to women.

Sweet on Geeks features a simple, basic layout that’s reminiscent of an early (circa 2000) HTML page. Although signing up is free, you’ll need a full membership to take advantage of the site’s messaging features, and fairly quick, even though a picture (or an avatar of some sort) is required. The initial sign-up sheet puts it all out there, and allows you to enter as much or as little the profile information as you like.

There are no toggles for some of the basics (such as whether you’re a drinker/smoker or not), just text boxes for you to describe how you feel about the issues. In other words, Sweet on Geek is less of a matchmaking site—it doesn’t give you compatibility scores—and more of a social networking site. Accordingly, profiles can be customized with status updates, blog posts, and friend feeds.

Searching for geeks is basic, and you are able to search within X miles of a zip code. You can also search for geeks by keywords. As for the people you’ll find here—the good news is that most of them fill out their profiles, so you’ll know a lot about their personalities (or lack thereof). The bad news is that a lot of them also use avatars as their pictures, so if you’re shallow...well, perhaps you shouldn’t be on a geeky dating site in the first place.

Sarah’s take: It’s much more about social networking than matchmaking or dating. I think it’s weird that you can’t filter out searches by, say, nonsmokers.

Alex’s take: There’s something very charming about Sweet on Geeks; it’s a small social network in which the founder still actively participates, and the absence of checklists in favor of text fields seems like an earnest attempt to encourage meaningful discussion. If you’re looking to dip your toe in the online dating pool but feel intimidated by the size of a free site like OKCupid (see below), Sweet on Geeks might be the perfect fit.

OKCupid

Who you can expect to find: Just about everyone, and then some.

How much it’ll cost you: Free.

Although it’s a completely free dating site, OKCupid is full of young singles—about 70 percent of its users are between the ages of 18 and 35. Sure, this is at least partly because of the site’s features other than online dating—tests, quizzes, and match-up questions that are created by both the staff and the users.

OKCupid has more steps than Cupidtino, yet it’s still relatively easy to create a profile and start browsing matches. OKCupid won’t start proactively sending you matches until you upload a photo and answer at least 25 personality questions, but you’ll still be able to contact and chat with people.

The site is easy to navigate, and there are multiple ways to find matches. You can do a detailed search, or you can do a “Quick Match.” Quick Match is sort of like Hot or Not—you rate users based on their photos and profile, and they’re eventually sent an e-mail with a grid of user photos. If they rate you highly (and you rated them highly in the first place), OKCupid connects the two of you.

As for what you’ll find on OKCupid, 55 percent of the users are men. Also, users seem to run the gamut and are much freer with instant messaging and e-mailing (probably because it’s free). In her few days as a member, Sarah received messages from guys who wanted to talk, pay her bills, and, of course, meet up. The good news is that most of the OKCupid users seemed to be there for the dating aspect—not just the quizzes and fun articles, such as the recent “Best Questions to Ask for a First Date.”

Sarah’s take: This place is surprisingly hoppin’ for an online dating site—there are lots of guys (and cute ones, at that) sending messages and making the first move. Also, I love the quizzes—those keep me around for a long time.

Alex’s take: I couldn’t care less about the quizzes or the cute guys, but OKCupid still seduced me with an intuitive interface and quick personality tests that get straight to the point. If you have a thick skin, I encourage you to submit a photo to OKCupid’s experimental MyBestFace engine and crowdsource the eternal question, “Am I hot or not?”

Match.com

Who you can expect to find: Serious online daters.

How much it’ll cost you: Free to look around, full benefits start at $18/month.

When people think of online dating, they often think of Match.com. (If you’ve been on Match.com for a while, you might also think “lawsuit.”) Match.com is a popular site for the more serious online dater. The majority of Match.com’s users are between the ages of 30 and 49 (51 percent), though the 50-plus demographic (20 percent) is the fastest-growing.

It’s free to sign up for Match.com, search for matches, and browse other people’s profiles, but any message exchanges require a paid membership. Paid memberships start at $18 per month (for a six-month minimum) and go up to $35 per month (one month minimum). You don’t need to complete your profile right away, but you won’t show up in Match.com search results until you’ve finished it (complete with photo).

Match.com has a very comprehensive search engine—you can narrow down your results by faith, languages, pets, salary range, amount of exercise, and interests, among other things. In case you’re having a hard time sorting through all of the prospects (even after you narrow it down), Match.com also offers up potential matches in the form of a “Daily 5.” Match.com submits five potential matches to you and asks you to say whether or not you’re interested—the site then modifies its matches based on your answers.

Sarah’s take: I hate to say it, but all of the matches that Match.com sent me as potentials were just so ugly.

