OkCupid – Page 26 – Online Personals Watch

New Apple Watch Dating Apps

Posted on May 21, 2015

MACWORLD – May 20 – Tinder, OkCupid and Match.com were quickly to introduce a Watch app, but a few other lesser-known dating sites introduced Apple watch apps this month. Clover cuts to the chase with its "on-demand" dating. With two taps, the Clover Watch app finds users a nearby date and suggests hotspots where the two can meet. WatchMe88 works like a radar that detects singles nearby. Apple Watch faces start to glow if two compatible users are close to each other. Another app in development is "Close Encounter". The app ditches the profile photos and focuses on personality. Users get notified whenever there's a match nearby. Jack'd claims to have created the first Apple Watch app for gay guys.

by Oscar Raymundo
See full article at Macworld

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Online Dating Is Killing Anonymity

Posted on March 31, 2015

THE DAILY BEAST – Mar 31 – Part of the appeal of online dating site and apps once was the privacy factor. But the more people use online dating sites and apps, the more likely we are to run into someone that we know. JSwipe allows users to turn off the ability to be seen or match with Facebook friends. OkCupid has a couple of features that will be rolled out in the next couple months. The first will allow a user to hide their profile from all users by default, and to only be seen by people they actively ‘Like’ or send a message to. The second will give the user an option of using a connected Facebook account to block any of their friends that are also on OkCupid.

by Emily Shire
See full article at The Daily Beast

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Would You Consider Accepting Bitcoin On Your Dating Site?

Posted on March 30, 2015

FORTUNE – Mar 27 - OkCupid already accepts it. You could say that accepting bitcoin was just a marketing gimmick—that OkCupid was just looking to garner some goodwill and buzz among tech types. OkCupid founder and CEO Sam Yagan reasoned at the time: “There’s no question that these digital currencies are going to be the future.” Zoosk's CEO Kelly Steckelberg remains hesitant. “I don’t know that bitcoin is at a place yet that it makes sense for us,” she says, “but certainly if it ever got there, we would consider it, absolutely.

by Daniel Roberts
See full article at Fortune

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You Can Now Buy The OKCupid Algorithm

Posted on March 19, 2015

FAST COMPANY – Mar 18 – OkCupid's algorithm go up for sale at the the world's first algorithm auction. The auction is hosted by the online art platform Artsy in partnership with the programming collective Ruse Laboratories. The auction is a "move to celebrate the art of pure code and designate algorithms as an exciting new category for collectors". Seven lots have been donated for the auction, including OkCupid's Compatibility Calculation, the algorithm the dating site uses to match its users. For the OkCupid lot, the winner will not actually buy the rights to the code, but will receive two artistic interpretations of the algorithm mathematically expressed on paper.

by Sophie Weiner
See full article at Fast Company

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Algorithms Work But People Need To Be Honest

Posted on February 19, 2015

NATIONAL POST – Feb 18 – LA PhD student Chris McKinley applied his mathematical skills to OkCupid to “hack” their algorithms, transforming his empty inbox into a treasure trove of compatible mates and, 88 dates later, a marriage proposal. Then tech CEO Amy Webb, similarly luckless on JDate, created her own algorithm using 72 traits to land a husband. “Algorithms can mathematically continue to become more precise in terms of connecting like-minded and similar people,” says Amarnath Thombre, president of Match.com, “but there will always be magic to love.” Match uses 1,500 parameters in a “love equation” with a feedback mechanism. So “the more users rate, the better they date,” he says. In a new commercial, eHarmony asks: “Do you want fast or forever?” As it turns out, lots of people prefer fast, like Tinder.

by Rosemary Counter
See full article at National Post

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Hunt For The Perfect Data: Christian Rudder Of OkCupid

Posted on February 17, 2015

FT – Feb 17 – Christian Rudder, the co-founder and president of OkCupid, never had plans to revolutionize the world of online dating. He has never used dating sites himself. Rudder says the permeation of the Internet in our day-to-day lives has virtually taken away the stigma of online dating. Facebook, especially, has played a big role. When OkCupid was launched in 2004, its main distinguishing factor was giving users the ability to look beyond “age, sex, and location” to more personal characteristics that are better indications of a match. The algorithm is based on the weight that users give to the questions they care about. On the site, which now has 30M members, users can answer questions across a wide range of topics. These weighted answers are compared with another user’s and a match percentage is generated. Rudder realized he had an unprecedented amount of information on human desire and behaviour so he wrote a book: Dataclysm: Who We Are (When We Think No One’s Looking), which was published last year.

