How Does Zoosk SmartPick Work?

SmartPick hands you a daily selection of members Zoosk thinks you may get along with. It chooses them from your answers, your preferences and how you use the app. For each one you tap a heart to show interest or an X to pass. If you both choose the heart, Zoosk tells both of you and you can start exploring the connection.

Zoosk says SmartPick looks at three things: what you have filled in about yourself, what you said you want, and what you do on the site.

The third one matters most over time. As you respond to recommendations, SmartPick learns your tastes and can make its introductions more relevant. What you do elsewhere in the app teaches it too. Sending Likes and messages counts. So does accepting or removing a Connection, and so does answering the messages you receive. Each tells Zoosk a little more about what you actually want.

The plain reading is that SmartPick rewards a man who uses the app and ignores one who does not.

A free (Basic) member gets a limited number of SmartPick recommendations each day. Premium members are not held to a set number and may see more, depending on who is available and how compatible they are.

That last clause is worth reading twice. Paying does not bring you a flood of women. It removes the daily ceiling, and what you actually get still depends on who is on Zoosk near you and how well they fit. If the free handful is mostly women who are not your type, more of the same will not help.

When you choose an X, nobody is told. The heart stays private too, unless she chooses one for you as well.

That lets you vote honestly. Do not heart a woman because she seems like the kind of woman you are supposed to want. Heart the ones you would be glad to write to tomorrow morning. Honest votes are what the learning runs on, so careless ones teach it the wrong things.

Zoosk lists four ways to improve what SmartPick shows you:

1. Fill in your page completely.
2. Add photos.
3. Stay active.
4. Keep your SmartPick Survey up to date, under Account Settings and then SmartPick.

The survey is the one men skip. Answer it when you sign up and then forget it, and Zoosk keeps working from what you said that day. If your idea of what you want has sharpened, update it.

Photos deserve the most effort of the four. a dating coach points out that women decide quickly and swipe left almost by instinct on photos that look like every other man's. Your photos are what a woman sees when she is shown to you in her own set, so take a clear, daylight one of your face first.

Both of you chose the heart, so you already have something that most cold messages do not: she said yes before you wrote a word.

Use it quickly. My method for moving a woman from an app to a real plan takes about four to seven messages, and every message has a purpose. He wants her to feel attraction, comfort and a reason to commit to meeting. The mutual heart covers the first part. Your messages build the other two. Write a first line that picks up one specific thing about her, give her something easy to answer, and suggest a plan once she gives you a real reply.

Messaging on Zoosk needs a paid membership, so the free part is for choosing and the paid part is for talking. Do your choosing first, and start paying when you are ready to write.

On a free account the selection is short, and it ends. When it does, stop. Opening the app again an hour later will not produce more.

Use the rest of that sitting on the part that gets dates. Write to the Connections who are waiting, and answer anyone who wrote to you. A few minutes on SmartPick and a few minutes on your messages, every day, beats one long evening once a week.

Do not heart every recommendation to see what happens. You will train SmartPick to show you more of the women you did not actually want, and your own matches will be hard to sort.

Do not treat SmartPick as the whole app, either. It is one source of introductions. If your daily selection is thin, use the other parts of Zoosk as well, and judge the app by the women you meet, not by the number of hearts you collect.