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I worked at OkCupid from 2013-2017 and totally resonate with the author that mid-2010s OkCupid was a really special product, and that it took a steep decline as

I worked at OkCupid from 2013-2017 and totally resonate with the author that mid-2010s OkCupid was a really special product, and that it took a steep decline as the decade went on. It's not entirely fair to say that the Match acquisition immediately caused that decline; I started a couple years after Match got the company in its hands, and only two of the original founders were still focused on OkCupid full time. But the product continued to improve and grow for years after that. There was very little top-down directives about how to develop the product during that time. OkCupid had excellent growth in the first half of the 2010s, but as that growth started to plateau, it was pretty clear that the focus moved to following Tinder's trends in an effort to match their level of growth. But OkCupid was a really healthy company with great profits and low burn, being only a team of 30-40 people. It could have stayed the way it was and continued to turn a profit. But Tinder had shown that the market size for mobile was way bigger than the desktop-focused product that OkCupid used to be. The focus towards acquiring more mobile users meant stripping down and simplifying a product that previously demanded hundreds of words of essay writing, and answering hundreds of questions. The essay prompts became simpler, multiple choice asymmetric questions got deprioritized over reciprocal yes / no questions. And as a user, I felt the quality of conversations I had went down as most messages were sent on the go from people just trying to line up their weekend plans, instead of a deeply invested audience trying to form meaningful connections first. I really miss working on the product OkCupid was when I started, and often day-dream about starting another dating app closer to its original long-form vision. But the worst part of trying to do that is bootstrapping users, and seems like the only ways to do that are either have a lot of capital, or shadier methods like fake profiles or scraping data off of other sites. Not really interested in raising or setting my morals aside to do it.

Iulioh 3y ago
Thanks for sharing Another thing destroyed by the infinite growth model
- pif 3y ago
  You mean: another thing destroyed that a few people used to enjoy when the developers had no chance to have it economically better!
  - Iulioh 3y ago
    Man, you can have a profitable thing and just..have that? Like if you have the same let's say 20% profit in the world of business is not enough, you want the RATE of your return to go higher even if the product allowed you to stay stupidity rich. Economically better is a good pair of words that leads to enshittification via greed
    - pif 3y ago
      Enshittification is only a problem from the point of view of the non-paying user. But the on-paying user has no say in what happens to the app. As they say, if you are not paying for the product, you are the product. Enjoying the generosity of other people is fine, but it gives you no right to expect it to last indefinitely.
      - Iulioh 3y ago
        That's not even remotely the point. Have you read the post or seen how the things go? The paying user get fucked too, just give it time.
    - pif 3y ago
      > enshittification via greed You are right. The greed of affectionate users who refuse to pay has destroyed many a service!
lr4444lr 3y ago
I met my wife on OkCupid. The original format attracted a much smarter and more worldly crowd of women, to put it bluntly, than the other services. I exited the dating game before Tinder, but if OkCupid lost that quirky, artsy, college educated crowd in the chase to compete, that's a real shame.
- switchbak 3y ago
  As did I! OkCupid was a shining star of a product that treated its users with respect and provided a really valuable service. I didn't realize that it's no longer. I feel old pining for the internet of yesteryear. As is obvious only in retrospect, you don't realize when the golden years are!
  - raisedbyninjas 3y ago
    Anybody else remember the data blog posts? Those were interesting and satisfying. It was another confirmation that I'd found the right dating site and probably a like-minded userbase.
    - dspillett 3y ago
      Particularly the one that was a tare-down of why paid dating sites like match.com where a mug's game for almost everyone. That somehow went AWOL fairly soon after the match.com take-over…
      - lolinder 3y ago
        This one, Why You Should Never Pay For Online Dating: http://web.archive.org/web/20100725135309/http://blog.okcupid.com/index.php/why-you-should-never-pay-for-online-dating/ http://web.archive.org/web/20100725135309/http://blog.okcupi...
        dspillett 3y ago
        Very much sounds like the one. Can't double-check ATM as network I'm on blocks archive.org.
