Text is, in some ways, on the way out, unfortunately. There are dating sites now that are just pictures.

Use correct grammar and punctuation. Do not use net speak, like WOT, W-O-T or U. Those messages get a lot lower reply rate.

Women are much more discriminating. I think both types of people are equally interested in having an attractive partner. But women essentially give the thumbs up to only half as many guys as guys giving the thumbs up to women.

We noticed recently that people didn't like it when Facebook "experimented" with their news feed. Even the FTC is getting involved. But guess what, everybody: if you use the Internet, you're the subject of hundreds of experiments at any given time, on every site. That's how websites work.

I know that shorter messages are better in terms of reply rate. The optimal length is something like 50 characters. Characters, not words.

A great piece of advice for online dating is to stand out from the crowd. So greetings like "hello" and "hi" are very common. They do less well than things that are a little bit quirky or a little bit weird, like "howdy" or "holla." The rarer your salutation, the better it does, in general.

Going to a site with more users seems obviously better to me, but at the same time, having a bland, middle of the road profile with bland, middle of the road pictures seems like a bad strategy to me.