Data, a Love Story: How I Gamed Online Dating to Meet My Match Hardcover – 31 Jan 2013

I work with data as part of my job and I've been using online dating sites off and on since 2005 so this book seemed right up my alley. After reading about it on several websites to say I was anticipating reading this book wasn't an understatement.

Basically, Data, A Love Story: How I Gamed Online Dating to Meet My Match is the story of writer Amy Webb who, after being frustrated with her initial attempts at online dating, decides to use data to game the system, have better results, and ultimately meet the man of her dreams. It is a premise that I am sure resonates with many online daters (I know it did for me) because there is often a stark difference between the way dating sites are presented in their commercials and the reality that many online daters experience when they sign up.

Unfortunately, I'm not sure this book lived up the hype. For starters, there just wasn't enough focus on the 'data' part of the story for my tastes. Given its prominence in the title and the degree to which it was referenced in the articles I read before picking up the book, I was disappointed to find it comprised less than 1/3 of the content. The rest talks about the relationship and online dating struggles that lead her to game the system in the first place, the other things she did to improve her chances (i.e. going to the gym, buying new clothes, and getting a hair cut), and her experience dating after doing her research. To me these sections weren't as interesting or compelling to me as the data side of the story in part. I think this was partially because her storytelling wasn't really on par with the memoirs I usually read. Some of the scenes and details she shared in the book seemed unnecessary and distracting. After she finished her data collection the book had a hard time maintaining my interest and I had to focus to keep from skimming the rest of the book.

The data she gathered also wasn't quite as eye opening as I expected. Many of the articles I'd read about the book prior to picking it up divulged almost entirely the big lessons from the book. Basically, I felt like if you read a lot of the coverage of the book you already got most of the meat of the story. Not to mention what she learned seemed surprisingly basic given the lengths that she went to in creating fake profiles and monitoring the interactions. Much of the advice she gives, i.e. the importance of attractive pictures that show you in your best light and convey that you are an approachable and easy going person, is available elsewhere on the internet, including the advice sections of the dating sites themselves. I don't doubt that a lot of this information was helpful in 2005 as much less was written about online dating then, but in 2013 it comes off as a little basic. This is especially true when you compare this book to OkTrends, the blog for OkCupid. While that blog hasn't been updated (at least at the time of this review) since 2011 and I do find their analysis a bit flawed at times, it is still much more in-depth and eye opening. Basically I could see her advice being useful to someone who is just starting out in online dating or who might be clueless about how to write a profile, but if you are a more seasoned online dater there is a good chance you're doing a lot of what she writes about already. The one tip that I do think is less written about elsewhere is her suggestion that you turn your wants into a detailed, tiered rating system. If you're someone who historically has dated men who don't match up to what you really need, I could see this being a helpful exercise.

I also think she greatly oversimplifies what it takes to be a successful online dater. In a CBS News interview she was quoted as saying, "I want those folks to know that it's just a matter of taking more control of their situations. Online dating sites can work very well, as long as you know how to really use them." Personally, to me this seems like a gross oversimplification and I could see a lot of online daters feeling disappointed if they believed this to be true. In her book, after implementing her system Webb goes on just one additional date and finds her husband. But I'm not 100% that even if people followed her advice to a "T" they would have the same results, especially since the dating site landscape and how they display users has changed since Webb's experience on JDate. I think if she had wanted this book to be more of a how-to than a memoir she would have had to include more experiences (especially men's) beyond her own.

Overall, I found myself really disappointed in this book. Reading the coverage ahead of time it seemed like it a book that would be hard for me not to love, but it just didn't live up to my expectations.

Basically, the bottom line for me is that this reads as a funny memoir about meeting your husband online but it is less successful as a 'how to' dating book. While it doesn't deal specifically with online dating, I'd recommend Love 2.0: How Our Supreme Emotion Affects Everything We Feel, Think, Do, and Become instead. It's a really fascinating book about the science of love and how to cultivate a life that allows for more moments of love.

