REUTERS – Mar 31 - OkCupid.com called for a boycott of Mozilla Firefox to protest the world's No. 2 Web browser naming a gay marriage opponent as CEO. OkCupid visitors who accessed the site through Firefox on Monday were tol to use other browsers. "Mozilla's new CEO, Brendan Eich, is an opponent of equal rights for gay couples," the message said. "We would therefore prefer that our users not use Mozilla software to access OkCupid."
Category: OkCupid
Hannah Fry At TEDx Talked About Online Dating
PIPE DREAM – Mar 29 – Mathematician Hannah Fry shared top 3 tips for being successful in the search for love, during her TEDx talk at Binghamton University. Her first tip, “how to win at online dating,” covered steps to creating an OKCupid profile that gets attention. Fry said that though most people try and hide the aspects of their appearance that they feel others might find unappealing, they should actually show them off. Her second tip went over how a person might know when is the right time to settle down into a meaningful, long-term relationship. She explained that in order for one to maximize their chances of finding an ideal partner, assuming they are searching from when they turn 15 to when they turn 35, is to reject every partner that shows up during the first 37% of that stretch in time, and to settle with the next person that appears who is better than all of his or her predecessors. This procedure is called optimal stopping theory, is apparent in nature, according to Fry. Fry’s last was how to avoid divorce. The couples with the healthiest relationships are not the ones who put up with each other the best, but instead are the ones who are most willing to be vocal with one another about what is bothering them.
by Nicolas Vega
See full article at Pipe Dream
Big Data Might Not Be The Key To Long-lasting Romance
BBC.COM – Mar 24 – "If you want to know if a prospective date is relationship material, ask them these 3 questions", says Christian Rudder, co-founder of OkCupid.
- Do you like horror movies?
- Have you ever travelled around another country alone?
- Wouldn't it be fun to chuck it all and go live on a sailboat
According to him, these are the questions first date couples agree on most. Some dating sites ask as many as 400 questions, and the answers are fed in to large data repositories. Match.com estimates that it has ~70 terabytes of data about its customers. Applying big data analytics is helping dating sites provide better matches for their customers. And more satisfied customers mean bigger profits. But people lie. Many users also supply inaccurate information about themselves unintentionally.
Man Sues OkCupid After Date Takes Him For $70K
NY POST – Mar 18 – A man from Queens slapped OkCupid with a lawsuit after a man he met on the singles site swindled him out of ~$70K. He blames OkCupid for failing to conduct “even minimal screening of its subscribers and therefore deceptively creating the impression that their dating service was safe."
Dating Sites Are Working Harder To Prevent Harassment
FORBES – Mar 11 – The Internet offer a veil of anonymity that makes it easier to talk before you think. Dating sites are taking some steps to make online dating a much safer and harassment-free experience. Yesterday at SXSW, Elissa Shevinsky, a former dating entrepreneur who helped build OKCupid’s spam filters, shared some developments she was working on. OkCupid had a spam filter that would filter messages with bad grammar or naughty words. OKCupid now has a pilot program that deletes messages with short words. Many entrepreneurs have experimented with making users pay for every message or capping the number of free messages they can send at one time. The goal is to prevent daters from spamming thousands of people with the same message.
Internet Dating Study Suggests Racial Barrier Can Be Overcome
PRESS RELEASE – Jan 26 – A study by sociologist Kevin Lewis of the interaction patterns of 126,134 U.S. users of OkCupid.com suggests that racial prejudice can be overcome, but we have a long way to go. Lewis found that people still self-segregate in online dating as much as they do in face-to-face interactions, most reaching out to those in their own racial background. However, if a person is contacted first by someone outside their race, their were more likely to contact others within that race. Thous Lewis found that the effect only lasted about a week.
The full article was originally published at YottaFire, but is no longer available.
Math Genius Hacks OkCupid To Meet His Future Wife
NY DAILY NEWS – Jan 22 – Chris McKinlay created a number of fake profiles on OkCupid, along with some programs to mine data, to meet his wife. After answering 350 questions, he realized that he would only be matched with someone if they answered exactly the same questions as him. So he created 12 robot profiles that answered all of the questions randomly. With 6M answers from 20K prospective mates, he then used an algorithm to sort through the women he'd like to meet. He ended up with having a 90%-plus compatibility rating with 10K women. He designed software to view as many profiles as possible. Receiving ~20 messages a day, he went on 87 dates. The 88th turned out to be his wife.
Which Dating Sites Got The Best And Worst PR In 2013?
OPW – Jan 3 – Here are the Courtland Brooks rankings of the top 10 and the worst 4 performing idating sites for PR in 2013. We used Meltwater News and our qualitative analysis.
Best
- Match
- eHarmony
- Tinder
- OkCupid
- AshleyMadison
- Grindr
- Down (BangWithFriends)
- HowAboutWe
- Spark Networks brands
- Zoosk
Worst
- TRUE
- FriendFinder
- Cupid
- White Label Dating
CEO Q&A: Sam Yagan, Match.com
PR WEEK – Dec 30 - Sam Yagan, CEO of Match.com, talks about how Match.com differentiates itself in an oversaturated market.
Q: How do you contend with the growing number of niche dating sites?
A: We see new sites pop up every week, but it all comes down to scale, innovation, and success. Our PR is aimed toward core users (20-40s). Our PeopleMedia brands use a more niche, targeted PR approach.
Q: What are Match's biggest challenges?
A: Safety and security.
Q: What off-site offerings does Match have?
A: Our singles events – Stir. We are now holding ~400 events a month in 80 markets.
Q: What role does PR play with your site?
A: It helps to change the perception of online dating as an authentic means of finding a relationship.
Q: How do you get the word out?
A: We continually issue interesting data such as our annual Singles in America study. We use social platforms to engage with our current, former, and potential new members.
Q: What's on the horizon for next year?
A: We have several big initiatives in place, including our 4th annual Singles in America study that will launch in February.
by Diana Bradley
See full article at PR Week
People Are Willing To Pay On Free Sites
LATINO POST – Dec 14 – OkCupid introduced its Spotlight feature in July. ~2500 people used the feature in the first 24 hour of its existence. It allows users to pay $2 for 15-minute of extra promotion. One person spent $1,800 for boosting the profile for 3 months. It become a way to monetize OkCupid, which gets revenue from "A-list" and advertising. A-list members pay $5- $10 a month to get better matches, browse profiles invisibly and be free from ads.
by Jessica Michele Herring
See full article at Latino Post