OkCupid
 |
|
|---|---|
| The best dating site on earth is the best Dating on Earth |
|
| free contact exchange | |
| languages | English user interface, content partly multilingual |
| Seat | New York , USA |
| operator | InterActiveCorp |
| editorial staff | individual registered authors, some editorial |
| Registration | optional, necessary for some functions |
| Annual income | unknown |
| On-line | January 19, 2004 |
| http://www.okcupid.com/ | |
OkCupid is one of the oldest dating sites on the Internet. Like practically all competitors, it uses a matching algorithm that uses a series of questions and answers to assess the compatibility of users.
history
The founders of OkCupid (Chris Conye, Christian Rudder (owner of the OkCupid profile), Sam Yagan and Max Krohn) were still students at Harvard University when they became famous with TheSpark and later the learning aid SparkNotes. Among other things, TheSpark.com offered some humorous self-tests, including the Myers-Briggs compatibility test .
SparkMatch was born as an experiment by allowing registered users to search and contact others who had passed the compatibility test based on their results. SparkMatch became very popular, was decoupled from SparkNotes as a separate page and later renamed OkCupid. At the moment, OkCupid assigns the users largely identical questions to personality types - in terms of question, blurb and order. In 2001 SparkNotes was sold to Barnes & Noble and its founders focused their work on OkCupid.
At least since August 4th, 2009, OkCupid has introduced A-List accounts that offer additional services for a monthly fee.
technology
C ++ is used as the programming language (including the front end). The developed web framework "okws" is available on GitHub under the GPLv2 . Outside of OkCupid, the framework has no noteworthy distribution and no contributors.
User profile
Current functions
- The classic user profile can be found under About . In addition to a personal brief description, some typical small talk content is queried. The running texts are wikified ; individual words can be linked to global searches in order to find other users with similar interests or character traits .
- In the table Details the user can reveal some data about himself. The content of these can overlap with the user-generated questions.
In the search, profiles are displayed as entries with the profile picture. OkCupid therefore derives the attractiveness of the profile picture from the ratio of search hits and calls to the profile. Depending on whether the profile is one of the more attractive or unattractive 50% of users, it will be preferred to them in the search results.
OkTrends notes that more attractive profile pictures are on average older than less attractive ones.
- Under Personality there is a graphical representation of all identified character traits of the profile in comparison with one's own through superimposed semi-transparent modified normal distributions.
- Under Questions answered questions in the profile can be compared with the answers of the calling user.
Abandoned functions
- The journal was a blog.
- The users could write tests that could be answered by other users in a multiple-choice procedure . The Tests tab contained a list of the tests completed by the user and released for publication.
search
OkCupid's search function, which was abolished in mid-2020, basically allowed any user to find any profile (unless one of them had blocked or hidden the other person) and offered different sorting options. However, this was not an exhaustive search , so the search results differed with each call, even with fixed sorting.
Compatibility Assessment
OkCupid generates the compatibility assessment from the intersection of the questions answered by the users to be compared. In order to increase the overlap, the responses of the profiles are also extrapolated using the responses from similar profiles. The matches and deviations from the desired answers are then weighted according to their importance for the respective user and OkCupid concludes from this on the compatibilities from the point of view of the two users, i.e. how likely OkCupid considers this person to get along with the other.
ask
Registered users of Okcupid can answer user-created questions using multiple choice methods. The user can select a maximum of one from two to four answer options. Each question is classified by the creator in one of six broad subject areas, which can be seen by looking through profiles, where larger or smaller differences exist. The answered questions of your own and the viewed profile can also be sorted according to various criteria, for example to find questions that are important to the other person but were not answered by yourself.
Questions can also be answered “not publicly”. Such answers are then used to estimate compatibility, but cannot be viewed by other users. In return, questions that have not been answered or that have not been answered “publicly” have to refrain from seeing answers from other users to these questions. If you publish your answer, you can comment on it; for example, to underpin your own position towards a user with a different opinion. Answered questions can be answered again after 24 hours, changed in visibility or the answer deleted, while comments can be edited as often as you like.
For each question answered, you can specify what should be considered the desired answer or answers. In this way, tolerable attitudes can be distinguished from intolerable ones and still express one's own position. In addition, it must be indicated in three stages how important this question should be considered overall. In this way, questions can also be answered that you consider to be irrelevant, but may be relevant for the potential partner, but only if you have given an answer to the topic yourself.
The personality assessment and the compatibility assessment are formed from the answers. The maximum number of points that can be achieved in the compatibility assessment increases with the number of questions answered.
In addition to personality questions, the questions also include questions of knowledge and logic.
