I’m the first to admit it: we might be popular, we might create a lot of great relationships, we might blah blah blah. But OkCupid doesn’t really know what it’s doing. Neither does any other website. It’s not like people have been building these things for very long, or you can go look up a blueprint or something. Most ideas are bad. Even good ideas could be better. Experiments are how you sort all this out. Like this young buck, trying to get a potato to cry.

We noticed recently that people didn’t like it when Facebook “experimented” with their news feed. Even the FTC is getting involved. But guess what, everybody: if you use the Internet, you’re the subject of hundreds of experiments at any given time, on every site. That’s how websites work.
Here are a few of the more interesting experiments OkCupid has run.
Experiment 1: LOVE IS BLIND, OR SHOULD BE
OkCupid’s ten-year history has been the epitome of the old saying: two steps forward, one total fiasco. A while ago, we had the genius idea of an app that set up blind dates; we spent a year and a half on it, and it was gone from the app store in six months.
Of course, being geniuses, we chose to celebrate the app’s release by removing all the pictures from OkCupid on launch day. “Love Is Blind Day” on OkCupid—January 15, 2013.
All our site metrics were way down during the “celebration”, for example:
But by comparing Love Is Blind Day to a normal Tuesday, we learned some very interesting things. In those 7 hours without photos:
And it wasn’t that “looks weren’t important” to the users who’d chosen to stick around. When the photos were restored at 4PM, 2,200 people were in the middle of conversations that had started “blind”. Those conversations melted away. The goodness was gone, in fact worse than gone. It was like we’d turned on the bright lights at the bar at midnight.
This whole episode made me curious, so I went and looked up the data for the people who had actually used the blind date app. I found a similar thing: once they got to the date, they had a good time more or less regardless of how good-looking their partner was. Here’s the female side of the experience (the male is very similar).
Oddly, it appears that having a better-looking blind date made women slightly less happy—my operating theory is that hotter guys were assholes more often. Anyhow, the fascinating thing is the online reaction of those exact same women was just as judgmental as everyone else’s:
Basically, people are exactly as shallow as their technology allows them to be.
Experiment 2: SO WHAT’S A PICTURE WORTH?
All dating sites let users rate profiles, and OkCupid’s original system gave people two separate scales for judging each other, “personality” and “looks.”
I found this old screenshot. The “loading” icon over the picture pretty much sums up our first four years. Anyhow, here’s the vote system:
Our thinking was that a person might not be classically gorgeous or handsome but could still be cool, and we wanted to recognize that, which just goes to show that when OkCupid started out, the only thing with more bugs than our HTML was our understanding of human nature.
Here’s some data I dug up from the backup tapes. Each dot here is a person. The two scores are within a half point of each other for 92% of the sample after just 25 votes (and that percentage approaches 100% as vote totals get higher).
In short, according to our users, “looks” and “personality” were the same thing, which of course makes perfect sense because, you know, this young female account holder, with a 99th percentile personality:

…and whose profile, by the way, contained no text, is just so obviously a really cool person to hang out and talk to and clutch driftwood with.
After we got rid of the two scales, and replaced it with just one, we ran a direct experiment to confirm our hunch—that people just look at the picture. We took a small sample of users and half the time we showed them, we hid their profile text. That generated two independent sets of scores for each profile, one score for “the picture and the text together” and one for “the picture alone.” Here’s how they compare. Again, each dot is a user. Essentially, the text is less than 10% of what people think of you.
So, your picture is worth that fabled thousand words, but your actual words are worth…almost nothing.
Experiment 3: THE POWER OF SUGGESTION
The ultimate question at OkCupid is, does this thing even work? By all our internal measures, the “match percentage” we calculate for users is very good at predicting relationships. It correlates with message success, conversation length, whether people actually exchange contact information, and so on. But in the back of our minds, there’s always been the possibility: maybe it works just because we tell people it does. Maybe people just like each other because they think they’re supposed to? Like how Jay-Z still sells albums?
To test this, we took pairs of bad matches (actual 30% match) and told them they were exceptionally good for each other (displaying a 90% match.)† Not surprisingly, the users sent more first messages when we said they were compatible. After all, that’s what the site teaches you to do.
