7 ms·

Can you say more about what’s not working? I’ve been with my girlfriend three years, just bought a car together. It’s going well! We met on OKcupid. I’m a hap

Can you say more about what’s not working? I’ve been with my girlfriend three years, just bought a car together. It’s going well! We met on OKcupid. I’m a happy customer, though I don’t think I’ve ever paid them anything.

rkachowski 7y ago
OKCupid has really been pushed to adopt the tinder based swipe approach in the past 2 years or so. They've also had a few big PR screw ups with forcing users to present their real names and really shifting the feature set to be more like Tinder now. It's really not the same as okcupid from 4 years ago
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- WorldMaker 7y ago
  Yes, that's the impact of Match Group buying OkCupid. They've just about entirely completed homogenization with their other dating apps.
- jlokier 7y ago
  I agree. I used the old OkCupid for years and met a few new friends through it. It tended to match me up with people already in my "friends of friends" extended circles, with good quality common interests and attitudes, and was great for expanding those circles. I thought it was one of the best sites on the net for getting to know new people. (Way better than, say, Facebook, where you exchange comments but never really get to know new people one-on-one.) And with people I already knew, we would have fun checking out how well OkCupid thought we matched up. I want back a couple of years ago, after a few years break, and OkCupid had removed everything that made it useful before. I mean everything. It just wasn't any use. Sadness. Never been back since. It's a shame there's nothing else on the net like the old OkCupid. It was socially useful and unique. Hopefully someone will come along and replicate the good parts in a new site someday.
  - hombre_fatal 7y ago
    I'm sure plenty of HNers can give you tips for making friends on Tinder: you simply fail to attract the opposite person. ;)
    - jlokier 7y ago
      Tinder is completely different. Initial matching is based on looks, and the emphasis is on dating/sex rather than friendship. OkCupid was based on knowledge and attitudes as well, using a type of machine-assisted learning that deduced what people really find important to know about each other. Rather than what someone designing a questionaire assumes. And rather than people relying on looks, impulsive attraction, and random early conversations where people are winging it. The central idea, in addition to free-form profiles, was users submitted a lot of answers to multiple-choice questions, as well as the answers they would like a potential match to have (because they might be different), and how important each answer was to them. So this worked well for people who were looking for attributes that complemented theirs, in addition to other attributes where similarity was what mattered. In addition, users could submit questions, and over time the system grew to mainly ask those questions that were found to be statistically useful in matching people up. This meant great questions for matching would rise to the top of the pool, while poor questions, or badly written ones, or unhelpfully ambiguous ones, would not. This also meant that the kinds of things people ended up matching on were more diverse than any other site. So it really helped people find matches on non-mainstream attributes that mattered to them personally, that were not generally reflected on other sites (such as match.com...). Things like how much do you like your partner to dress as a goth, do you mind if your partner sleeps with other people too, and if not what about cuddling others without sex, not just what's your orientation, but effectively what subtle aspects of orientation that haven't been formally enumerated, does it bother you if your partner supports a particular type of politics, what about bedtimes, what is your approach to raising children (smack or never smack), do you like drugs and if so what kind, etc. Basically anything you can think of which humans actually care about. It was an excellent way to find people that shared your attitudes and worldview, especially if you had non-mainstream interests. Tinder will give you none of that.
jressey 7y ago
Survivorship Bias: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias I met my wife online after a year of fruitless first dates. Maybe I'm just unappealing or something but it was truly a miserable part of my life. Edit: I'm gonna add in here that most people don't have the stick-to-itiveness that most readers of this site do.
- zulln 7y ago
  So you met your wife after a year and call the whole thing a failure?
  - jressey 7y ago
    What I'm saying is a might as well have dated random people for a year, it would have been the same result. The dating sites sell you on 'matching.' Oh, and if you think you're using it for free, think again. They are collecting all kinds of personal information about you
    - JimboOmega 7y ago
      Only OkCupid does; Tinder barely tries and even then it's hidden. For the most part the selling point is that you get introduced to people you wouldn't just meet in your normal social cirlces/events. Apps besides OkCupid have mostly moved to the model where you put in a few basic facts (age/sex, do you drink, etc), upload some pictures, a short (< 500 characters in Tinder) text blob, and off you go swiping. There's no attempt to match you on interests let alone any deeper compatibility metrics. Also on the data collection front, the business model is more based around advertising, and just knowing you're single is all the info they need. They can bombard you with ads for events to go to, clothes to wear, etc. You're the most lucrative market if you're 18-35 and single.
      - lnanek2 7y ago
        Actually, they do try to match you on attractiveness. Also how much you swipe. If you swipe to like every profile you get different results.
paride5745 7y ago
I matched with my wife on OKcupid, for me it worked well.
- outside1234 7y ago
  Me too. This was 5 years ago, so perhaps it has moved on per the other comments, but it definitely was the best of the lot when I was dating.
mcv 7y ago
Was that before OKcupid was bought by Match? They used to be very critical of other dating sites, but I think those posts have been removed, now that they're owned by Match.
goatinaboat 7y ago
Before Match bought them OKC had an excellent blog post in which they demonstrated that Match customers were 12x less likely than the general population to get married...
parliament32 7y ago
Things get a bit kookey when you realize their business model depends on people not finding partners. The longer you're single, the longer you're on their platform, so the more money you make them. There's no incentive for them to actually match you with anyone apart from trust. I suspect a lot of people would be far more interested in a "pay us $X, money back guarantee if you don't get a date" kind of service. At least that way your and the company's interests are aligned.
- devit 7y ago
  That's only if one assumes long-term monogamous relationships, but there's no reason to only consider those. In fact, if a dating app worked very well, non-monogamous and short term relationships would probably be more satisfying.
BuildTheRobots 7y ago
OKC used to be a nice usable site where you could meet interesting people and talk. They also used to publish quite a lot of original research. They got bought out by Match a few years ago, at which point it suddenly became swiping and now you can't message (or see messages) without having first matched with each other. tldr: Once sold, it went from an interesting place to a cesspit quite rapidly.
odiroot 7y ago
Most of my friends (both male and female) complain about dating apps. It may be highly local problem though, related to the culture of the city I live in. Usually when travelling I noticed it worked much better for me.
- hombre_fatal 7y ago
  I think we complain about dating apps because it's a harder pill to swallow that dating itself is a crapshoot, and you just sound like an incel when you complain about dating and how unfair life is. Besides, aren't we presumably on Tinder because of the logistical downsides of meeting people otherwise? Nothing stops us from using Tinder as a supplement. If dating was so great and without trade-offs, we wouldn't have downloaded Tinder to begin with. :)
coupdejarnac 7y ago
I met my last girlfriend on Okcupid several years ago, too. Okcupid now works like a slightly modified Tinder. It's awful.
Mountain_Skies 7y ago
Perhaps the OkCupid you used three years ago to meet your girlfriend isn't the same OkCupid experience that users have now.