Staff Robot
The imaginary “Staff Robot ” is OkCupid's mascot . He signs for most e-mails, gives the user tips about the website and expresses his sympathy if something went wrong, for example if a profile was not found or a search did not return any results.
Quiver matches
Registered users receive so-called quiver matches from the Staff Robot , which represent partner suggestions with somewhat broader search parameters. Users can then contact them, which Staff Robot posts as an "accepted match" (accepted partner proposal) or discards them; in both cases Staff Robot registers the decision and takes it into account for further recommendations.
Range of functions
| Use case | guest | Registered | A list | Favorites |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| view other profiles | if tolerated | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| rate another profile | No | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| edit other profiles | if tolerated | if tolerated | if tolerated | if tolerated |
| edit your own profile | No | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Create test | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Go through the test | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Publish test result | No | Yes | Yes | |
| ask questions | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Answering questions | No | Yes | Yes | Yes |
Forms of use
Sexual orientation
At OkCupid, the user can choose between 22 different genders and 13 sexual orientations. For people with whom the user would like to contact, the user can choose one or more of the 22 genders. As OkTrends found in 2010, most bisexual users only contact one gender, which puts the meaningfulness of this information into perspective.
relationship status
OKCupid is used more than average by people with nontraditional ideas about relationships, especially by people who live in polyamorous relationships, i.e. openly enter into relationships with several partners, and also by bisexual people who sometimes have several partners. Many questions in the questionnaire concern boundaries and attitudes about the preferred openness or closeness of relationships.
Protection against unwanted contacts
Messages can be blocked from users who live too far away, have too few questions answered, have an inappropriate sexual orientation or age, and whose profile is too young, poor compatibility or no photo. In addition, user names can be explicitly specified on a black list (blocked). It is therefore up to the respective user to decide on a filter strategy or to forego filtering entirely.
Blocked users do not notice this. You can still write messages that appear in your chat window, but these messages will not reach the blocking user even if they later unblock them, so that two users can have different versions of a dialog.
Prohibited forms of use
OkCupid prohibits any form of commercial use by companies, organizations and private individuals.
Usage language
OkCupid has only mastered multilingual continuous texts in the profile since 2010, which are also always displayed in all available versions. The entire rest of the system (questions, etc.) including the user interface is not multilingual.
Range
According to Alexa Internet , OkCupid was one of the 500 most visited websites in the world in 2014, with over 70 percent usage in the USA, where the website is among the 150 most visited sites.
According to OkTrends, OkCupid had 3.5 million active members in 2011.
financing
In addition to advertising embedded on the site , OkCupid generates income through paid accounts. These are called A-list accounts and offer a few additional options for restricting the search, organizing photos, more storage space for messages, any number of awards per day, an optional marking of the profile as an A-list profile and advertising-free website. OkCupid also offers the option of paying in the cryptocurrency Bitcoin . The essential functions should remain free in the future:
"Our plan is never to charge for anything that's currently free on the site, including messaging other users."
"We plan to never ask for anything that is free now, including contacting other users."
Self-image
OkCupid tries to differentiate itself from other contact exchanges in various aspects. The OkTrends post Why You Should Never Pay For Online Dating deals with sites that are perceived as competition . Exemplary are Match.com and eHarmony called; So pages that carry out compatibility assessments, but require paid accounts for communication. The article concludes from business figures, price structure and derived distribution of the billing periods that approximately 96% of the profiles belong to users who cannot answer. Compared to the 20 million profiles from Match.com, OkCupid is rather small with 1 million profiles, but because of the many times greater chance of getting a response to a contact request, OkCupid sees itself as more suitable and presents itself as little David compared to the big Goliaths . After the takeover by InterActiveCorp, which also owns Match.com, the blog post was deleted.
OkTrends
The official blog of the OkCupid makers, OkTrends, published detailed analyzes of various aspects of OkCupid at irregular intervals; starting with user behavior and ending with picking up the paid competition.
Individual evidence
- ↑ okcupid / 34 / m ( Memento of the original from June 19, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ About us . OkCupid; accessed on February 14, 2014
- ↑ A-List Upgrade. OkCupid
- ↑ Self-assessment of the technology used
- ↑ GitHub repository
- ↑ a b The Biggest Lies In Online Dating . OkTrends
- ^ Non binary profile options. In: Help. OkCupid, accessed May 10, 2019 .
- ↑ terms #Commercial use prohibited. OkCupid
- ↑ Alexa.com . In: Okcupid.com Site Info . Retrieved February 14, 2014.
- ↑ OkTrends
- ↑ mashable.com
- ↑ FAQ . OkCupid
- ↑ OkTrends: Why You Should Never Pay For Online Dating