But we took the analysis one step deeper. We asked: does the displayed match percentage cause more than just that first message—does the mere suggestion cause people to actually like each other? As far as we can measure, yes, it does.
When we tell people they are a good match, they act as if they are. Even when they should be wrong for each other.
The four-message threshold is our internal measure for a real conversation. And though the data is noisier, this same “higher display means more success” pattern seems to hold when you look at contact information exchanges, too.
This got us worried—maybe our matching algorithm was just garbage and it’s only the power of suggestion that brings people together. So we tested things the other way, too: we told people who were actually good for each other, that they were bad, and watched what happened.
Here’s the whole scope of results (I’m using the odds of exchanging four messages number here):
As you can see, the ideal situation is the lower right: to both be told you’re a good match, and at the same time actually be one. OkCupid definitely works, but that’s not the whole story. And if you have to choose only one or the other, the mere myth of compatibility works just as well as the truth. Thus the career of someone like Doctor Oz, in a nutshell. And, of course, to some degree, mine.
I don’t have a camera!
I have only had 10% and 0% matches. Probably because I am a very unique person who communicates very differently than most. So, knowing I had little to gain by relying in numbers supplied by a computer (and I’ve had some less than desirable.experiences with google searches as.well), I decided to.trust my
MALSS, my 10s and 0s had a lot in common. Too bad for them if the number stopped them.
At first, I had a simple profile, nothing exciting. I got sevetal likes and exchanges that went nowhere.
Then I changed my profile a hundred times. Dead silence to all my entreaties.
finally, I threw caution to the winds and wrote from my heart. Then responses started coming.
If nothing else, OKC fulfilled its mythical namesake: I fell in love with a girl whose picture caught my eye while in another correspondence and she fell in love with me, both HOH. But I’m already sensing it may be an unhealthy, for all the wrong reasons relationship, exactly as that mythical mischevous child half-god would have it.
There are no guarantees in love and healthy relationships and fun seem antihetical. Ultimately, no matter what appriach you take, wherever you seek it, no one will ever know which is right.
If you blot out the photos I am sooo gone from your site! I don’t care for what reason you do it. No photo is just as bad as no information in the essays. No way!!!
Oh, cool, a non-aology for ethical fuckery. Can, y’know, it couldn’t possily be important for someone to -need- to date people they feel they have a high match percentage with, due to past trauma, being trans, that sort of thing. After you guys failing to have inclusive gender options for trans people, and for sexuality, then pretending like you give a shit about LGBTQ people w/ the Firefox CEO incident, I’m deleting my profile. Fuck y’all.
My decision to cancel Auto-Renewal for A-list was in part because I didn’t sign up to be part of secret social experiments. I enjoy your site but you should really ask the customers before deviating from the services we signed up for.
ordered the Kindle version. ISAR convention in September . interesting topics.
I don’t understand why some people feel the need to act like this company is a cool buddy of theirs, that needs someone to shut up the “silly” critics after reading this. No one expects businesses to do anything for free; that’s a ridiculous statement. Non A-list users see advertisements all the time. Videos just play without anyone clicking a button for instance, and never would I get the idea to complain about such a circumstance. A list users pay money.
Deceiving people about “who” they are talking to, and what others get to see of them does not belong to the methods I expect. then mocking them for possibly feeling scared of how thoroughly they are psychologically manipulated- in other words of how companies might pull the strings of their lives- and for reacting angrily, is almost even more startling.
The funny thing about this is that an improvement of quality would be a win/win situation. I bet many if not most users are willing to part-take in experiments that ultimately might help them find people they like, and you wouldn’t be criticzed if everyone knew what happens. So if I’m honest I don’t even understand the point in knowingly deceiving people.
But I am sure it’s just me being stupid again for just not simply seeing the deeper sense, just as I am not looking trough their business plan.
That said thanks to aguycalledjustin (one of the commenters below) for the link.
I really didn’t mind. There has been to many times where we have all heard that complete opposites attract or some couples are exactly like one another. Does it really matter? It’s all about two people attracted to one another, and it happens in so many different ways. Why shouldn’t some websites use that to work with. You could even call it science. Thanks for the experiment. It’s worth actually trying. If anyone is upset then perhaps there was to much expectation to begin with.