OkayPhysicist 3y ago
The upside of dating app bootstrapping is that it's an inherently local phenomenon. People want to meet people near them, which means you can gain traction one locale at a time. Maybe some kind of promotion where you cut deals with some local bars or restaurants to get some kind of discount / freebie if you match with someone (with the implication being that they'll use it for the date). Still takes capital, just not "nation-wide aggressive advertising push" levels of capital.
- JCharante 3y ago
  Nationwide is much easier in countries with a large primacy index, for example Thailand where Bangkok has 9x the population of Thailand’s second largest city, and Moscow where it has 4x the population of St Petersburg. Everybody is nearby when you have subway trains connecting half the people in your country together in under an hour.
carabiner 3y ago
I would pay $100/month for a site like the original okcupid, but I want Max Krohn, Christian Rudder and the rest of the original team running it.
- pif 3y ago
  > I would pay $100/month for a site like the original okcupid, but ... That you would not pay $100/month for a site like the original OkCupid.
- genewitch 3y ago
  you're in luck! OKCupid costs ~$44 a month, and you can add on "read receipts" for about $0.50 each, superboosts for $1-$3 each, the privacy (hidden) profile for $10/month. with some creativity you can have 0 real matches for ~$100!
  - webninja 3y ago
    The matches are real. It’s just that you have to get on an airplane and fly to a new country to meet them. I’ve met my matches in person. One of the girls paid for almost everything too.
    - genewitch 3y ago
      is that where you disappeared to for 3 years?
      - webninja 3y ago
        It’s not where but yes it is why.
talldatethrow 3y ago
I remember being on SparkMatch when I was a 14-15 year old. A dating site meant for teens, from the makers of Spark Notes. I always had this weird vague hunch that spark match become OKCupid. Any info on this?
- martey 3y ago
  from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OkCupid https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OkCupid > SparkMatch debuted as a beta experiment of allowing registered users who had taken the Match Test to search for and contact each other based on their Match Test types. The popularity of SparkMatch took off and it was launched as its own site, later renamed OkCupid.
- qingcharles 3y ago
  The biggest online dating site in the 90s had a minimum age of 13 o_O. I thought that was weird, even back then. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matchmaker.com https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matchmaker.com
  - talldatethrow 3y ago
    I remember I was 14-15 on SparkMatch because I had to convince my mom to drive me 30 miles to a mall so I could meet a girl from SparkMatch. To this day I was the most out of my league girl I ever 'dated' (only kissed a few times). I soon acted too sweet and too lame and lost her. But it taught me a lot to always be cooler and I cleaned up in the coming OkCupid/PlentyofFish revolution, and doubly so by the time Tinder came around. I still think about that girl sometimes, which makes sense, because she was somewhat unique to be online constantly back in 1999-2000.
sirspacey 3y ago
A somewhat natural conclusion is that mobile killed the thoughtful internet. Ouch.
- fiddlerwoaroof 3y ago
  I find I comment and write much less on mobile than on a computer, because the writing experience on mobile is still very sub-par.
  - wvenable 3y ago
    This is very true. And now think of all the people who's only Internet experience is on mobile. They exist entirely within that sub-par writing universe.
    - bigstrat2003 3y ago
      I actually feel really bad for the younger generation, actually. There's a whole bunch of teenagers who have no idea how good and useful computers can actually be, because all they ever have known is the shitty watered down mobile version of computing. Even desktops aren't as good as they used to be (thanks, Electron), but they're still a damn sight better than mobile. But if one grew up thinking that a phone/tablet is the end-all of computing, they have no idea what they're even missing.
