Social networking and dating websites have significantly different ideal image aspect ratios.

Resizing your pictures to ideal dimensions is easily one of the fastest ways to increase your profile views.

If you pay attention to those ideal picture dimensions ratios, your images will stand out from the crowd and get your profile viewed more. What is most important to you is how your thumbnails show up in the site’s search. After all, nothing prevents you from uploading an unmodified picture into a second picture slot, but we only have one opportunity to catch her eye in the sensory overload of thumbnails.

Image aspect ratio is the proportion of an image’s length to its height.

There is a bonus point for websites that crop your pictures to bring out your face. If you submit a picture that is ideally cropped, you will retain control over how you will be presented to the world. Believe me, that is not trivial. The staffers generally don’t do a good job at making you look your best because their workload is astronomical.

By the end of this article, you will know how to avoid having your pictures be blurry, squished, distorted, and too small.

Here is how to optimize your pictures for several popular websites to achieve professional results

MySpace.com

Have you noticed that on MySpace, for example, certain images on the friends thumbnail page look better? Myspace has optimized its site for long and narrow portraits and full length vertical body shots. In fact, MySpace photos get resized proportionally to be 90 pixels in width. The main profile pictures are 170 pixels in width.

Your best bet for the ideal MySpace profile picture thus becomes a vertical image that would look good when resized down to 170 pixels in width. I would suggest taking a high quality body shot and cropping it to a multiple of 170 pixels. 340 pixels should be sufficient. With MySpace, we have the opportunity to show not just your face but also the rest of you with no penalty. We are not so lucky on most other websites.

What’s interesting about this site is that it resized my properly sized 534×800 2:3 image down to 162×242. It appears that the absolute maximum is 170×400, or a 2:5 ratio. Crop a picture to 4:5 and then crop it in half, if that’s what you want. Out of curiosity, I uploaded a 600×1499 picture that got resized to 170×424 picture and an 80×199 thumbnail.

Rest assured, that picture will stand out of the crowd as you’d be literally twice as tall as everyone else around you

For MySpace.com, the maximum (that I found so far) image size is 170×424 (although 170×255 is what I normally see) and its ideal image aspect ratio is 2:5 even though most will use 2:3.

Facebook.com

On Facebook, your friends are represented as 50×50 pixel thumbnails.

Your photos are probably represented by 130×130 pixel thumbnails.

The maximum profile dimensions appear to be 200×266. You will have a built-in image cropper to select your thumbnail image.

For Facebook, the ideal picture size is 200×266 or its multiple and the ideal image aspect ratio is 3:4

Plentyoffish.com

Let’s look at Plentyoffish. Their ideal image size is different. Unlike Myspace, they merilessly destroy your photograph by squishing it into a 75-pixel square. It is tremendously challenging to stand out from the crowd in the sea of people on plentyoffish. On the other hand, you can use that to your advantage. If your picture shows undistorted, and everyone else is distorted, it will be you who gets his click.

Your best bet for Plentyoffish is to use square pictures. According to their own recommendations, 300×300 pixels square images will work best. Again, resize your profile photograph to match these dimensions, and I will guarantee you a lot more profile views, assuming your face looks good. On that site, you don’t see headlines in quick match view, so having a very clear face picture is essential.

You need to understand that Plentyoffish will resize all of your photos down to about 300 pixels. Don’t upload a picture that looks good at full resolution, but where you are just a tiny dot at a reduced resolution. This is particularly true for beach photos. Crop them to showcase you, and not the gorgeous landscape. You can always review and marvel at the original size photos with him in your bed and under candle lights later. For now, your task is to highlight your text with relevant pictures where you can be clearly seen.

For Plentyoffish, the ideal image size is 300×300 pixels and its ideal image aspect ratio is 1:1

Match.com

Match’s profile thumbnail images are 80 pixels in width. The aspect ratio for the thumbnail is 4:5. Sounds simple, right? Match will even crop your picture for you.

The ideal image size for a Match.com profile image is 280×350 and its ideal image aspect ratio is 4:5

Chemistry.com

Chemistry profile thumbnail images are displayed initially scaled down to 145 pixels in width, however their micro-thumbnails are only 51px. Chemistry does have a dynamic overlay so that if you move your mouse over the tiny thumbnail, you can see the 80px version of that file. Actually, it’s even more complicated, but if you will care about such minute details, you can probably write an article like this yourself.

It appears that the ideal photo size for that site is a maximum of 400 pixels in width. When scaled down to 80 pixels, it would appear 5 times smaller. When scaled down to 51 pixels, it would appear approximately 8 times smaller.

