The Best Places to Find Love in America? For Whom?

Sometimes there might be a great opportunity waiting for you but it’s just not what you want. Pew recently published the best cities for women to find the ideal man. By ideal man, they mean someone who is single and is employed. High bar, right?

Pew poll snippet

As posted on the New York Times:

New York Times snippet

Facebook Data Science ran a series in February 2014 where they looked for the cities that were the best if you were “trying to find love.” Of course by that they mean “largest probability of formation of a relationship.” The rank was:

  1. Colorado Springs, CO
  2. El Paso, TX
  3. Louisville, KY
  4. Fort Worth, TX
  5. San Antonio, TX

These are some interesting results but I don’t know if it helps anyone. I’m sure there’s many available women in Rocky Mount, NC and that recent history shown true love sparks in Colorado Springs, CO – but that doesn’t mean those statistics alone will work for me. Maybe those women in Rocky Mount won’t like me or that Colorado Springs isn’t the place for me?

We all have unique personalities and desires that aren’t expressed in these types of studies. Just because someone is single doesn’t mean they should be with just anyone. Furthermore, knowing the demographics aren’t enough to convince me that my odds of finding love will actually change if I move anywhere. I need to know the personalities of the people there. I need to know if the person with the sort of personality and background to like me will be there.

None of these studies actually tell me that. Actually if I felt really motivated, I can look some similar data up in Census data or even through the CDC for free.

What would be really interesting is a way to generate studies like these for everyone. If everyone is unique why should everyone see the same report? If we could merge all the data used in those studies with personality and romantic data – we can make a personal report. A custom love map, just for you.

Well, that’s a small part of what we’re working on at Nanaya.

I don’t know how someone would use this. I imagine someone right out of college with the opportunity of living in different cities might find this useful. Perhaps this is for someone who’s changing careers later but also wants to find love? Maybe just like these studies, it’s just fun to know for the sake of knowing.

Not knowing how people will use Nanaya makes me really excited. I look forward to finding out all the different ways people will use Nanaya and what it may mean to their lives. Even if it’s just a chuckle.