While this is somewhat interesting I would prefer to discuss another, more important problem. I have had several contacts with guys who were of questionable character. Some of these contacted me directlt and went on for a while and in one case asked for money from me. I realize that you cannot screen con men but in several of these cases the men were in the military and pulled their profile off your site within 24 hours of contacting me. MOST recently I was sent two matches which turned out to be the same person from Lombard with two different names
This has caused me to question your involvement in these unfortunate instances. Your lack of being able to be contacted further creates a possible impression that someone on your staff is making questionable if not deliberately illegal matches. Please reply at your earliest convenience. If I do not hear from you I will not be renewing my higher priced membership.
Sincerely
Jim (cineman321) Mulcahy
I agree with Steph5203. I just can not take someone serious when I receive a message from someone who has no photo or they did not answer any questions. Guess they are really looking for someone.
And I’m not too convinced about those percentages. In my case, be it high or low, I have had no luck
Katie:
If you knew you were part of an experiment that was testing how good the match system was, you’d likely act differently than if you thought the system was working like normal and it just happened to give you different matches. There needs to only be one main variable in such an experiment.
OKcupid are not the first, nor will they be the last, company to use such methods to try to make their system better and get better, more accurate analytics. But they are one of the few who are so open about it after the fact and who share their failures as well as their successes. For that I think they’re pretty neat.
That’s of no surprise here. Most people are retards who only look at pictures without reading anything and I’m definitely not talking just about guys.
Wtf also with the ton of girls with a profil that have no description at all, they think that only because they look good that people will get interested in them and if so, for the good reasons rather than only to f*** them? In my opinion any profil without description for 1 week should be deleted automaticly.
This is funny… I have told my friends that are also on the site that algorithms are running the show and not to believe everything they see or read… I guess I have been right:-)
Experimenting is fine and it’s how you learn about your customers and their behaviors so you can offer them a better product/service. However, this crossed a very strict line – I can now no longer trust that the matching algorithm – arguably OKC’s most significant asset – has any value. I can no longer trust that the “recommended” matches are who they think is a good match. Those were some of OKC’s best strengths.
Allow users to signup for random beta tests, or otherwise tell them before testing on them when it comes to trust.
Congrats on obtaining some interesting and insightful data. I hope it was worth losing the trust put into the days/weeks/months/years of improving your “special blend”. I only see OKC as a service for me to find other people to date, not a service intent on providing the best matches for me. Was it worth it?
My learning about an effective experimental design gave me tremendous appreciation of potential information.
I almost wanted to like this article even before I read it. I thought there may be a bit of parody with some genuine undercurrents that would enhance my appreciation for OkCupid. Not to diminish the skill and creative process that no doubt went into the metrics, it turned out to be an account of what most users of a dating site would expect to experience. That’s fine in both the explanation and the practice. And one would also expect a bit of sensationalism and the capitalization of a current news story that divides public opinion against one of the internet’s top dogs, to emotionally pull the readers’ attention.
However, the introduction was a distraction leaving the article falling flat for several reasons. Even though there are probably many people, including OkCupid users, who are not at all bothered by Facebook’s ‘experiments’ but rather bothered more by or amused with the ‘silly’ reactions of the people who are strongly opposed, I think the comparison was an unfortunate choice.
Both OkCupid and Facebook are social media, but Facebook is not a dating site although its original purpose was to bring people together socially. It seems that the most recent experiment accomplishes exactly the opposite for some people, as does the routine post filtering for the purposes of exposing users to unwanted posts in lieu of their preferred pages’ posts. There is the impact on those individuals who rely on close friends and family members for daily contact, for their well-being. Who may even be at risk without it. This contact was deliberately prevented. I am not surprised there are a considerable number of healthcare professionals and scientists appalled by it. This kind of behavior exemplifies all that is wrong with the internet. Through unprecedented growth and opportunity their operations have morphed into a monstrosity with a user interface that is continually sacrificed for the sake of profit and I don’t mean the necessary presence of ads. Consider: http:/ /www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2014/06/30/facebook-only-got-permission-to-do-research-on-users-after-emotion-manipulation-study/, and http:/ /blogs.scientificamerican.com/doing-good-science/2014/06/30/some-thoughts-about-human-subjects-research-in-the-wake-of-facebooks-massive-experiment/.