      - vore 3y ago
        This is a ridiculous out of touch take. Of course young people know what desktop computing is like: they use it at school for class and use it at home for gaming. Have you considered that people might prefer mobile is preferable because it’s, well, mobile and you don’t have to lug a big ol’ machine around?
        bigstrat2003 3y ago
        I'm skeptical of your claim that young people are actually using desktops in those situations. As far as I've seen, young people are primarily gaming on consoles and are using stripped down devices like Chromebooks at school. It's also been noted that computer skills have gotten markedly worse among young people in recent years, which suggests they are not in fact being exposed to desktops regularly. And I definitely think you're off base about mobile devices being popular because they're mobile. People will sit at home and use a phone that is an incredibly worse experience than using an actual computer, and think it's an adequate substitute. They don't need the mobility in that situation, but they really think there's nothing wrong with the user experience.
scoofy 3y ago
OkCupid had the best damn blog on the internet. They were obviously extremely thoughtful folks. I was genuinely sad when it was discontinued.
- bunabhucan 3y ago
  Founder wrote a book. Blog is still at archive.org
oxfordmale 3y ago
Almost all internet algorithms seem to converge around maximising time spend on the app in question. A dating website simply doesn't want to be too effective, as you would lose two customers every successful match. Similar to the approach used in slot machines, you want to give the illusion of winning, but I'm reality only provide moderately succesful matches rather than perfect ones. Of course there is a human element too. Dating sites give the illusion of choice, and a result a lot of potential matches aren't realised on, as the partner is good looking enough.
- wbobeirne 3y ago
  I always push back on this argument, because it came up a lot. As someone higher up at the company once put it, if people are sufficiently convinced that you can find them what they're looking for in a dating app, there's almost no amount of money they wouldn't spend. People churn after not getting what they want out of an app. And relationships end, and people will return to apps they felt they had success with. Word of mouth successes were the ultimate marketing tool, OkCupid didn't have really any ad spend for the first year or two I was there (and apparently the hadn't in the years past.)
  - oasisaimlessly 3y ago
    > people will return to apps they felt they had success with So then the trick is to provide the illusion of successful relationships (but of course not ones that actually pan out in the long term).
    - oxfordmale 3y ago
      Long lasting relationships are based on common values. However, you can have succesful medium term relationships based on common interests and good looks. OkCupid, in its heydays, indeed managed to match people on common values by asking detailed questions. A lot of modern dating apps are far more focus on looks and common interests. Yes they look cute, and love rock climbing too, but hate children, and never want any. It will result in a good match in your mid twenties, but likely going to result in irreconcilable differences when you approach 30. Unless of course you both hate children :-)
kromem 3y ago
I feel a twinge of guilt whenever I see things about how OKC got crappy. Not that long before the acquisition a certain jackass brought in as a consultant (ahem) happened to point to OkC as the leading competitor against the acquiring company's properties specifically for mobile. Sorry everyone... If it makes it any better, I've had to use the product since then too, and suffered alongside all the rest of you.
- snerbles 3y ago
  Hey, at least you can say you had a direct role in how couples meet and their resulting progeny. Our personal misery and loneliness aside, the long-term societal effects as generations wear on will be fascinating.
- uoaei 3y ago
  I appreciate your candor. Though I am upset, I realize this is the kind of thing that would be hard to see coming.
  - sambazi 3y ago
    huh? the top point is that more users usually lead to a worse product, no?
    - uoaei 3y ago
      Speaking specifically to the short-sighted nature of business objectives and the enshittification of good services via acquisition and repurposing.
    - dredds 3y ago
      The perfect matching service would lose 2 new users every login. No different to selling an everlasting lightbulb. The only salvation of such a perfect product would be a "de-networking effect" whereby newly-happy couples would auto-evangelize the site for bringing them together in the first place, but that wouldn't grow the site much. The success of the "nightclub app" is that people feel they are a match only as long as they "drink", and by morning they are thirsty for more. Growth comes from the heartache of loneliness, failed relationships, and divorce. A worse product (poor matching, and stifled communication) is the actual goal of a more profitable dating app, not simply being a consequence of having more users.
