NY POST — Oct 26 — OkCupid is free, unlike market leaders Match.com and eHarmony. This is a fairly unprecedented concept in the half-billion-dollar online dating industry, which is the third most lucrative Internet business after, of course, porn and gambling. "Online dating is just about the last bastion of paid content on the Web," Yagan said. "What we're trying to do is take down the $500 million online dating industry." OkCupid makes money from display advertising funneled through Google's AdSense program.
The full article was originally published at NY Post, but is no longer available.
Mark Brooks: I've added a ranking on the left bar for the top free dating sites.
Mark,
Those hitwise numbers are either very outdated, or the data is very inaccurate. We are consistently beating BOM on reach, page views, and rank.
OkCupid is ENTIRELY free. Users can chat, email, IM for free. We accept donations but have no restrictions on site functionality for those who don’t pay.
Ranking.websearch.com, compete.com and hitwise all say that collaboradate.com barely has enough traffic to even be registered. Bookofmatches is way bigger for now.
As for OKcupid, I’m sure it will become a massive site soon, so many features are being added and so many people are being hired.
Complete.com appears to do it’s rankings based on months, and seeing as how we only just launched March that may be how it appears. Hitwise also seems to do an average based on many months of traffic details. Correct me if I am wrong?!?!
I am speaking of recent traffic, which is all that really matters, whats in the past is old news…
Markus, shame on you, where are your manners? Sam is a genuine guy and he’s on your (free dating) side. If paid dating went away you wouldn’t make nearly as much money, remember that. How many employess do you have in your apartment? 😉
Bookofmatches, huh? Never heard of it.
David,
I really do think OKcupid will become huge, its gaining traction in many of the markets where I have little to none.
Hiring people and building out your site isn’t a bad thing. From what I can see they are hiring people and focusing on building distribution related features. That kind of stuff is employee intensive. Keep in mind the other big free site matchdoctor.com also has 10 plus employees focused on building out the site.
Hitwise and ranking.websearch measure ranking on a daily visitor basis. Results for hitwise are averaged for a monthly period.
I think okcupid is a great site. Their user generated quiz/matching engine is interesting. I haven’t seen anything like it on other dating sites.