To quote this blog’s introduction “… if you use the Internet, you’re the subject of hundreds of experiments at any given time, on every site. …” The word experiment used with quotation marks is benign and can certainly connote humor, and subjects is a neutral word. However, since people are still human with emotions, the safeguarding of ethical practices by entities involving research on people, means that there are explicit definitions and guidelines for every phase of ‘research’. Facebook seems to think itself too big to fail, in a league of its own that doesn’t have to bother with any of that, including getting legitimate permission in advance, or that everyone else is doing it because: “…That’s how websites work.” In truth, ignorance and irresponsibility, are the basis of it.
These excuses are used by many corporations for sublimating human rights of privacy and protection. It is far from a joke that FTC got involved in this instance or that more oversight is being considered in regulating the internet. The imperative is that it is done to protect those with the most to lose.
In a market place where corporate behemoths use their personhood privilege to benefit via maximized profit and minimal customer service, they also have the added blessing of influencing legislation in their favor which is inevitably at the cost of the customer and the main street or small business owner, even to the point of influencing educational systems. So we hear ‘that’s how corporations work’ because ‘that’s how economics works’. Social Darwinism also works like this and it has an extremely polarizing effect on many aspects of society, to the general disintegration of the whole. There are the losers and the winners. Survival of the fittest justifies the absurdity that the act of failing is the fault of the weak. By this logic, the only reward is at the top level and all the multitudes striving in the middle have no excuse either. Not even that they wanna-be. These attitudes are rampant. The possibility that predatory corporate practices could become even worse, is deeply disturbing. I suggest everyone who hopes to get an education, pay off a mortgage, or raise a family consider what could be at stake.
The blog’s unfortunate introductory to its data analyses, gives the general impression of being a bit of an apology while belying the necessity for a responsible dating site business model, to treat with respect even those of its members who may not have the criteria or ability to sell themselves as winners. The truth is that all people are entitled to the expected services of membership – something I haven’t had reason to question about OkCupid but that Facebook has blatantly and consistently failed to do. I don’t know why OkCupid would even want to compare itself to this odious excuse of a social site.
This is bull shit! Why do your “people” feel the need to invade people’s privacy? You should have no right to read peoples private messages that could contain very private things about them! Not to mention their addresses and phone numbers. I’m sure “your people “protected them self with a million words that you know nobody will actully read before they get an account but I will have someone look over it anyways. Have a good day. I know I will when I figure out how to delete my account.
My learning about an effective experimental design gave me tremendous appreciation of potential information. The need to eliminate intervening variables is paramount and also extremely difficult. Those concerned lack sufficient understanding of the purpose of manipulating variables. Would not those who disagree with the experimentation support expanding their knowledge of interpersonal relationships? The divorce rate certainly speaks to this issue. I am fascinated by your results. I hope to see more.
I just don’t understand why you wouldn’t just give it to us straight!! If we were a good match in the beginning and you ruined that by saying we weren’t a good match, you ruined a relationship before it even began. People aren’t that shallow to where they just rely on looks. A lot of people, such as myself for example, really care about what we have in common and are really searching for a true relationship. I don’t want to be with a guy that I have nothing in common with!! I want someone to share the same interests with and make new interests and possibly memories. All I’m saying is that you ruined a possible relationship before it even had a chance. That’s disappointing!
When I first joined OkCupid the oktrends blog was my favorite part of the entire site, and I enjoyed this new post. When the time came to fill out my profile “The most private thing I’m willing to admit” was that after reading about how many folks on OkCupid lie about their age I knocked a year off my listed age to level the playing field. I also referred to the oktrends blog to explain why I did it. I’m over 70, so I doubt if that helped much.
