Sign In. Your are a Man. Seeking a Woman. United States United Kingdom Canada Australia Germany India Ireland Netherlands New Zealand Philippines South Africa Afghanistan Aland Islands Albania Algeria American Samoa Andorra Angola Anguilla Antarctica Antigua and Barbuda Argentina Armenia Aruba Australia Austria Azerbaijan Bahamas Bahrain Bangladesh Barbados Belarus Belgium Belize Benin Bermuda Bhutan Bolivia Bonaire, Sint Eustatius and Saba Bosnia and Herzegovina Botswana Bouvet Island Brazil British Indian Ocean Territory British Virgin Islands Brunei Darussalam Bulgaria Burkina Faso Burundi Cambodia Cameroon Canada Cape Verde Cayman Islands Central African Republic Chad Chile China Christmas Island Cocos Islands Colombia Comoros Congo Congo the Democratic Republic of the Cook Islands Costa Rica Croatia Cuba Curacao Cyprus Czech Republic Denmark Djibouti Dom.

Virgin Islands Uganda Ukraine United Kingdom United States United States Minor Outlying Islands Uruguay Uzbekistan Vanuatu Venezuela Vietnam Wallis and Futuna Western Sahara Yemen Zambia Zimbabwe. View Singles. TONS OF SINGLES. App Store. Steve Carter, vice president of matching at eHarmony , says they close accounts per day that their "highly experienced, dedicated and slightly paranoid 'trust and safety' personnel" deem spam, also by using software and human intuition. Like many online dating services, OkCupid amasses large amounts of data on its users, which Maxim says it uses to improve its products and monitor if the site or algorithm needs fixing.

OkCupid president and co-founder, Christian Rudder, publishes some of this data and insight on the site's blog, OkTrends , admitting unabashedly that they experiment on users. Carter says eHarmony recently added a machine scoring system that can automatically crop photos for different devices and tell users which images will be most successful with possible mates. This data can also help sites be more personalized, says Vatsal Bhardwaj, general manager of Match.

Sites catering only to redheads , farmers , tall people , cat lovers and Trekkies already exemplify this desire to find someone with a very specific type and tastes. Experts agree that mobile will define the future of the dating industry, but what effects that will have on information is unclear. Follow Rebecca Harrington on Twitter. Already a subscriber? Sign in. Thanks for reading Scientific American. Create your free account or Sign in to continue.

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You may have seen the Parks and Recreation episode where Tom Haverford makes 26 different online dating profiles to increase his odds of matching with every woman possible after his nerd profile matched with his boss Leslie. You may also have watched someone swipe right on every single Tinder option until they run out of every candidate within miles or make joke profiles just for a laugh.

Preventing these types of misuse and play is a big job for online dating companies. Identifying problems and deciding how to fix them is crucial for users looking for love, but now it's good for business, too. Match alone has 2. Even Tinder, heralded as more of a game than an actual dating service by many Millennials, will soon start charging for a premium edition to get a bigger piece of the online market.

People once looked down on online dating, but now it is widely accepted and continues to grow in popularity as new mobile devices provide additional platforms. One in 10 Americans has used an online dating site or app, according to a report from the Pew Research Center, and 59 percent think they're a good way to meet people.

So how do these companies keep their products running to find you love? Mike Maxim, chief technology officer at OkCupid , says the company is always making minor improvements to its algorithm to make the service better. In their algorithm that matches users with one another they use match percentages , which basically quantifies how much users have in common, along with their popularity and in-box messages.

On any dating site, he says, a small subset of users will receive the majority of the messages. The popularity metric which isn't displayed on people's profiles helps them match people with similar status on the site. Misbehaving users are a continuous battle, Maxim says, especially on a free site like OkCupid. To fight this, he says, they use computer and human defenses. Their software can detect if someone sets up multiple accounts, claims they are in a foreign country or exhibits bad behavior, and it can then flag their accounts for review or automatically disable them.

OkCupid also relies on reports from its users to find misbehavior, Maxim says. Steve Carter, vice president of matching at eHarmony , says they close accounts per day that their "highly experienced, dedicated and slightly paranoid 'trust and safety' personnel" deem spam, also by using software and human intuition.

Like many online dating services, OkCupid amasses large amounts of data on its users, which Maxim says it uses to improve its products and monitor if the site or algorithm needs fixing.

OkCupid president and co-founder, Christian Rudder, publishes some of this data and insight on the site's blog, OkTrends , admitting unabashedly that they experiment on users. Carter says eHarmony recently added a machine scoring system that can automatically crop photos for different devices and tell users which images will be most successful with possible mates. This data can also help sites be more personalized, says Vatsal Bhardwaj, general manager of Match.

Sites catering only to redheads , farmers , tall people , cat lovers and Trekkies already exemplify this desire to find someone with a very specific type and tastes. Experts agree that mobile will define the future of the dating industry, but what effects that will have on information is unclear. Follow Rebecca Harrington on Twitter. Already a subscriber? Sign in. Thanks for reading Scientific American. Create your free account or Sign in to continue. See Subscription Options. Follow Rebecca Harrington on Twitter Recent Articles by Rebecca Harrington Cameras Catch Coyotes as They Take Manhattan [Slide Show] Drug-Resistant Stomach Bug Gains a Foothold in the U.

Highly Contagious, Antibiotic-Resistant Food Poisoning Establishes U. Presence [Infographic]. Get smart. Sign up for our email newsletter.

Sign Up. Support science journalism. Knowledge awaits. See Subscription Options Already a subscriber? Create Account See Subscription Options. Continue reading with a Scientific American subscription. Subscribe Now You may cancel at any time.

Mike Maxim, chief technology officer at OkCupid , says the company is always making minor improvements to its algorithm to make the service better. View Singles. I will forever be grateful. Sign up for our email newsletter. THANK YOU for making it possible for me to meet my soulmate.

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