Hi, everyone! Have you made your plans for Valentine’s Day? We recently conducted an online survey about how people show affection online, and the results are in. Online romance is alive and, well, flirting, this Valentine’s Day. In fact, a survey of more than 1,000 men and women found that online instant messaging services like Windows Live Messenger are among the leading ways people prefer to flirt, second only to in-person and outranking text (SMS) and e-mail.[1]  

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So, if you still need to make your Valentine’s Day plans, consider using Messenger to set the stage for the evening. Send a flower (F), a heart (L), or even a hug (}) to help set the mood. Use the emoticon menu in your Messenger conversation window, or type one of the codes shown with each emoticon at left.

You can also blow a virtual kiss or send a wink to your Valentine with Messenger’s new dynamic display pictures. Just create several webcam snapshots to use as your display picture, with a different picture for each mood. Your display pic will change to match your mood whenever you type “:)” or “;)” or “(k)” (see below). Fun, right? Learn more about dynamic display pictures from this blog post on the Messenger team blog. Sending a kiss with Messenger

 

Here are some of our Valentine’s survey findings…

  • Men use IM more often than women when they have some kissing up to do.
  • Men are also more likely than women to use IM to pursue a secret relationship, or to test the waters to see if someone is interested in them.
  • The main reason people prefer to flirt online is because it allows them time to come up with witty, romantic responses.
  • Flirting via IM is not just for teenagers! 11% of 55 to 64 year-olds and 5% of 65 and older have used IM to ask someone out on a date.

The survey also found the following to be some of the WORST pick-up lines people have received via instant message:

  • “Are you tired? Because you have been running through my mind all day."
  • "Did it hurt when you fell from heaven?"
  • "Do you have a Band-Aid? Because I scraped my knee when I fell for you."
  • "Hey baby, if I could change the alphabet I'd put ‘u’ and ‘I’ together."

Happy Valentine’s Day!

- Dharmesh,
  Windows Live team

[1] The survey was conducted online with a random sample of 1021 men and women aged 18+ who use instant messaging-- all members of the Impulse Research proprietary online panel, which was carefully selected to closely match US population demographics and whose respondents are representative of American men and women 18 and over. Research was conducted January 28 - February 2, 2009. The overall sampling error rate for this survey is +/-3% at the 95% level of confidence.