Want More Sex? Maybe You Should Buy an iPhone
Report: Women iPhone owners had 12.3 partners, female BlackBerry owners had 8.8.
Aug. 12, 2010— -- It you want more notches on your bedpost, maybe you should buy yourself an iPhone.
At least that's what new data from the online dating site OkCupid suggests.
The free dating site, which matches people based on the mounds of user information it collects, said that among 30-year-old smartphone users, iPhone owners have more sexual partners than owners of BlackBerrys and Android phones.
In a chart posted to site's blog Tuesday, OkCupid said the magic number for iPhone-toting men was 10, compared to 8.1 for BlackBerry users and 6 for Android owners.
Women iPhone owners appear to be even more amorous. According to the site, female iPhone owners had 12.3 partners, while BlackBerry users had just 8.8 and Android fans had 6.1.
Dating Site Asks Users How Many Sexual Partners They Have Had
"Imagine if you had a video camera in every bar in the country. You would have tons and tons of great fodder for these kinds of reports all the time," said Sam Yagan, the site's co-founder and CEO. "We basically are watching millions of people date, and in the process we can watch what pictures they take, what kinds of messages they send. We observe all kinds of behavior and then when you aggregate it -- obviously anonymously – you can come up with some very interesting findings."
To help understand the millions of people who use the site, he said OkCupid asks users several optional questions, including the kinds of phones they use and how many sexual partners they've had.
Yagan said the sample size they used to chart users' sexual activity by smartphone type included about 10,000 people.
OkCupid also mined its data to determine which cameras take the most attractive photos of their subjects.
Online Dating Site Lets Users Rank Profile Pictures for Attractiveness
The site lets users rate the attractiveness of each photo uploaded to the site. The rankings remain private, but they help OkCupid pair people with similar attractiveness rankings.
"Everyday millions of photos get rated on our site and so, for every photo that's been uploaded, we know on a scale from 1 to 10 how it ranks from millions of member votes," Yagan said.
By examining the metadata encoded in 552,000 digital photos used in online dating profiles, he said, they figured out that the most sophisticated cameras take the most flattering photos.
Cameras with interchangeable lenses, like the Panasonic Micro 4/3s, ranked at the top, followed by point and shoot cameras and then simple camera phones.
Want to know the best time of day to have your portrait taken? Late afternoon and evening.
According to OkCupid, the "golden hours" just after sunrise and just before sunset are especially flattering.
And if you want to make sure that pictures reflect your youthful glow, the site advises staying away from flash, which appears to add seven years.
"Soft light can hide wrinkles, blemishes, devil eyes. The hard light of a flash often brings them out," OkCupid said. "For example, a 28 year-old who used a flash is as attractive as a 35 year-old who didn't."