The Great Age Experiment: Week 3

Part of an ongoing series, in which your intrepid correspondent offers herself as a guinea pig in an admittedly not-very scientific online dating experiment to determine, once and for all, whether a younger age on her profile will result in greater response to said profile.

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Week 3 Update

(Click here to read parts one, two and three in this series.)

ATTENTION ALL SINGLE WOMEN. If you are lamenting your lack of dates and blaming it on your advanced age, you may have to find another scapegoat.

We are now 3 weeks into a 4-week experiment, and although initial response to your correspondent's younger profile was slightly up from the same time span in the previous month, at this stage in the game the numbers have been reversed!

To hold steady with last month's response rate, profile views would need to be at around the 300 mark, and yet we're at a dismal 189.

Granted, since the profile in question (less the age change) has been up for just a week shy of two full months now, your correspondent may have hit profile-view-saturation, a common syndrome in the online dating world. The first few days and up to a week typically bring a flurry of responses, which dry up over time.

Online daters in the know will reveal that the most effective strategy is to put a profile up for a few weeks, max, then take it down for a few weeks or months, to capitalize on the "fresh meat" syndrome.

For the purposes of this experiment, however, your correspondent's profile is staying up, unchanged, for the full 30 days. (Let it be said that edits are waiting to be performed, and will be done just soon as the experiment concludes. Or as soon as she feels like putting up a profile again.)

Another 9 days to go. Watch for another report in about a week.

Results (Age posted on profile) Time period of data collection	match.com (43) 30 days	match.com (36) 3 weeks	aff.com (43) 3 weeks
emails received	8-10(?)	5 (plus 1 more from a winker who was then sent a "thanks for the wink" email)	74
emails from guys who might possibly be worthy of a meeting	2 (One of which was from a guy who'd gone out with your correspondent a few years ago)	2	1** **(Your correspondent did receive 2 additional emails that warranted replies for the sole purpose of lively, intellectual conversation. Seriously.)
winks/flirts received	8-10(?)	7	113
favorited/hotlisted	unknown	5	90
views	418	189	4,614 (1,826 in the past week) (17,728 total views since 7/29/2008, though the profile has only been active less than 6 months during that time)

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