Ugh, snowstorms, amright? While this weekend's impending snowstorm may have ruined your weekend plans and convinced you that really, really do need five jars of Cookie Butter from Trader Joe's, you're probably forgetting about how Winter Storm Jonas can affect your love life. Not only are we in the midst of online dating's peak season, which began on New Year's and ends on Valentine's Day, but we're about to see a surge in activity on dating apps and sites with Jonas.
What will Jonas bring? OkCupid revealed there is a 34 percent increase in exchanged messages on the site during bad weather. “We expect dating activity to be at least as high during Winter Storm Jonas as it was last year during Juno’s blizzard,” says Jimena Almendares, OkCupid’s Chief Product Officer. “Historically, we have observed that bad weather is great for online dating activity as people spend more time indoors."
So are people just eager to find someone to get warm with ASAP or are they actually spending more time on the site? "They are browsing more OkCupid profiles, sending messages and engaging in conversations that will lead to dates," says Almendares. "In general, during rainy days we see a spike in user activity of at least 10 percent. However, during Blizzard Juno, we saw the number of messages exchanged increase by 34 percent and during Hurricane Sandy we saw that conversations increased by 36 percent.”
If you're an online dater, now's the time to start messaging people. And lucky for you, I spoke with Almendares on this week's episode of Bustle's Sex and Relationships podcast 'I Want It That Way' all about OkCupid hacks, the site's biggest trends from the past year, and how to take advantage of the impending storm. Oh, and most importantly, she explains what that question about being excited by the prospect of nuclear war is really all about.
Take a listen below:
Images: Fotolia