They use a slightly non-standard ratio of 9:10, but the height is only very slightly longer than the width. I think they were going for 4:5, but they are not enforcing that.
For Chemistry.com, the ideal image size is 400×400, and its ideal ratio is 1:1.

Friendfinder.com and its less wholesome siblings

Did you know that the entire company is now owned by Penthouse?

Friendfinder thumbnails are 96×96 pixels. Friendfinder lets you have much larger pictures visible to gold members. If you are more into the adult side of that network, such as adultfriendfinder, passion, outpersonals, millionairemate, or alt, then you should especially realize that your thumbnail picture should be of your face and not of any other body parts. It is true that 96px is enough space to fit a good body shot, but gorgeous headshots tend to get more clicks, unless your body would still score 8+ on Hotornot after about 500 votes.

They only recently changed to square pictures on profile. If you have an older account there, you should update your picture to the correct size.

For friendfinder.com and its siblings, the ideal image size is 300×300 and its ideal image aspect ratio is 1:1 or square.

The unexpected bonus of the megapixel wars

Look at all of your snapshots taken with multi-megapixel cameras. Most of them are probably mediocre. Look at them at 100%. Do you realize that you only need an approximately 300 pixel square image to show your smile? If the overall composition is not so good, but the smile is burning hot, take the smile and ignore the rest of the image.

I went through my entire picture library and found one of my better smiles on a picture where my head is barely visible. That was only a 2.1-megapixel picture! If you routinely take 3+MP pictures, you probably have some very good candidates for creative cropping.

How on Earth can you optimize your images to each of the sites?

Are you getting dizzy yet from all these calculations?

The easiest way I’ve found so far is to use Google’s Picasa. It’s free and can do that pretty easily. What you’ll do is use crop tool and then export the result as a new image. Do yourself a huge favor, and don’t work on originals. Make a copy of your source photos and import that folder into Picasa separately from the rest of your pictures.

Undocumented Picasa tricks

There is an undocumented trick for Picasa to achieve 4:3, square, and 3:2 crop ratios. To get a 4:3 ratio, you would hold down CTRL while in manual crop mode. To get square ratio, hold down the SHIFT key while in manual crop mode. For the 3:2 crop ratio, you would hold down the ALT key while in manual crop mode. An astute reader will also recognize that 3:2 is same as 6:4 and 5:4 is same as 10:8, both of which are preset ratios in the photo size dialog box.

In summary, use the 4:6 option for ratios of sites requiring 2:3. Use the 8:10 option for ratios of sites requiring 4:5. You’ll have to use manual mode to get a square crop or a 3:4 ratio. Picasa will automatically adjust the overall image ratio if you use a modifier key and continue dragging.

Again, as of build 2.7, this is undocumented, so don’t bother looking through Picasa help for these modifier keys.

This article took many hours to research and write. I firmly believe that this research will help you to get more profile views with all the consequences of getting more dates. Who knew that knowing math could help you get a date? I welcome your comments.

Your profile can be a stagnant puddle, a trickle stream, or a class V rapid.

Guess which of the three ends in the waterfalls?

A highly targeted profile can in fact lead you to finding the match of a lifetime.

We recommend that your profile should convey a theme. A theme makes your profile more coherent and tells us more about you between the lines. It is much easier to write an easily flowing profile when you choose a unique theme to glue everything together.

Don’t try to be someone whom you are not. You chances for long-term happiness are much greater if you connect with someone who will like you for who you are today and not what the fantasy version of you might be. Such fantasies tend to collide with reality with disastrous results. For example, I watched an episode of “Millionaire Matchmaker” recently and one of the guys has a stripping pole in his living room. Will he be compatible with someone who finds that offensive? I don’t believe so.

If you are a football player, for example, your profile might look somewhat like this:

Headline - Pigskin lover with a sensitive touch - it’s obvious to football fans, and potentially curious to others

Opening statement - Huddle up! We are making a play of your lifetime! - here we are continuing with football terminology and are openly conveying the excitement of a major game.

The rest of the profile would carry the same theme. It would use appropriate terminology. A risque theme could be a game of touch football on the beach, for example, if you think you can get away with it.

Your last paragraph should always be a call to action. It should never be “If you’d like to know more, just ask”. That statement is a waste of electrons and, far more importantly, the reader’s time. Do you realize just how difficult it is to write to an attractive stranger something better than “Hi, you are hot! I’d like to know more”. If you provide the reader with more information, you will increase your chances of connecting with them through common interests. They will see you as a better match.

Let’s say you meet someone offline and she’s a total stranger. Would you tell her “Hi, I am Zack. If you’d like to know more just ask!” Absurd, isn’t it? We certainly would like to know more, but don’t make us ask for it. Humans love instant gratification. Don’t make us wait! Tell us now, immediately!