rkachowski 7y ago

OKCupid has really been pushed to adopt the tinder based swipe approach in the past 2 years or so. They've also had a few big PR screw ups with forcing users to present their real names and really shifting the feature set to be more like Tinder now. It's really not the same as okcupid from 4 years ago

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
WorldMaker 7y ago
Yes, that's the impact of Match Group buying OkCupid. They've just about entirely completed homogenization with their other dating apps.
jlokier 7y ago
I agree. I used the old OkCupid for years and met a few new friends through it. It tended to match me up with people already in my "friends of friends" extended circles, with good quality common interests and attitudes, and was great for expanding those circles. I thought it was one of the best sites on the net for getting to know new people. (Way better than, say, Facebook, where you exchange comments but never really get to know new people one-on-one.) And with people I already knew, we would have fun checking out how well OkCupid thought we matched up. I want back a couple of years ago, after a few years break, and OkCupid had removed everything that made it useful before. I mean everything. It just wasn't any use. Sadness. Never been back since. It's a shame there's nothing else on the net like the old OkCupid. It was socially useful and unique. Hopefully someone will come along and replicate the good parts in a new site someday.
- hombre_fatal 7y ago
  I'm sure plenty of HNers can give you tips for making friends on Tinder: you simply fail to attract the opposite person. ;)
  - jlokier 7y ago
    Tinder is completely different. Initial matching is based on looks, and the emphasis is on dating/sex rather than friendship. OkCupid was based on knowledge and attitudes as well, using a type of machine-assisted learning that deduced what people really find important to know about each other. Rather than what someone designing a questionaire assumes. And rather than people relying on looks, impulsive attraction, and random early conversations where people are winging it. The central idea, in addition to free-form profiles, was users submitted a lot of answers to multiple-choice questions, as well as the answers they would like a potential match to have (because they might be different), and how important each answer was to them. So this worked well for people who were looking for attributes that complemented theirs, in addition to other attributes where similarity was what mattered. In addition, users could submit questions, and over time the system grew to mainly ask those questions that were found to be statistically useful in matching people up. This meant great questions for matching would rise to the top of the pool, while poor questions, or badly written ones, or unhelpfully ambiguous ones, would not. This also meant that the kinds of things people ended up matching on were more diverse than any other site. So it really helped people find matches on non-mainstream attributes that mattered to them personally, that were not generally reflected on other sites (such as match.com...). Things like how much do you like your partner to dress as a goth, do you mind if your partner sleeps with other people too, and if not what about cuddling others without sex, not just what's your orientation, but effectively what subtle aspects of orientation that haven't been formally enumerated, does it bother you if your partner supports a particular type of politics, what about bedtimes, what is your approach to raising children (smack or never smack), do you like drugs and if so what kind, etc. Basically anything you can think of which humans actually care about. It was an excellent way to find people that shared your attitudes and worldview, especially if you had non-mainstream interests. Tinder will give you none of that.

