OkCupid

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OkCupid
Web address OkCupid.com
Commercial? Yes
Type of site Online dating service, Social network service
Registration Required for membership
Owner IAC/InterActiveCorp
Created by Chris Coyne, Sam Yagan, Christian Rudder and Max Krohn
Launched March 5, 2004
Alexa rank positive decrease 442 (February 2014)[1]

OkCupid is a free friendship, dating, and social networking website that features member-created quizzes and multiple-choice questions. The site supports multiple modes of communication, including instant messages and emails. OkCupid was listed in Time magazine's 2007 Top 10 dating sites.[2] The site is part of the "Match Developing" unit of IAC/InteractiveCorp's Match division.[3]

Overview

OkCupid facilitates friendships as well as heterosexual and homosexual relationships. OkCupid claimed 3.5 million active users as of September 2010. According to Compete.com however OkCupid attracted 1.3 million unique visitors in February 2011.[4]

The site used to have a highly active journal/blogging community as well. Journals are not available to new members and the feature is now "retired." Members have the option of saving favorite user profiles, which displays the favorited person's responses to questions and profile updates on the member's front page.

Any adult may join the site and all users may communicate with others via private messages or an instant messaging "chat" function. A-List (paying) members see no advertising and have more filtering options and preferential placement in an "A-List Matches" section of search results. A-list members can also browse openly while choosing whether or not their profile is displayed to those they visited.[5]

OkTrends, the official blog of OkCupid, presents statistical observations from OkCupid user interactions, to explore data from the online dating world. As of September 2013 the most recent entry on the blog is April 19th, 2011.

Matching

To generate matches, OkCupid applies data generated by users' activities on the site,[6] as well as their answers to questions. When answering a question, a user indicates his or her own answer, the answers he or she would accept from partners, and the level of importance he or she places on the question. The results of these questions can be made public. OkCupid describes in detail the algorithm used to calculate match percentages. The site notifies a user if someone rates them 4 or 5 stars.

Attractiveness and match results

Users who receive high ratings may be notified by email that they are in the "top half of OkCupid's most attractive users" and "will now see more attractive people in [their] match results." The email also reads "And, no, we didn't just send this email to everyone on OkCupid. Go ask an ugly friend and see."[7][8]

History

OkCupid was owned by Humor Rainbow, Inc. OkCupid’s founders (Chris Coyne, Christian Rudder, Sam Yagan, and Max Krohn) were students at Harvard University when they gained recognition for their creation of TheSpark and, later, SparkNotes. Among other things, TheSpark.com featured a number of humorous self-quizzes and personality tests, including the four-variable Myers-Briggs style Match Test. SparkMatch debuted as a beta experiment of allowing registered users who had taken the Match Test to search for and contact each other based on their Match Test types. The popularity of SparkMatch took off and it was launched as its own site, later renamed OkCupid. The current OkCupid Dating Persona Test is still largely identical, in question and text blurb content and order, to the original Match Test. In 2001, they sold SparkNotes to Barnes & Noble, and began work on OkCupid.[9]

In 2007, OkCupid launched Crazy Blind Date.[10][11]

In 2008, OkCupid spun off its test-design portion under the name Hello Quizzy (HQ),[12] while keeping it inextricably linked to OkCupid and reserving existent OkCupid users' names on HQ.[12]

Since August 2009, OkCupid has included an "A-list" account option that provides additional services for a monthly fee.[13]

In February 2011, OkCupid was acquired by IAC/InterActiveCorp, operators of Match.com, for $50 million.[14] Editorial posts from 2010 by an OkCupid founder criticizing Match.com and pay-dating as exploiting users and as "fundamentally broken" were removed from the OkCupid blog at the same time.[15] In a press response OkCupid's CEO commented that the removal was voluntary.[16]

In November 2012, OkCupid launched the social discovery service, Tallygram.[17] In April 2013, they decided to retire the service.[18]

See also

References

  1. ↑ "Okcupid.com Site Info". Alexa Internet. Retrieved 2014-02-02. 
  2. ↑ "TIME Magazine Online "Online Dating Websites"". Time.com. Retrieved 2011-05-23. 
  3. ↑ "IAC's Match.com Acquires Online Dating Site OkCupid For $50M In Cash". TechCrunch. 2011-02-02. Retrieved 2013-11-01. 
  4. ↑ "okcupid.com's (rank #1,483) Site Profile | Compete". Siteanalytics.compete.com. Retrieved 2011-05-23. 
  5. ↑ "A-List Extras". OkCupid. Retrieved 2011-05-23. 
  6. ↑ "Help Topics". OkCupid. Retrieved 2011-05-23. 
  7. ↑ "My Online Date Using the Almighty Amazon Algorithm (Part 1): Say Hello To My Ugly Friend". Digitalbookworld.com. Retrieved 2013-11-01. 
  8. ↑ "Ok Cupid is Hiding the Good-Looking people from Us Ugly Freaks". Consumerist. Retrieved 2011-06-07. 
  9. ↑ "About Us". OkCupid.com. Retrieved 2011-05-23. 
  10. ↑ "CrazyBlindDate.com". CrazyBlindDate.com. Retrieved 2011-05-23. 
  11. ↑ Mark Hendrickson Nov 6, 2007 (2007-11-06). "Meet Potential Lovers Over a Drink with CrazyBlindDate - TechCrunch, Nov 06, 2006". Techcrunch.com. Retrieved 2011-05-23. 
  12. ↑ 12.0 12.1 "Hello Quizzy". Hello Quizzy. Retrieved 2011-05-23. 
  13. ↑ "OkCupid.com". OkCupid.com. Retrieved 2011-05-23. 
  14. ↑ "Little Rock native Christian Rudder sells company to Match.com for $50 million". Arkansas Times. Feb 2, 2011. Retrieved April 1, 2012. 
  15. ↑ Rudder, Christian (2010-04-07). "Why You Should Never Pay For Online Dating « OkTrends". waybackmachine.org. Retrieved 10 April 2011. 
  16. ↑ Jeffries, Adrianne (2011-02-02). "OKCupid: We Didn't Censor Our Match.com-Bashing Blog Post | The New York Observer". New York Observer. Retrieved 10 April 2011. 
  17. ↑ "OKCupid Has Launched Social Discovery Service Tallygram". OnlinePersonalsWatch. Retrieved 2012-11-09. 
  18. ↑ "Tallygram, OkCupid’s Foray Into Friend Finding On Facebook, Hits The Deadpool". TechCrunch. Retrieved 2013-04-16. 

External links

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