A friend recommended this book to me, as I have done some online dating in the past. It's a quick read with fine writing, not challenging to get through. However, around the chapter where Ms. Webb starts logging in to jdate as a series of falsified male profiles, I realized I was feeling really, really bothered by this book. I think it goes deeper than frustration with her neuroticism and lack of social grace. It's that she has a genuine disregard for other people! I found it distasteful that she would head off mid-date to email about how terrible the person was. Yes, online dates can be tough and people can be duplicitous, but if you stoop to their level, you are no better. But then - the hypocrisy - the most duplicitous turns out to be Ms. Webb, who engages with 96 women on jdate who all believe her to be a man looking to date women. Perhaps, if she had logged in as a man to check out a few profiles and learn a few tips that might have been okay. But responding to messages of unknowing women was so...mean-spirited. Almost as mean-spirited as her merciless mocking of these women's profiles, who never intended to put themselves out there for such a purpose. She kept smugly comparing herself to a researcher...she likes data and spreadsheets, she knows people at MIT, she knows the formula for the correlation coefficient. Oh, Honey, no. I am a PhD-level researcher, and here's what sets us apart: real researchers have to abide by these things called "ethics" - which would not allow duping all those women because you can't get a man. Many of Webb's take-aways (profile word clouds, photo analysis, etc) have been analyzed and documented on the okcupid dating website blog (so you can go there for tips instead of paying for this book). But here's the difference - okc explicitly tells people that they will mine their profile data in exchange for the free dating service. People who don't want to participate in the "research" can opt out by not signing up for the service. I was aghast at Webb's treatment of these women for her own purposes, but I shouldn't have been. In her listing of 72 traits she wants in her ideal man, she makes her values clear. Her listing fails to make mention of wanting a guy who is kind to others, who appreciates their dignity and worth. He should be VERY GOOD with money, be VERY GOOD in bed, and even care about the music of George Michael. But on human kindness, she'll take a pass.

Amazon reviews tend to have something in common with this book-they run on, and on, and on. Here's the quick hits:

Yes, the author is neurotic (as presented in her book, I'm not claiming personal experience here, thank Jewish Guy) in a non-cute, difficult to sympathize with way.

Yes, this is the self-obsessed, awkward, repetetive, list-heavy, repetetive, repetetive, and perhaps even REPETETIVE book you haven't been looking for. We get it. You have a list. By the third or fourth nitpicking revision, I wanted to get this back to the library ASAP to preserve my patience and faith in humanity.

Is there any practical information here for those seeking online connection to their future spouses? Not unless you consider marketing yourself to the point of straight up false advertising practical information. Shallow, shallow stuff.

I couldn't make myself finish it, but got stuck at the DMV before I could return it to the library, and thus got inspired, much as prison inspires weightlifting: it was better than staring at a wall. That said, I really can't say that reading this was a rewarding experience for me. I felt like I got scammed by a marketing campaign, which is heavy irony considering the content of the book.

Vayo con diablos!

You're either going to love or hate this book. I did both, so I have to give it a mixed review.

It used to be that if a fellow was decent and kind, honest and faithful, and could provide for a family, he was considered good husband material. Now, apparently, there is a new generation of upwardly mobile Jewish women trolling for trophy husbands on JDate and other sites. This is the story of one woman's neurotic, obsessive search for the perfect prince-doctor-husband. It is occasionally entertaining, sometimes moving, but often annoying. If you share the author's values that people can be reduced to a set of superficial stereotypes, that desires of the heart can be described with equations, and that "anything goes" in the search for your own Perfect mate, then you might enjoy this. The rest of us will cringe and moan as we read it.

The underlying premise of online dating is simple and seductive: given a large enough pool of potential matches and enough information about each one, finding the perfect mate can be reduced to a data-crunching problem. One must gather, filter and interpret the data posted by others and manage and manipulate the data you put out about yourself. The author, a self-avowed data geek who is as happy in a big pile of data as a pig in... well, you know, resolves to become an online dating Ninja so she can find that Perfect Husband needle in a haystack of mostly mediocre men.