jressey 7y ago

Survivorship Bias: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias I met my wife online after a year of fruitless first dates. Maybe I'm just unappealing or something but it was truly a miserable part of my life. Edit: I'm gonna add in here that most people don't have the stick-to-itiveness that most readers of this site do.

zulln 7y ago
So you met your wife after a year and call the whole thing a failure?
- jressey 7y ago
  What I'm saying is a might as well have dated random people for a year, it would have been the same result. The dating sites sell you on 'matching.' Oh, and if you think you're using it for free, think again. They are collecting all kinds of personal information about you
  - JimboOmega 7y ago
    Only OkCupid does; Tinder barely tries and even then it's hidden. For the most part the selling point is that you get introduced to people you wouldn't just meet in your normal social cirlces/events. Apps besides OkCupid have mostly moved to the model where you put in a few basic facts (age/sex, do you drink, etc), upload some pictures, a short (< 500 characters in Tinder) text blob, and off you go swiping. There's no attempt to match you on interests let alone any deeper compatibility metrics. Also on the data collection front, the business model is more based around advertising, and just knowing you're single is all the info they need. They can bombard you with ads for events to go to, clothes to wear, etc. You're the most lucrative market if you're 18-35 and single.
    - lnanek2 7y ago
      Actually, they do try to match you on attractiveness. Also how much you swipe. If you swipe to like every profile you get different results.

paride5745 7y ago

I matched with my wife on OKcupid, for me it worked well.

outside1234 7y ago
Me too. This was 5 years ago, so perhaps it has moved on per the other comments, but it definitely was the best of the lot when I was dating.

mcv 7y ago

Was that before OKcupid was bought by Match? They used to be very critical of other dating sites, but I think those posts have been removed, now that they're owned by Match.

goatinaboat 7y ago

Before Match bought them OKC had an excellent blog post in which they demonstrated that Match customers were 12x less likely than the general population to get married...

parliament32 7y ago

Things get a bit kookey when you realize their business model depends on people not finding partners. The longer you're single, the longer you're on their platform, so the more money you make them. There's no incentive for them to actually match you with anyone apart from trust. I suspect a lot of people would be far more interested in a "pay us $X, money back guarantee if you don't get a date" kind of service. At least that way your and the company's interests are aligned.

devit 7y ago
That's only if one assumes long-term monogamous relationships, but there's no reason to only consider those. In fact, if a dating app worked very well, non-monogamous and short term relationships would probably be more satisfying.

BuildTheRobots 7y ago

OKC used to be a nice usable site where you could meet interesting people and talk. They also used to publish quite a lot of original research. They got bought out by Match a few years ago, at which point it suddenly became swiping and now you can't message (or see messages) without having first matched with each other. tldr: Once sold, it went from an interesting place to a cesspit quite rapidly.

odiroot 7y ago

Most of my friends (both male and female) complain about dating apps. It may be highly local problem though, related to the culture of the city I live in. Usually when travelling I noticed it worked much better for me.

hombre_fatal 7y ago
I think we complain about dating apps because it's a harder pill to swallow that dating itself is a crapshoot, and you just sound like an incel when you complain about dating and how unfair life is. Besides, aren't we presumably on Tinder because of the logistical downsides of meeting people otherwise? Nothing stops us from using Tinder as a supplement. If dating was so great and without trade-offs, we wouldn't have downloaded Tinder to begin with. :)

coupdejarnac 7y ago

I met my last girlfriend on Okcupid several years ago, too. Okcupid now works like a slightly modified Tinder. It's awful.

Mountain_Skies 7y ago

Perhaps the OkCupid you used three years ago to meet your girlfriend isn't the same OkCupid experience that users have now.