Women users of the online dating site state a range of preferred ages for partners that is relatively normal, and when it comes to reaching out to other users, they stay pretty strictly within their own self-imposed guidelines. However, men on the site continue to state a preference for 20-something girls well into their later years. And even when male users state a cut-off age, they continue to contact women who are below that age.

Here's what that looks like in a graph format:

Women, on the other hand, display an "admirable openness to both reasonably younger and reasonably older men," with the exception of early-20s young women who generally prefer to date slightly older young men.

Here's where the plot thickens: Stated age preferences are fine and dandy, but how different genders actually interact with potential dates of varying ages belies male users' statements about who they're really looking to meet.

Here's a heat map overlaid with the women's stated age preferences. You can see that, with striking regularity, women mean it when they say they want to find a partner within a given age range:

As you can see, the data show that 29-year-old women generally stop messaging significantly younger men.

Now, here's the data on men's messaging habits:

The men in this study consistently reached out to the youngest of the women in their preference range - which already heavily favors younger women. Moreover, they don't cut themselves off at their stated minimum age preference. "No matter what he's telling himself on his setting page," reads the OKCupid blog, "a 30-year-old man spends as much time messaging 18- and 19-year-olds as he does women his own age."

Taking into account this data about sexual desirability and women's responses to frank questions about sex acts and exploration, the OKCupid researchers determined a socio-sexual sweet spot for men to consider:

To some, this graph might look like an episode of Cougartown. But the folks at OKCupid feel that "older" women get a bad rap in the online dating world - one that they don't necessarily deserve.

What's your experience or opinion on the matter? Let us know in the comments.

The company recently ran some numbers on response rates for messages sent between almost a million otherwise compatible men and women of varying races, and the results are eye-opening. "Whenever we compare the match/reply charts for a given breakdown of the population, they should look about the same," the related blog post reads. "However, this, like so many other fine assumptions, totally breaks down when race gets involved."

As a control group, the folks at OKCupid examined reply rates based on zodiac signs. They predicted a 60% match rate among all zodiac signs, and there was relatively little variation between the response rates, which ran in the 30% range and pretty much match up with the line graph above:

However, when looking at profiles with a similar degree of compatibility - right around 60% - the reply rates varied wildly based on gender and, interestingly, race:

It probably comes as no surprise to the seasoned Internet user that, in general, the ladies have a better chance of getting a reply to a sent message (sorry, fellas!), but looking at the exact breakdown of replies is a disheartening commentary on interracial dating.

Here's a table showing response rates for male senders of varying ethnicities:

The data show that black women reply "about a quarter more often" than women of other races, that white men get more responses, and, to quote from the post, "White women prefer white men to the exclusion of everyone else--and Asian and Hispanic women prefer them even more exclusively. These three types of women only respond well to white men. More significantly, these groups' reply rates to non-whites is terrible."

Next, let's take a look at what happens when the sender is a woman:

And now we see why white men are today's punching bag - at least on the OKCupid blog. They respond less than any other group, and they respond least of all to black women. And speaking of black women, who we saw in the last table responded more than other groups: These ladies are receiving fewer responses than their peers of other races.

Finally, take a look at this chart looking at users' responses to the question, "Would you prefer to date someone of your own skin color/racial background?"

Ouch! White men and women do not come off particularly well, especially considering the relative open-mindedness of their peers. And sadder still, according to OKCupid's internal metrics, their users are younger, better educated, and more progressive than users on other sites. Truly, the mind reels.

Without making any assumptions, we would also love to see how the data look for same-sex pairs of varying races. Is there something about GLBT culture that might make queer folks less racist than our straight counterparts?

Moreover, we wonder if the study was conducted based on data from U.S. users only, or whether international users' messages and replies were examined, as well.

What do you think this research signifies, RWW reader? Are there other, unseen factors at play, or do you think the data stand as a sad commentary on unjustifiable race-based phobias inherent in a hegemonic culture? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.

After crunching the numbers, it appears that response rates to heterosexual males are extremely low. The baseline rate of reply to messages from men is only 22% and for women it's over 40%. Essentially, messages sent by men are only half as likely to get replies than messages from women. It would be interesting to see how this dynamic shifts for same-sex dating sites. Nevertheless, one thing is certain across the board - brevity is the key to getting a response. Apparently "being yourself" is less about painting a picture and more about linking to one. Says OK Cupid, "After about 360 words (1800 characters), you start scaring people off, like the online equivalent of a face tattoo."

Given that Twitter offers the ability to link to videos, photos and profiles, what are the chances that microblogging dating has a future? Let us know in the comments below.

Photo Credit: Lead - Postcards From Home and Inset - Lord Khan

I caught up with Markus today via email and asked how the business is doing now. He didn't want to get specific about earnings, but he said that POF will earn $10 Million + next year (which puts it at around $30k per day). So just in earnings, POF has grown rapidly over the past year or so. As well as Adsense, income now comes from banner ads and affiliate marketing. A May Wall St Journal article has a good general profile of Markus and his company.

There is one former fact about PlentyOfFish that has just become a myth - Markus hired his first employee a few weeks ago! This person is doing customer service, a task previously done by Markus and his girlfriend. So technically POF is a two-person company now, but that doesn't make quite as good a headline ;-)

Comparison with Facebook

What really pricked up my ears was when Markus started to talk about click-through rates and how that compared POF with Facebook. As you'll recall, Facebook supposedly has a valuation of $15 Billion currently, thanks to Microsoft's $240 investment last week. Many people are skeptical of the Facebook valuation though, because Facebook and social networks are known to be poor at generating money from ads.

Markus told me that per page view, Plentyoffish has 5-10 times the click through rate of Facebook. So by his calculations, POF's 1.2 Billion page views per month is the same as 5-10 Billion Facebook page views per month. Facebook "only" generates 40 billion page views a month and yet it has a $15 Billion valuation. But the crux of Markus' argument is that despite having about 33 times the monthly traffic of POF, Facebook's poor click-through ads should bring the valuation models closer. Markus said that "over 40% of Facebook's pageviews are image related, ads in bad positions and users just generally looking to waste time." He said that "there are only a handful of sections on the site [Facebook] that will generate good click thru rates for advertisers."

So getting down to nitty gritty metrics, Markus concluded that "Facebook is only able to generate 10 to 15 times as many clicks on ads as my site and it's valued at 15 billion. Needless to say I'm watching ad supported business model valuations very closely." What's more, some of his direct competitors - e.g. Eharmony and match.com - are apparently valued in the billions.

While Markus didn't put a figure on what PlentyOfFish is probably worth, it's clear he is thinking in Billions and not Millions. It's very hard to quantify this, but at the very least POF would be worth in the 9 figures due to its annual revenues of $10M. Not bad for a one-man company (plus a new Customer Service Rep!).