About
OkCupid is a free dating website that pairs registered members based on their compatibility score determined through a series of survey questions. The site includes a public forum, instant messaging system and an official blog analyzing statistics from various user interactions.
History
Harvard University students Chris Coyne, Christian Rudder, Sam Yagan and Max Krohn launched the literary website TheSpark[10] on January 7th, 1999. The site included a beta app called “SparkMatch”, which allowed registered users to take a “Match Test” and search for and other users to contact. Their main project eventually became known as the educational study guide website SparkNotes[1] and was sold to the company iTurf Inc. in 2000 and subsequently purchased by Barnes & Noble in 2001. The founders continued to work on SparkMatch, eventually changing its name to OkCupid before launching the site on March 4th, 2004.
InterActiveCorp Acquisition
On February 2nd, 2011, the company InterActiveCorp (IAC), owners of the competing dating site Match.com, announced in a press release[15] that they had acquired OkCupid for $50 million in cash. The same day, an OkCupid blog post criticizing the dating sites Match.com and eHarmony was removed from the site. In an interview with The Observer[16], OkCupid CEO Sam Yagan claimed they were not asked by Match.com to remove the post but that it seemed like the “common sense thing to do.”
Features
Anyone over the age of 18 may join the site and begin searching for other members based on various criteria including location, age, relationship status and “match %.” Members can obtain the “A-list” status by paying a monthly fee, which allows them to bypass all advertising and provides several more filtering options. When browsing other user profiles, free-of-charge members’ names remain visible to the profile owners, while A-list members can elect to browse anonymously.
CrazyBlindDate
On November 6th, 2007, OkCupid launched the website CrazyBlindDate[13] for users in Boston, New York City and San Francisco. The dating site used used an algorithm to match users based on simple personal questions and set up dates for them. In April of 2010, Time Out[14] reported that the site was taken down for construction.
OkTrends Blog
On July 7th, 2009, OkCupid launched the OkTrends blog, which analyzed and graphed data received from its registered users. Based on their answers to survey questions, the blog described how people from different races, ethnicities, geographic locations and socio-economic status viewed political, ethical, romantic and other issues.
Traffic
As of July 27th, 2012, OkCupid.com has a Quantcast[3] rank of 394, an Alexa[4] rank of 211 and a Compete[5] rank of 1,828. Compete reported that the site received over 1 million unique visitors in the United States in June of 2012.
Online Presence
On November 17th, 2009, the /r/OkCupid[11] subreddit was created, in which Redditors share profile critiques, dating experiences and relevant media. Several Tumblr blogs with themes related to the site have been launched, including “This is Not Ok Cupid”[7], “Ok Cupid Kill Me”[8] and “Fuck no ok cupid.”[9] On May 31st, 2012, the Tumblr[6] blog “OkCupid Enemies” was launched, which featured photos of OkCupid members accompanied by screenshots from disturbing or humorous sections of their profiles. The first post included a photo of a man giving the camera his middle finger, captioned with a section of his profile which read, “…when I was 17 I had a seizure and died it wasn’t very fun” (shown below). As of July 30th, 2012, the OkCupid Facebook[18] has received over 11,000 likes and the OkCupid Twitter[19] account has received over 17,000 followers.
Highlights
Alyssa Bereznak’s Gizmodo Article
Alyssa Bereznak’s Gizmodo Article was an article published in August of 2011 to the tech news blog Gizmodo, which featured intern Alyssa Bereznak’s OkCupid date with the world champion Magic: The Gathering player Jon Finkel. In the article, Bereznak insulted Finkel for playing the card game and revealed that she would not have dated him if she were aware of the hobby beforehand. After the story was submitted to Reddit, Bereznak was inundated with attacks from various Redditors and Finkel participated in an “ask me anything” thread on the social news website.
Search Interest
External References
[1] Spark Notes – Spark Notes
[2] The Atlantic – Why Match.com Shouldn’t Have Purchased
[3] Quantcast – www.okcupid.com
[4] Alexa – www.okcupid.com#
[5] Compete – www.okcupid.com
[6] Tumblr – OkCenemies
[7] Tumblr – This is Not Ok Cupid
[8] Tumblr – Okcupid, kill me
[9] Tumblr – Fucknookcupid
[10] Wayback Machine – TheSpark
[11] Reddit – /r/OkCupid
[12] Tech Crunch – Meet Potential Lovers Over a Drink with CrazyBlindDate
[13] CrazyBlindDate – CrazyBlindDate
[14] WebCite – Time Out – The Date in Dating Website
[15] PRNewsWire – IAC’s Match.com Acquires OkCupid
[16] The Observer – We Didn’t Censor Our Match.com-Bashing Blog Post