However, I never took the matching based on people’s publicly expressed opinions very seriously. For one thing, the simple hypothesis that “like attracts like” has been studied to death. If only it were that simple! For another, my personal experience tells me otherwise. Many decades ago I was in relationships where we had a lot of interests in common but they never worked out: it seemed as though having so many shared interests degenerated into either power struggles or the boredom of an echo chamber.
I’m a widower now, but my wife and I were together for 40 years and I think we often managed to work as a “team” in certain respects; different interests and talents, but complementary most of the time. A trivial example of what I mean is that we both liked fishing and seafood. She could get excited if she caught a fish or two, but she wasn’t as interested in the “catching” part or the “cleaning” part as she was in being outdoors and part of the general activity. She put things pretty plainly, along the lines of, “I’ll take over when you hand me some nice fillets or steaks, you know, like they come from the supermarket. Maybe in some plastic wrap.”
On OkCupid I’ve basically ignored the match numbers and concentrated on looking at pictures and reading the profiles. If I find someone who seems interesting I’ll add her to my “favorites”. If she seems REALLY interesting I’ll message her right away, even ignoring obvious deal breakers, for instance the fact that I’m well outside her stated age envelope. I almost have to do that sometimes because I’m probably so far out in the tail of the age distribution on OkCupid that my choices are limited, unless I expand my horizons to women in Vladivostok or Lagos. So, if I’ve contributed to the data in this post it would have made no difference to my dating experiences.
One OkCupid tool that I’ve found useful is the “Your Best Face” feature that allows you to put your prospective profile photos out to be rated by a large number of members. In exchange you have to rate pictures of others. I’ve used it to edit my photos, although the results I’ve gotten are sometimes a bit puzzling.
I don’t believe that your experimental manipulation of match ratings constitutes a serious ethical violation, and the results seem to confirm this. Nevertheless, it was a good move to post this debriefing in spite of the crap you’re getting. I suppose it would be possible to scrape the responses to this post to find the common characteristics of the complainants, I even thought of doing it myself. Nah, it would be too tedious, and I already know the answer
So called free dating site with exceptions,no messages without upgrading.One could say it suck
I’ve been on sites for a couple of yrs. your analysis confirms what I felt ! Other than height. (I’m tall ) and location, I look at photo and then hear their voice before I meet someone !
Welp, the 30/90 explains me and the quasi exboyfriend.
Just because you weren’t notified about being a part of the Focus Group, doesn’t mean that you were part of it or that you were subject to experimentation.
They talk about the day where there were no photos. Unfortunately, that shows us how vain we really are. I would admit that if someone is a 90% match, but I don’t find them physically attractive or in a situation (physically) that I would be able to handle, I might have to pass them over. On top of that… they publicised the date that they would be doing it, so that’s not really unknowing experimentation… it’s notified experimentation.
This blog also doesn’t take into account all of those people of whom are messaging multiple people at the same time where after 2 messages they find someone else that they want to speak to and ignore you completely, or find love in the real world, and stop using the service all together.
Yes, OKC might have tampered with Match Results, but if you examine it, match results don’t really matter with some of the questions that are being used. If they started marking profiles of gay men to show they liked women, that would be tampering… but they didn’t. They did a suggestive match percentage, and that’s it.
So those of you that state “I didn’t sign up for this…” you kind of did when you agreed to the ToS and the Privacy Policy. It’s to be expected that small amounts of information may be organized in a way that is opposite to what you wanted. They still want to find the right match for you, but if everyone doesn’t participate in the essay, or pictures, or question-answering, it doesn’t matter anyhow.
~Hemmi
I think the experiments are interesting as far as getting people to go outside of their comfort level or go beyond looks. Maybe people are naive about how much of our lives are monitored and experimented with. I think people would be shocked.
Unfortunately, I’m not really sure how these experiments really sought to improve the users experience. Often times, I will get matches who smoke or do drugs. Both of which are non-negotiables. Men are often matched with me, who have stated clearly that they do not want my body type. Also, assuming that four messages constitutes a match may not actually mean anything beyond politeness. If you want to learn more about your users experience and improve user outcomes, it would be in your best interest to choose experiments that improve the site and really help people get the relationships they are looking for.
