Many online dating studies use a method known as "pre- messaging ," where participants send out messages to several people before they attempt to make contact with them. This study found that pre-messages can lead to more responses and sometimes even result in offline dates! The trick is picking the right pre-message: those who succeeded were more likely to mention something from the profile of their target, such as a shared interest or similar experiences.
If you're struggling for things to say, one issue may be your profile itself. Most profiles are too sparse, meaning there's little there for other users to
After a few months of using Tinder, a popular mobile dating app, I decided to create an experiment.
I crafted 20 male A/B test profiles with different pictures of myself, all of which led to the same bio and were exactly the same except for one word. Each profile picture used my actual photo but with varying headings such as “CEO at Solu” or “Working on my startup” or “Surfer dude looking for some waves”. These weren't lies – just slight contextual changes. The bios were also adjusted slightly: "Looking for something serious"/"wink wink"/"hanging out today" etc. As you might expect, these small differences had significant effects on the number of matches and conversations I got on the app.
The experiment was easy to carry out because Tinder is location-based, meaning that it only shows you people in your area (typically a radius of 100km). Moreover, if two people like each other's profiles then they are able to chat with each other without needing to exchange phone numbers. At first this seems like a good idea; however, it has an inherent flaw - dating apps allow men to get away with approaching hundreds or even thousands of women (if they can get enough matches) before finding one they really like.