Alex’s take: Either I registered too late or I’m just not that compatible, because Match.com didn’t send me any matches at all. I guess that’s a blessing in disguise? Either way, OKCupid pretty much blows Match.com out of the water in every meaningful way.

eHarmony

Who you can expect to find: People who are looking for a serious relationship. Seriously.

How much it’ll cost you: Varies, but a popular subscription is $30/month for six months.

eHarmony is not a dating Website—rather, it’s an online matchmaking service. Unlike other sites, which allow users to browse and search for potential matches, eHarmony does all of the legwork for you. That’s right—there’s no way for you to browse the database of 33 million users, because (let’s be serious), if you knew what you wanted, you wouldn’t be on eHarmony in the first place.

eHarmony is also a little more complicated to sign up for than other dating sites: Instead of answering a few questions and being paired up with potential matches, each user must fill out a comprehensive relationship questionnaire. The questionnaire helps in the matchmaking process and also indicates that a user is serious about finding a serious relationship (in other words, the questionnaire is in-depth enough that you’re not going to just fill it out for fun). And yes, the matchmaking that eHarmony does is based on scientific research of what makes a long-term relationship last.

According to a 2008 study conducted by Harris Interactive, an average of 542 people marry every day in the United States as a result of eHarmony’s matchmaking skills. eHarmony doesn’t just sit around and wait for its users to meet up, either—they also offer various matchmaking-related services, such as profile advisement (professional writers who will help your profile shine) and secure calling services so users can safely get in touch with each other.

If you’re looking for a very serious long-term relationship, eHarmony is the place to be...but if you’re looking for anything less, perhaps OKCupid is more your style.

Sarah’s take: Well, eHarmony isn’t a dating Website—it’s a matchmaking Website. This isn’t the place to go if you’re playing around. Seriously, their questionniare is really long and not for the faint of heart.

Alex’s take: So many questions! Online matchmaking is a booming business, and nobody is better at transmuting you into a statistic than the algorithmic alchemists at eHarmony.

So there you have it: no matter what you’re looking for, whether it’s a serious relationship, a Mac-lovin’ honey, or some “OtakuBooty,” there’s a dating Website out there just for you. That means you have no excuses when February 14 rolls around.

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Online Dating Enjoying a Boom Among Boomers

“Fifteen years ago if you went on an online dating site, you would be thought to have three heads,” says anthropologist Helen Fisher, author of Why Him? Why Her? and Why We Love. Make that four heads if you were middle-aged.

Yet today, it is Baby Boomers who are making the biggest splash in the online dating pool. At Match.com, the 50-to-65 age group is the online dating site’s fastest-growing demographic, up 89% in the last five years. And on JDate.com, the website for Jewish singles, members in the 50-plus age group jumped 40% in just one year, from 2008 to 2009. JDate’s parent company even has a site dedicated to the Boomer market, SingleSeniorsMeet.com, which is its fastest growing property.

Just as Baby Boomers have lagged behind younger people in embracing the new technology, so have they been slower to dip their toe into the cyberspace dating waters. But now they are overcoming their fears. “’Isn’t it dangerous going online?’ I hear this from the older set who aren’t quite as used to having their lives online as the younger generation is,” says Gian Gonzaga, senior director of research at eHarmony.com, which has also experienced a boost in interest from the 50-plus crowd. “Once you shove them out there, they adapt quickly. They remember what it’s like to have fun.”

The surge in popularity among middle-aged singles should come as no surprise. “I’ve always felt that online dating would be most popular among people who are 50 to 65,” says Fisher, a consultant to Match and its offshoot, Chemistry.com, “They know everyone in their family and social circles. Where are they going to meet people? They don’t have time to adopt new hobbies that are likely to introduce them to potential partners. And they are long past going to bars. In the old days we had different mechanisms, but those are gone.”

The new mechanisms are actually ideal for Boomers. “Many Boomer daters sign up for online dating post-divorce or after a long dating hiatus,” says JDate spokesperson Arielle Schechtman. “They are busy professionals, so being able to learn about potential dates online, on their own time schedules, makes online dating more valuable to them than to other age groups.”

Fisher also points out two important trends that are boosting the popularity of online dating among the older crowd. “Women are powering into the job market; they have more disposable income so they can walk out of bad marriages,” she says. “Also, with an aging population, we’ve got Viagra, and estrogen replacement. The expectation now is that older people are going to date, and remarry.” Indeed, according to one estimate, one in four second marriages for Boomers began online.

