4 ms·
"general rpc servers for solving specific problems using in memory data structures (e.g., who qualifies for a match search given dozens of constraints and milli
by dustingetz 16y ago
"general rpc servers for solving specific problems using in memory data structures (e.g., who qualifies for a match search given dozens of constraints and millions of users; what your match score is with 10,000 qualifying people, given you've all answered hundreds of different questions each on average) ... Great tech is available now, serving is cheaper, and you probably don't have the computational workload OkCupid does."
I know people who have used OKC before. OKC users in my social class (male, white, educated) ignore the match percentages, because the SNR is really low. They just plow through all the search results of people to find good pictures and interesting profiles.
So, I'd speculate that match-percentages are a marketing thing, and that they know they made a weak business decision which required lots of computation and now they're stuck with it.
I'm probably wrong. Maybe the long-tale users pay attention to match-percentage.
- gfunk911 16y agoI don't ignore the match percentages at all. Obviously they aren't perfectly correlated, but they're pretty solid. People with very low match numbers are basically 100% duds.
- starpilot 16y agoYou probably are wrong, and you imply you've never used okc. Match percentages matter to me highly since they certainly indicate users I'd get along with, based on my interactions with other users. Their data also show that messages response rates correlate strongly with match percentages.
- neild 16y agoI signed up for OKC, lurked for a while, and then sent a message to the person at the top of my match list. We're still together, five years later. I'm probably an outlier, but hey--match percentage works some of the time!
- DrStalker 16y agoI think of the match percentage as the equivalent of having HR look at tech resumes before forwarding them on to me; it's not perfect, but it saves me from reading through completely irrelevant profiles.