Haha
wow, thank you for posting this elaborate analysis … i love your openness and depth … i feel that algorithms based only on similarities are missing something … complementary … often i see in the match questions people being one thing and hoping to find the opposite … so, as i’ve also noticed in a recent new relationship, in some areas it’s good if it’s the same, but in some other areas it’s best if it’s quite the opposite … i hope you will continue your openminded train of thought and feeling your way around this social artwork …
Belittling human experimentation. Classy.
OkCupid lied to its users and told them people who were good matches were incompatible. It also said people who were terrible matches went well together. That explains all those fucked emails I got saying people I found disgusting were an excellent match.
Did anybody notice that during their photoblackout period Okcupid kept track of when users exchanged contact info. So I guess its okay to lie and monitor people’s personal communications as long as you call it an experiment.
I was an A list member but Okcupid will never get another dime out of me. They’re a bunch of sleazy bastards just like most other businesses.
you got outted on BBC tv last night.. you set up fake profiles without pics and without text!!!
I can’t trust OKC..
your “stats” are made up and have no baring.. and yep I have been on some truly awful dates with rude and money grabbing / freeloading women (you aren’t all like that, I know)
well done you..
I am not appalled but rather thrilled to know that I was chosen to be part of an experiment. If it helped to do any good and I was an affluent part of the process, then more powers be to those “geniuses” who created the different phases of the project.
My only qualm with the site is that I should be able to tell who does find me somewhat within their interest without having to subscribe to the a-List. After all, they can contact me anyway via message for free anyway; so leave the A-list for those willing to use the services of direct online chat or other extra prompts along those lines.
You seem to have the database for some interesting studies in relationship dynamics, and maybe even the technical expertise and interest to pursue them. I’ve liked this site, you put some thought into it and the questions are interesting.
I like it
I would have preferred if you had beaten the New York Times to the punch in letting your users know. This almost seems like after the fact damage control.
I’d let you try anything that would find me a partner, but I find that the women I am meeting (and I am trying my hardest to stay “age-appropriate”) are very set in their ways and/or not sure they want to be in a relationship.
I will be trying other social dating sites come September, sex sites and younger women. Sorry, girls, but you missed this boat.
Chevy, South Hadley, MA
Based on this, I have had less than 10 real conversations in all the years I’ve been on here. But their matching algorithm seems to work so maybe I should pay more attention to that!
Sometimes I send a message, get a message back, then send another message and never get another one back. My guess is that she didn’t look at my profile before sending the first message, then looked at it before sending another one and didn’t like it. I’ve also been told by at least one user that I’m pretty good-looking, but she didn’t message me because my question answers were awful. Seems like Ayn Rand isn’t very popular around here!!
First thing I do is I look at your pictures. Frankly, if you’re fat I pass you by. I’m not fat. If you don’t have decent pictures I’m not sure what you look like so I pass you by. Then I glance through your profile for “red flags”, which for me are things like mentioning religion/God/Jesus (I’m an atheist) or far-left politics (I’m a strident advocate of laissez-faire capitalism). More than one child is usually a problem also because I figure you won’t have enough time for me. If you got through all this and you’re cute enough I will probably send you a nice message about something in your profile. I don’t read the question answers because it takes too long, but if the Match % really works that well I should pay more attention to it!
Why has OkCupid become some bland?
I remember once when I have someone one star, OkCupid displayed something like “You gave them one star. Burn!”.
Now it’s just “You rated them one star”. Boring.
The government uses people as guinea pigs for experimentation so it is to be expected these shallow psuedo-intellectual children running this site would do the same. The self congratulatory tone of this write up and the mockery of others that comes through on the write up makes any statement about the state of the users of this site not even worth knowing. The people on here should have just been left alone to their own struggles instead we find we have been insulted for the amusement of some immature wayward flippant juvenile who it turns out is more dysfunctional than those supposed lost souls at whom he laughs. The lack of professionalism on this write up makes it difficult to read as the writer comes across as someone whose most significant personality trait is to ambush others with insults. I think most people on here are probably pretty decent people with the same mix of bad people in the ranks as would be found anywhere else. Now we find out we have some shit for brains behind the scenes “experimenting” on us. We are the supposedly defective parties while this junk experiment is held up as showing our faults as if the results should be self evident without the “experiment” and the rest of us are just too dumb to see the obvious. Your test was poorly thought out, poorly implemented and poorly communicated to us for our consideration.