by Christopher Kompanek
See full article at Financial Times

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Dating Sites Investing In Behaviour-based Matching

Posted on February 16, 2015

SMH.COM.AU – Feb 14 – OkCupid's pitch says: "We use math to get you dates." Co-founder Christian Rudder is crunching data from millions of users to come up with insights such as women are most attracted to men their own age, and men are most attracted to women aged 20-22. "What people say they want, and what they really want, are very different in practice," says Kari Taylor, from RSVP. RSVP switched from profile-based matching to behaviour-based matching a few years back and saw an 80% surge in users saying yes to conversation requests. eHarmony's predictive model for attraction has improved up to 400% in the past couple of years. An algorithm for attraction is possible given how much data is available. But the real question is whether that's the direction the industry is heading. The biggest thing in the online dating is Tinder, an app that doesn't use any info except a photo.

by Inga Ting
See full article at SMH.com.au

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The Mathematical Formula For Love

Posted on February 10, 2015

BBC – Feb 10 – How do we find the right person and keep them? Hannah Fry, author of The Mathematics of Love, says three things make the magic formula.

Be proud: Play up to whatever makes you different.
OkCupid team discovered that those that were rated as both very beautiful and very ugly – did far better than those who everyone agreed were quite cute.
Be proactive: Go out and get what you want.
Be provokable: Speak up if something bothers you.

See full article at BBC

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Which Dating Sites Received The Best And Worst PR In 2014?

Posted on February 7, 2015

CB – Feb 7 – A lot of companies that traditionally receive a lot of press hits appeared to be lacking this year, including POF, Badoo, SNAP Interactive and Zoosk. Tinder got the most press coverage in 2014, followed by Match.com. Articles mainly highlighted Tinder's impressive growth. It also scored some negative press, most notably the Whitney Wolfe lawsuit. We heard a little less about eHarmony last year, but they still received solid press coverage thanks to their new eH+ service and the announcement of a plan to launch a "jobs matchmaker". OkCupid, as usual, made the list along with AshleyMadison, Grindr and Hinge. There were also companies with more sad than good news. Cupid was one of them. They sold their casual dating sites in 2013, posted weak 2013 annual results, tried unsuccessfully to revive their business, and even launched new services such as LoveBeginsAt and dating app Tangle. In December the news came out that the company decided to sell the remaining mainstream dating sites and quit the dating business. It was not an easy year for Spark Networks either. After some bad news for investors, a fight between the company leadership and Osmium partners began, ending in July with Osmium appointing 4 new directors to the Spark´s board. CEO Greg Liberman left the company in August and layoffs began in September.

Read the full post on CourtlandBrooks blog

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What We Learned From Sam Yagan’s Reddit AMA

Posted on January 6, 2015

CHICAGOINNO – Jan 6 – Here are some of his most interesting responses from yesterday's chat.

Q: Has the online dating business significantly boomed in the past few years?
A: Absolutely. In the last 5 years, the number of MAU of dating products is up ~3x.

Q: Everyone looks at Tinder as a hookup app. What do you view it as?
A: It's hard to get married without hooking up, no? I bet even people on eHarmony hook up. I look at Tinder right up there with Match and OkCupid as one of the three best ways to find a relationship.

Q: Is online dating "good" for society?
A: Dating apps truly make society better, in several ways:

Greater choice leads to the selection of higher quality spouses.
Technology makes it easier to meet people who are less similar (farther away, different socioeconomic levels, different ethnicity, etc.).
The ease of getting back in the dating market empowers people in bad relationships to leave them.

Q: What has been the biggest challenge of your career?
A: Turning OkCupid around.

Q: Does the free-ness of OKCupid attract a different group of people as compared to Match's subscription fee?
A: Yes. People who pay for Match likely have higher intent than people on OkCupid or Tinder.

Q: Any hints as to what the pay features may be on Tinder?
A: Not confirming any of this, but there's plenty of reporting on this topic: http://techcrunch.com/2014/11/04/how-much-would-you-pay-for-an-undo-button-on-tinder/.

by Jim Dallke
See full article at ChicagoInno

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