Hi guys, wanted to share a few things I've learned about setting up a successful dating profile on Tinder or Bumble. As an engineer I have fun playing with the apps, doing some A/B testing (looking at results of two different test sets) and figuring out how their matching patterns work to make the app work for me. In order to do successful A/B testing I've got a paid version which means I see who has swiped right on me. This is very useful to see how tweaks are helping or hurting.

  1. If you are not sure what a good profile looks like, go get Bumble and set your preferences to men... stay with me folks ;) How Bumble works is that it primes you to swipe right by putting the most successful (insta-right swipes) at the start of your session. That's why you always see gorgeous doctor-models in the first 10 or so. You can use this to your advantage by looking at what men are considered insta-right swipes in your area and then tweaking your profile to reflect similar things.

  2. My most recent discovery that prompted this post is that if you've got it flaunt it!! Think of the girls that you swipe right on, usually the fit girls showing a little skin. One bikini pic goes a long way when looks is all you've got to go on. For some reason I got it in my mind that girls didn't want to see guys with their shirts off. I suppose I've read a number of profiles complaining about it... boy way I wrong. I'm not crazy fit by any means but I'm certainly in good shape (rock climbing twice a week, eat well and lots of other exercise leads to a decent physique). I re-did all my pictures last night and put a couple in there that I previously considered a bit too wild. One in specific was from Burning Man: no shirt, rainbow tutu with glowing leds and boxers. I set this up at 3am last night. I woke up in the morning to casually check to see if it had made any difference. Normally I get about a match a week on Bumble and have grown pretty frustrated, this morning, less than 6 hours later I had 4 new matches and by the end of the day I had at least 10. Now of course not all are gorgeous models but definitely a few cuties in the mix. I can't tell you enough how much this one simple test has boosted my confidence. Now I feel like I get to be the picky one. Feeling desired like that all of a sudden left me with a grin on my face all day and I can take that confidence into my dates and not worry about outcomes because there will be more matches tomorrow. That creates a great attitude for a succesful date to be yourself, have fun and not put out needy vibes.

  3. Another aspect that I've been playing with lately is just asking to meetup almost immediately. I've seen a few girls write "no pen-pals" on their profile. To me I took this to mean "I don't want to chat for weeks". I've had many conversations go dry in less than a day or two after some nice back and forth. I think my version of the appropriate amount of chat is way more than what most of these women are expecting. I had a friend explain it to me in terms of 'girl-time' vs 'guy-time'. Invariably, girls will be getting waaayy more matches than a typical guy. Second, the reason we are all on here is to get a little attention in some form or another. So when a conversation goes long and she knows another guy is a swipe away that will take her out on a date then you will get dropped. So what I mean by 'girl-time' vs 'guy-time' is that the amount of time it takes for a girl to get bored is a lot shorter than it takes for a guy. That means you need to operate in 'girl-time' to be successful. One, as soon as I see a match come in, if I want to chat with her then I'll swipe right (advantage of paid version). Chances are she's still on the app and you'll be able to start talking immediately, even better if it's not Bumble so you can make the first move. Second, try to make sure you have time either that day or in the next day or two to actually meet-up and invite her to do something. One that worked for me since I travel a lot is I'll say "Hey I'm actually in your area today, wanna meet up for a xyz?". Definitely gotten some quick dates this way in the recent history.

  4. So one last tip for these types of sites is whether or not you should pay for the upgraded experience. I think to do A/B testing it's incredibly powerful to see when matches come through and be able to respond to them almost immediately. However, in my experience, after a few swipes both Tinder and Bumble will show you 99% of your matches if they are in your criteria anyway so you'll get a chance to match on them within your first 10-20 swipes. Sometimes I actually like to not see who my matches are so I can swipe unbiased of whether we will match. But if you don't want to waste a bunch of money you can just buy it for a month to fine tune your profile and then cancel your payments.

Hope that helps guys! It's been a long, interesting, sometimes fun, sometimes frustrating journey of experimentation and of course context is everything for when something will or won't work. And what may work for you may not work for someone else. Dating is different every where as well so this is what I've found in the LA area.