She begins by defining the attributes of her perfect husband; not just the top 5 or 10 or 20, but a detailed list of 72 requirements. Of course, "tall, dark and handsome" are givens, but he must also be good with money and "very, very, very good in bed". Naturally, Mr. Right would also have to be ambitious and highly accomplished in his field, but still have lots of time to cater to the wife which he adores, taking her traveling around the world to culturally fascinating places, and indulging in her interests without being too attached to his own, and on and on. Honestly, I cringed when I read the list and found it incredibly narcissistic.

After she has categorized and prioritized and color-coded her list into a spreadsheet, she comes up with a "score" with which to rank every potential match. A minimum of "700" is required before she will consider someone. With tools in hand, she begins her husband search with the meticulous zeal of a Vanderbilt shopping for a summer estate in the Hamptons.

At some point she has the epiphany that it takes two to make a couple, and that whoever she selects must also select her. In order to outperform her competition in gaining the favor of her dream man, she must know exactly what the women are doing and what works in getting to be one of the "popular" profiles. This is where things get really ugly.

Without any hesitation or embarrassment, the author then proceeds to describe how she created ten (10) fake profiles of men on JDate. Each is carefully crafted with data and descriptions, and completed with fake photos. She then spends a month interacting with all the women who respond to her fake profiles, gathering- you guessed it- data. Apparently, when the author learned about market research, she skipped the class on ethics. The fact that 100 or so women thought they were interacting with their own potential mates seems not to have bothered her. Perhaps if she had found a perfectly suited match that turned out to be the fake profile of some other woman's experiment, she might not have been as sanguine about the subterfuge. I don't know what bothered me more: the fact that she committed the fraud, or that she seemed to take gleeful pride in having come up with the system.

After gathering all her data, and coming up with conclusions, the author then crafts her perfect profile and a set of rules to snare her perfect match. I don't think I'm giving anything away here by telling you that it worked. She meets the man of her dreams who meets all 72 items on her wish list, has a perfect score, and they live happily ever after. Jewish American Princesses everywhere can rejoice. They have a new heroine to guide them.

I have to admit that while reading this story, I was rooting for her online dating experiment to fail. I didn't share her values and found her methods abhorrent. I was hoping she would have a chance encounter with someone that met few of her criteria but with whom she would fall madly in love, in spite of her data and rules. But then that would have been my story, not hers.

I find it truly shocking that this book has received so much press, and can only attribute this phenomenon to the author's professional background and media savvy, because it is so insipid that it doesn't even hold up as an airplane read. As other reviewers have pointed out, there is no real "data" nor any pattern of constructive analysis presented in these pages, despite the fact that Webb contrives that device as the primary hook. In fact, this self-serving memoir tells the tale of a character who, having failed to salvage a clearly doomed romance (because they had "such a great beginning"), attempts to find a new mate online, begins cyber-stalking a bunch of women on JDate to figure out what makes them appealing (creepy), and drafts an exhaustive list of criteria for her 'perfect match'- a 72 point list so superficial that if the author were male, she would draw comparisons to another author of her caliber, Tucker Max.

In order to find a meaningful connection with a life partner, she employs the tactics of a sociopath. Even in a digital world, Webb's calculated, embittered, hyper-cerebral attempt at creating an attractive online persona is strikingly disingenuous. If you are a cyborg with no basic understanding of what makes humans vaguely appealing to other humans, you may glean a few dating tips from this book!

To the gentleman who slid her the check at the end of the meal on one of her 'disastrous' dates: I totally get it. If I had to sit through a meal with this boring, entitled blowhard, who undoubtedly spouted off about herself and her professional qualifications through the course of the entire meal- I would expect a free dinner too. (I sort of feel like she owes me a free dinner for my time spent reading this drivel).

This book sets feminism back 50 years and belongs in the flash-in-the-pan bargain bin next to that mid-nineties affectation, "The Rules", where it will no doubt end up after Webb's ride of self-promotion meets its natural end.

Unfortunately books like this do sell, because they provide the perfect vapid slush to fill space on venues like "The View". For a good critical review, which provides some insight into the author, click here: [...]

To summarize, I didn't like the book! The pearl of wisdom that can be found in it, however, is the basic precept that if you want something, you should ask for it and expect it. This tidbit of wisdom would have been better served up as a facebook meme rather than an a droning full-length memoir.