The cold hard facts about Internet dating_其他

The cold hard facts about Internet dating

For anyone banging his or her head against the wall in the world of dating, it seems the answer could lie in your calculator.

I recently spoke to Shanghai millionaire Dr Li Song, the CEO and co-founder of the world's largest matchmaking website for Chinese speakers, www.zhenai.com.

It boasts 23 million registered users - and new ones are signing up at a rate of 30,000 a day.

The key to Dr Li's company's matchmaking success? Some amazing intuition into how lovers feel, into how their hearts beat, what makes their tears flow?

Not at all. In fact, it all comes down to quantifiable statistics and probability.

The size of Dr Li's database enables his team of 400 call-center matchmakers to input the data for each new seeker of love, and out pops the most likely suitor for his or her profile.

Details such as length and style of hair, clothes, manner of speaking, are all collected.

The matchmakers advise those who sign up that 70 percent of women with long, straight hair get second dates.

Just 5 percent of those with short, curly hair do.

His team advises women to wear above-the-knee skirts, high heels, and definitely black, transparent pantyhose. "Not too low-cut for the tops. If you wear something too low-cut you lead a man to think of you in the wrong way. In other words you want to be sexy, but not sexual," he stresses.