“Even if you work at Samsung Electronics, you can still get rejected” ... The unexpected reason popularity on dating apps varies sevenfold

[Financial News] An analysis has found that a prestigious business card alone cannot guarantee interest from the opposite sex on a dating app. Even among employees of the same major company, the amount of interest they received varied by as much as sevenfold depending on the number of profile photos and how thoroughly they filled out their bios.
On the 26th, Blit, a dating app that verifies users’ employment and is operated by the workplace community NOW Talk, announced findings from an analysis of usage data from around 300,000 working professionals in South Korea who joined the app between January and September this year.
The survey found that male Samsung Electronics employees with six profile photos received about seven times as much interest per user, on average, as those who uploaded just one. Whether users filled out a bio also directly affected the interest they received. Users who wrote a thorough bio of at least 200 characters received about six times as much interest on average as those who left it blank.
Whether users’ employers paid out large performance bonuses did not lead to changes in interest from the opposite sex. Blit analyzed popularity trends among employees around the time Samsung Electronics and SK hynix paid out large performance bonuses earlier this year, and found no statistically significant changes. In other words, how thoughtfully users presented themselves—not their employer’s name recognition or a temporary increase in income—was the key factor in making a match.
The usage analysis also identified a “golden hour” when users were most active in accepting matches. By day of the week, the number of match acceptances on Sundays was 1.2 times the overall average; by time of day, the figure at 10 p.m. was twice the average. This suggests that 10 p.m. on Sunday is a peak time for exploring new connections as the weekend draws to a close.
There were also clear differences in how users approached matching by gender. Women spent more than twice as long as men, on average, viewing profiles of the opposite sex, but initiated matches only about one-third as often as men. Meanwhile, women accepted about 67% of requests, compared with about 50% for men, suggesting that women were more cautious when sending requests and men when accepting them.
The match acceptance rate was also more than three times higher for requests sent after users viewed community posts or stories in the app than for requests made from a standard profile. Users who thoroughly completed the questionnaire about their values also received more than twice as much interest as those who left it blank, highlighting a trend among people in their 20s and 30s to look beyond basic credentials and learn about a person’s tastes and lifestyle.
Kang Gu-min, Blit’s team lead, explained, “Appearance and financial circumstances are major criteria when looking for someone of the opposite sex, but even when those factors are the same, the actual level of interest varies considerably depending on how thoroughly you present yourself.” Launched in 2021, Blit has recorded 500,000 cumulative members. Users aged 30 to 34 make up the largest share, at 42% of the total.
[email protected] Moon Young-jin Reporter