Online dating is a natural for aging Baby Boomers precisely because they’ve been around the block a few times. (At Match, among the 50 to 65 demographic 71% are divorced and 11% are widowed.) “With age comes experience, so middle-aged daters can be a lot more savvy than younger daters in knowing what they want in a mate,” says Schechtman. Adds eHarmony’s Gonzaga, “Older singles also have a better perspective on their personal values and priorities in life. Experience from past relationships is a huge advantage for older singles who are looking to get into another long-term relationship.”

Boomers, moreover, often have a more open-minded view of potential partners, which is well suited to the online search process. “Older people are looking for a companion, a lifelong partner,” says Fisher. “They are not looking for a reproductive partner, so they can look at a broader range of individuals and are more likely to pick somebody from different social economic or religious backgrounds. They don’t have to bring this person home to mother anymore and explain why he’s Greek instead of Jewish.”

And with age comes a wider circle of connections. There are countless stories about Boomers bumping into someone online whom they knew in their early years. Jerry Brown, 60, a widower from Lake Forest, Calif., was pushed to start dating again by his daughters, who took his photo and wrote his online profile; soon he was perusing potential mates under the screen name Voltageman5050.

“After 20 minutes I came across a picture of someone eating a snow cone that looked very familiar,” he says. It turned out to be Patti Johns, or NursePatti659, Brown’s unrequited high school crush. “I sent her an e-mail with my phone number and said to hurry,” says Brown. But Johns, who was divorced and had been on Match for three years, took her time. “I knew the e-mail was from that guy who had a big crush on me 40 years ago,” she says. “So this is who the universe is giving me? I had blinders on when it came to Jerry.”

Those blinders melted away when Johns finally agreed to a date, and they stayed up talking until 2 a.m. Voltageman5050 and Nursepatti659 plan to marry this spring.

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Matching Language, True Love?

By Kathleen Doheny HealthDay

The next time you have a first date, forget about chemistry and common interests.

What really matters, new research suggests, is whether your language styles match.

How can you boost the chances of that, you ask? Well, it’s kind of like chemistry — it’s there or it isn’t.

The kind of language style the researchers focused on was the use of such words as personal pronouns (I, his, their); articles (a, the); prepositions (in, under), and adverbs (very, rather) — the types of words most people don’t give much thought to.

But when this language style is in synch with someone else’s, well, the sparks might just fly, said study author James Pennebaker, the chair of psychology at the University of Texas at Austin. He and his colleagues evaluated the language style of 40 men and 40 women who were speed dating and found that the more it matched, the better. When speed daters picked their matches, they tended to go for those whose language style matched their own, he found.

“You are four times more likely to match and probably go on a date if your language style matching is even just above average,” he said.

In a second study, Pennebaker’s team looked at 86 couples’ instant message exchanges and found that language style matching mattered there, too. Participants were age 19, on average, many of them living in different towns as they attended school.

“These are wonderful groups to study,” Pennebaker said. “They have notoriously unstable relationships.”

They had to be dating at least six months. “What we found is if their IMs were high in language style matching they were much more likely to be together three months later,” he said.

Those with the highest matching, he said, “were 50% more likely to be dating at follow-up.”

The study was recently published online in the journal Psychological Science.

Some experts think you are attracted to a person and begin to talk like them. Others say when someone talks like you, you are attracted to them.

It may be a bit of both, Pennebaker said. And he feels that paying attention to the other person plays in, as well.

The new research may actually help reduce nervousness for first-time daters, said Jeffrey Hancock, an associate professor of communication at Cornell University. Because you can’t give someone instructions in how to have their subtle language style match another’s, he said, the only advice is “be yourself.”

And cut yourself some slack, perhaps. “If you interact the same way the other (person) interacts, you are going to be in good shape,” Hancock said. “If you don’t, it’s not your fault.”

He agrees that paying attention to the other person also counts and, like language style, comes naturally. “If I really like you, I am going to pay attention,” he said.

The new study shows that “the words we choose in everyday interactions are related to the success of our relationships, including whether the relationship progresses from a casual meeting to a romantic relationship and whether we resolve conflicts,” said Rachel Simmons, a postdoctoral fellow in psychology at New York Presbyterian Hospital.

In her own research, she has found that couples who use more “I” and “we” words solve problems better than those who use more “you” words.

She, too, thinks the language matching works both ways. “The more a person matches your speech and behavior patterns, the more you like them. The more you like them, the more you match their speech and behavior.”

Pennebaker is co-developer and owner of a text analysis program, and donates profits from sales of that program to the university.

Are You Interested?

By Brett Pulley

With the rise of the Internet, people began looking for love on websites such as Match.com and EHarmony.com. With the growing popularity of social networks, they’re turning to services like AreYouInterested.com.

