Making your profile effective - merits a lot of thought, doesn’t it? And why not, when you consider that someone halfway across the world whom you’ve never met will be looking at it and making a judgement about you - good, bad, or neutral.
Probably the two things you must consider, in no particular order, are.
01. How do you want to project yourself - either as a great person, somebody very good, somebody everyone would like to know, somebody who can(and will) be everyone’s friend, or somebody whom people will distrust, given first chance. Or, would you want to present an indifferent attitude - the happy-go-lucky or the’I’Don’t-Care’ kind?
02. How many people would you want to impress with your profile - and importantly, what kind - The young ones, the good oldies, the bad oldies, the kids, or just everyone, or just plain no one?
I feel that these two questions are starters for you to make a subjective judgement as to how effective your profile must be. Hey, face it - it’s got to be subjective - introducing any element of strict objectivity in your profile would be a little out of the way.
You may also want to consider the following points:
01. Not all at MS plug their real names / information onto their profiles - I don’t, for that matter.
02. Not all at any such website may plug good information about themselves - you may suddenly find that the 20-something you’ve been chatting with is actually 80-something - you get the idea.
03. Take a look at photos of other MS users - how many real photos can you discern? Not many, I wager.
04. Be careful with plugging your primary email address on MS or any site - MS apparently does a very good job of hiding stuff if you tell it to, but still.
In toto - consider the what, where, why and how of any information that you want to put up on your profile.
Of course, mundane things like good grammar, punctuation, etc., etc., -’nuff said there - the better it is, the better it is.
And good luck - luck is important, as you’ve got to be happy when you’re writing your profile, and it shows only then.
PS: I forgot one very important thing. Be HONEST. But, in my humble opinion, only as far as required.
IMHO.