Congratulations to everyone reading this! Refinery29's audience has been officially named the most desirable group of readers on the Internet, with a collective grade of A+ from dating app The Grade. The app assigns users letter grades based on profile quality, message quality, and message response rate, kicking users who descend to an "F" grade off the app. (A social media platform with consequences for poor spelling and hostile messages? Not just a fantasy anymore.) The Grade also pulls users' interests from Facebook and suggests matches. "We're trying to constantly improve our matching algorithm," CEO Cliff Lerner told us. "We looked at what college you went to, sports, your occupation, your location, and really nothing jumped out as moving the needle."
Then, The Grade considered what its users are reading. The app analyzed 40,000 swipe interactions by 5,000 singles who had listed a publication as an interest and deduced that users who like Refinery29 are liked by other users 64% of the time, the highest rate of any group of readers. "Very rarely do we see any group get liked more than 50% of the time," Lerner observes.
EliteDaily and Jezebel readers are liked 60% of the time and earned grades of A and A+ respectively; the Huffington Post, The Daily Mail, and Gawker claim places four through six with 58%, 57%, and 52% like rates. "It can really help us in our matching algorithms if we know two people are reading these high-quality publications — they're going to be very engaged in our product and probably like each other more than someone else," Lerner said. At the bottom of the list are ESPN fans, with a like rate of 26% and an average grade of D (in response, they ask that you hate the game, not the player).
We'd like to thank the Academy all of you heartbreakers for this honor. Click through to The Grade's website for the full ranking. Then, head to the comments section of this story to find a date. (Kidding. Sort of.)
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