Phishing customers is unethical – to disclose this in the context of a blog release as an “experiment” is telling – cupid wants to avoid egg on his chubby little face.
If cupid is willing to tell us about this, what is cupid not telling us?
Not knowing if I’m conversing with a person or an ‘experiment’ is bullshit – adios, cupid.
Experiments are one thing if it’s free but another if it’s not. Experimenting on A list users is not cool. That’s not what they pay for..
Actually I found this to be a fascinating article which coincided with much of what I thought, filling out your Long-form….as opposed to a Short-form…..heh heh.
I think the worst thing a person can do, to be honest, is fill out nothing and rely on a photo. Of course there are the odd ones hwo give a profile once sentence or two, and fill out a couple of things they want you to know about them (before opening questions I guess) like if they’re straight or not, but really short-sheeting themselves.
On a personal note, I did however see a threshold of about 65% and over yield an astonishing similarity in attitudes when talking or visiting with dates from this site. The higher the compatibility, the less we had to talk about. Thinking and acting alike, aren’t necessarily a compatible thing, nor is the old adage “opposites attract”, yet I also contacted people who had a low (35%) compatibility rating just to test MY theory on dynamism in relationships. If you both know what each other is already thinking, I believe it squashes some of the mystery of why the sexes are interesting and different. How can you really quantify (though I’m sure you find it fun, and so would I) what makes the heart go “thump thump”?
Just sayin’.
Have fun with your scripts.
Cheers,
Hope
How come almost all of the users I like have “replies very selectively”??
So your excuse is (1) everyone else on the Internet treats people like crap so therefore it’s okay that we do it too, and (2) we don’t have a clue what we’re doing so we figured the best way to find out is by being dishonest. You guys try so hard to be hip and cool but it seems to always turn out that you are immature and cruel instead. One good example is that April Fool’s Day fiasco a couple years ago. That was not just immature and cruel but also a potential relationship killer, not exactly what a dating site is supposed to be doing. Your immaturity is apparent in the questions you ask, as is your use of bad grammar and semantics. If you can’t hire young people who are mature, then maybe you should consider hiring older people who are mature. And while you’re at it, hire a few competent editors. As I am not shallow and obsessed with trying to be cool at the expense of others, my match percentage with OKC currently stands at 0%. If you care to improve that, I suggest you grow up and try a little honesty.
Some of my “90%” matches are users who love Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert, but that’s actually about a 0% match with me.
Interesting how pissed off people seem to be because they were experimented on by a website. It’s almost like they never use the internet or any website because… well.. we all know that NO OTHER WEBSITE would EVER experiment on PEOPLE for ANY REASON.
Can we all maybe grow up a bit? Are you made Facebook secret keeps metrics on you and adjusts the ads you see based on the metrics? Are you mad at google for basically the same thing? Are you mad at pornhub for keeping track of your searches? Wikipedia? Fact is every site looks at their metrics and how their site operates and experiments with them without telling YOU because they want to find ways to make their site and what the sites purpose is run more effectively. If not, they become obsolete because another site will come along and do what they do, but better.
If it all goes for a better user experience with a site, product, or service, then I’m interested. Just so long as no one shoves probes up my anus.
Actually, I’ve found that the women that I date most often are usually a 85% or LOWER match for me! The ones that have a 90% or higher rating are easier to start a conversation with but it doesn’t last for more than a few messages!
Great blog post!!!! Screw anyone that is pissed off about being part of an experiment, that’s what life is. Get over it!
As OKC admittedly lies to its users, I’m thinking that any favorable feedback that appears on this blog is fake.
I won’t respond to profiles without pictures from a safety perspective. No, picture makes me assume there is a scam going on. Yes, people can you fake pictures etc. but it is also safer to have a picture of the person assuming it is at all real before you meet a stranger.
My real thing, not having read all of the comments, is that I want to go back to the user agreement, if you are A list you are paying, so I’m curious about breach of contract or fraud for manipulating profiles etc.