I’ll give you an extreme example. I recently wrote a resume for a woman as a favor. It took me 4 hours! I was completely exhausted! She openly commented that she felt as if she were being interrogated. It took me 4 hours to write a simple resume for a relatively low-level position. Only about 30 minutes of that was actual writing. Given the opportunity, she probably would finish her profile with the “Just ask” comment. Woe be to the person who would ask her out and then try to learn more about her.

It’s OK to have a long profile. If you wrote a long profile that flows well and has a well defined headline, a strong opening statement, a highly coherent multi-paragraph body, and a catchy call to action, you will have a profile that is substantially more attractive as compared to the typical short, unorganized, and generally boring essays.

For this scenario, an action statement might be as simple as - Ready?! Make the catch!

When you write your profile, evaluate it for flow. Is anything out of place? Can anything be expanded? Will expanding on more interests amplify the emotional response? Does it make you smile just reading it? Do you have a burning desire to contact yourself?

Image credit: http://karin-travels.webtravellog.com

To finish my river-themed article, I leave you with this thought:

There is a reason why they call them bridal veil waterfalls…

Writing catchy headlines

Headline writing is akin to writing poetry. The idea is to grab the reader’s attention using very few words. Admit it, this one made you look.

What you need to realize is that your headline should describe you and not the person whom you are seeking. After all, if the reverse were true, I would write a headline “Seeking Miss Nude Universe for a Hot Orgy with Angels and Fallen Angels in My Bed Tonight!”. Considering that I’ve gotten a lap dance from that woman in the past, I’d say that at least part of my next level of expectations is reasonable.

Your headline should describe you succinctly and be as witty as possible.

This is your opportunity to catch the reader’s attention and to have her click on your profile. What works great is a headline of comprised of contrasting words. For instance, one of my headlines reads “World-class computer expert…Dancer :)”. That headline is the longest that particular site would allow me to write. Yet, I managed to express something unique and interesting about me in just 5 words. If I weren’t a dancer, I’d probably use the word “Danger”.

To summarize, your headline should be all about your own self-expression and not about whom you seek. It is there to give the reader a chance to have a glimpse into your personality without reading a lot of text.

Let’s analyze a few sample female headlines from my search results (18-36, female, less than 25 miles from my zip code):

Looking For Someone Real - meaningless
kiss me like youll never see me again - has potential
Just looking… - Actually less likely to be contacted, signals zero commitment
I’m just a plain and simple girl… - tell us something unique
Chemistry - cliche
cute cali girl for some fun!! - everyone likes to have fun
Smoke me;I’m dope. - now, this one caught my attention!
Looking for a Good Hearted Man - and so is everyone else
Really? - meaningless, signals no commitment
Hello world - this one also caught my attention, as it tends to be a programmer’s first ever program
lets go get some fu*kin french toast - caught my attention because I want to know why
Lookin 4 A Real Peoples 2 Kick it With - obviously an illiterate person who has nothing in common with me.
Searching for a great man! - and so is everyone else.

I clicked through most of those profiles, but my time is limited, so usually I don’t do that.

As is usually the case, the profile with the most interesting headline, which in my case was the girl’s expression that she should be smoked, was the most interesting person out of the list.

Here is her full profile - http://www.plentyoffish.com/member4275694.htm

If you have an interesting headline, your profile views and meeting opportunities will go through the roof.

Time and time again I come across profiles that are genuinely painful to read.

One of the most important concepts in advertising is effective use of white space. This post is fairly easy to read because the text is broken down into paragraphs.

It is a well-known fact that the online Internet dating profiles are typically read in two phases.

• Phase I is skimming the content and headlines looking for a quick overview of the person.
• Phase II is actually reading the ad, sometimes multiple times.

By not utilizing an abundance of white space in your profile, you make it exceedingly difficult to skim, which in turn makes the reader skip your profile altogether.

I see well-written profiles quite often where the only final touch the person needs is just to add some more white space.

Your comments on this article are welcome.

And now to illustrate the concept of painful to read profiles…

Time and time again I come across profiles that are genuinely painful to read. One of the most important concepts in advertising is effective use of white space. This post is fairly easy to read because the text is broken down into paragraphs. It is a well-known fact that the online Internet dating profiles are typically read in two phases. Phase I is skimming the content and headlines looking for a quick overview of the person. hase II is actually reading the ad, sometimes multiple times. By not utilizing an abundance of white space in your profile, you make it exceedingly difficult to skim, which in turn makes the reader skip your profile altogether.I see well-written profiles quite often where the only final touch the person needs is just to add some more white space.