"Four times as much communication?" I wish...

For awhile, eHarmony has put up banner ads on it's site, in it's attempt to inform people about their ability to declare a preference for fast-track.

Actually, I'm pretty happy that they're trying to make fast-track requests seem more normal.

But, in these ads, they cite a statistic that caught me off-guard.

According to the ads, people who declare a fast-track preference receive four times as many communication requests!

I found that interesting. And it definitely contradicted my own data set.

So, I tried to find out more about the basis for eHarmony's claim.

It was difficult to find - but one article finally made it clear.

It explained that people who declare a fast-track preference receive four times as many fast-track requests than the people who don't.

That's a big difference, in my opinion. And it doesn't contradict my old data.

Of course, my old data has it's weaknesses. The experiment was done over a year ago. I didn't have that many matches in the data set.

And, recently, at least one member of our Google Group has introduced a reasonable theory that certain personality types might respond better to fast-track than guided communcation. And has some data backing up his theory, at least in his case.

But eHarmony's statistic? It's just not relevant to most men, in my humble opinion.

I still hold to my belief - attractive women are flooded with communication requests. They don't have the time to read profiles attached to men who aren't showing interest. And it's much better to be guy #3 to request communication, rather than guy #40.

Again, if a woman seems worth talking to, I recommend initiating communication quickly. Don't wait for her to initiate.

Time is not on your side.