The dating application, available on Facebook and Apple Inc.’s iPhone, lets users see beyond the personal details of potential mates to their social circles, including friends and family. AreYouInterested.com is adding more than 50,000 users a day, according to New York-based parent SNAP Interactive Inc., compared with the 20,000 new daily users Match.com reports.

AreYouInterested.com is now the largest Facebook dating application, with more than 13 million average monthly users, according to research firm AppData.com. Its popularity may cut into the growth of Match.com, part of IAC/InterActiveCorp, and EHarmony.com Inc., whose Facebook programs have 72,712 and 8,607 average monthly users respectively.

“Those traditional online dating companies don’t have a large app presence like us,” Snap Chief Executive Officer Cliff Lerner said in an interview. “Our growth, as well as the growth of a couple competitors, has come out of nowhere.”

Match.com has greater appeal for serious daters and a stronger long-term business, though it may not be signing up as many new users, said Gregory R. Blatt, CEO of IAC. Founded in 1995, the dating site collects pages of data from users to help them find appropriate mates, with a large engineering team to refine its site and algorithms.

“AreYouInterested is a flirty, fun little app,” Blatt said in an interview. “They have a few people working in a garage. We’ve got hundreds of engineers maximizing our business. You need huge degrees of sophistication, huge amounts of data behind it, and a huge community.”

AreYouInterested vs. Match.com

IAC’s Match business, which includes other dating websites such as Chemistry.com and SeniorPeopleMeet.com, had revenue of $292.4 million in the first nine months of the year, up 13 percent from a year earlier. Blatt ran the business until he took over the CEO role this month from Barry Diller, the billionaire who built and controls New York-based IAC.

Snap, traded over-the-counter, had $3.9 million in revenue in the first nine months, up 65 percent. Lerner and his brother, natives of Long Island, New York, founded the company with $750,000 from friends and family. Cliff, 32, had worked as an equities analyst at Lehman Brothers Inc; Darrell, 36, ran a fantasy-sports company. Snap has 17 employees and, for the record, operates from an office building in Midtown Manhattan.

Digital Teddy Bears

Snap Interactive rose 30 cents, or 150 percent, to 50 cents at 3:59 p.m. New York time in over-the-counter trading. The shares have increased 233 percent this year. IAC fell 26 cents to $29.71 in Nasdaq Stock Market trading and has gained 45 percent this year.

The brothers first started a dating website called IamFreeTonight.com in 2006, and shifted their focus after the initial success of their social-networking products.

AreYouInterested.com is a software application, or app, that users can load onto their Facebook page or iPhone with a half-dozen mouse clicks. It lets you click through photos of potential matches, and exchange messages or virtual gifts of digital roses or teddy bears.

One reason dating apps on Facebook are popular is that they give romance-seekers insight into potential partners through the social-networking site’s existing information, according to Darrell Lerner, Snap’s co-founder. People who meet on AreYouInterested.com can become Facebook friends and learn about each other before they ever agree to an actual date, he said. They typically can see another person’s Facebook posts and photos or videos of them and their friends.

‘More Comfortable’

“A lot of people on dating websites don’t put up legitimate information,” Darrell Lerner said in an interview. “Because we’re an app on Facebook, every user is legitimate. Before people go out with someone, they look them up on Facebook, they add them as a friend, and they see who their friends are. They get a better representation of the person, and it makes them more comfortable.”

IAC’s dating sites have 1.8 million subscribers, who pay $24.95 a month or $99 for a year. The websites had 6.5 million unique visitors in November, up from 60 percent from a year earlier, according to the market-research firm ComScore Inc. Operating profit for the group rose 25 percent over the first nine months to $77.3 million.

“Never has Match experienced the kind of growth it’s experienced in 2010,” Blatt said.

The company is working to introduce new Facebook apps that will compete with AreYouInterested.com, he said.

More Mobile

On Facebook, other competitors also exceed Match.com in number of users. Zoosk.com, backed by Canaan Partners, Bessemer Venture Partners, and ATA Ventures, has 6.1 million average monthly users for its Facebook app, according to AppData.com.

Snap plans to expand the AreYouInterested.com brand beyond Facebook, particularly on mobile devices, Cliff Lerner said.

“We believe there are big growth opportunities around mobile as web usage continues to increase rapidly and there are exciting opportunities around location-based features for dating apps,” he said.

One online dater, a 26-year-old event planner in Manhattan, said she had joined a couple dating websites before she recently registered for AreYouInterested.com through the Facebook application.

“For people in their 20s and 30s on Facebook, dating is a big aspect of our lives, and a lot of people use Facebook as a dating thing anyway,” said Adi, who declined to give her last name for privacy reasons. “There’s something to be said for a dating website that’s linked in with the most popular social network. It makes it feel more real.”