Angostura 3y ago
You raise a really interesting point that I hadn't really thought about before - the possibility that the move to mobile first is directly responsible for making things worse, dumber, simpler with less functionality.
doctorpangloss 3y ago
> OkCupid had excellent growth in the first half of the 2010s, but as that growth started to plateau, it was pretty clear that the focus moved to following Tinder's trends in an effort to match their level of growth. Okay... what was the ratio of active men to women on OkCupid each year? How about on Tinder? You worked there, and that's an unfair assessment of Tinder. The fundamental trend in these dating apps is that ratio, and the relative growth (or decline!) of that gender's active user base. And it's not something Match, or for that matter Dataclysm ever discussed, even though it's kind of the most important single metric for a dating app. I mean ask demographers, they talk about 3m:2f being a crisis ratio [1]. And on Tinder it's probably closer to 10:1-20:1, I'm sure they pay AppAnnie (or whatever they're called now) to push out some fake ass numbers here and there. If it wasn't a horrible number - anything worse than 3m:2f is pretty horrible! - they would write about it, and they simply won't. On the one hand I really liked Dataclysm, and I was bought into the ideas it put forward. There's this post from 2018 by the author that used to say, oh well the reply rate to black women was 20 percentage points lower, which is the same in 2008. Well, trends showed about 18 percentage points more interracial marriages, the data was totally counter to trend: that indicated a problem in OkCupid, not in the user base as the author claimed. The Tinder PR team kind of put the kibosh on that kind of transparency for the wrong reasons, but it was the right idea. So this big essay prompt format that the app used to use, I don't know if it was part of the problem where OkCupid was fundamentally against trend. In some respects, clearly, the essays versus swiping didn't matter. It certainly seems intuitive that the essays matter, it appeals to a sense of superiority in a particular audience's way of believing how online dating should work, but those guys are operating in the vacuum of the single most important data point (the actual ratio) and are forced to essentially generate fictions for why the apps work the way they do and why it worked for them. I appreciate that from your point of view, 2013-2017 was a focus on "mobile" and that in your opinion that was "bad." But c'mon, show me a category of free app that didn't have a focus on "mobile." I personally think the apps are doing the best given the circumstances - the ratio! - and that everything else is dancing around this because, if people knew, you know, they'd stop using them. [1] https://www.google.com/books/edition/Date_onomics/7GDVBgAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&bsq=3%20men https://www.google.com/books/edition/Date_onomics/7GDVBgAAQB... (page 22)
wvenable 3y ago
I don't understand why so many companies are against simply developing a new product with a new brand instead of lobotomizing their own product. It seems to have over and over where a product and brand that makes decent profit is utterly destroyed in an attempt to acquire a new market.
- bc11hn 3y ago
  Because creating a new product is harder and more expensive than changing an existing one, even if it does destroy it. Advertising, novel technical infrastructure, new branding, etc... all of this needs to be done for a new brand -- and then who knows if any one will come visit? Or, you can just make whatever short-term changes to your existing successful product, juice the metric you're looking to juice, and (in theory) cashout before the long term repercussions take affect.
  - wvenable 3y ago
    New branding isn't necessarily bad; it can make a new product seem fresh. Technical infrastructure, both hardware and software, can be reused. You don't have destroy one software product to make another. Take this OkCupid example; they had their website model. They could have just created "OkCupid Nights" as a separate Tinder-like product reusing as much of their tech as possible.
- Cthulhu_ 3y ago
  Well, the existing product already has critical mass, a new product - like the various Instagram clones, then the various Tiktok clones, then the various Twitter clones - all have to acquire their own customer base. That said, other point: Why not just accept you're no longer growing? The company would've stayed solvent for years yet, with a steady group of users coming in and out over time as the brand becomes synonymous with thoughtful dating profiles instead of the rapid fire hot-or-not that is Tinder.
  - wvenable 3y ago
    The endless pursuit of growth is incredibly destructive. A consistent profitable business is considered a failure. Instragram was able to pull their users into Threads pretty easily without making Threads a direct part of Instragram. It is still it's own thing with it's own brand.
throwaway2037 3y ago
This post reads like Eternal September[1], and I write that without any cynicism or snark. It makes good sense that text-heavy web apps would fall prey to image-heavy mobile apps. I still think there is potential for dating apps that target higher intellect users. Most of the dominant apps today are mobile-first, largely visual, and disappointing for both sides. One idea: Could speech-to-text technology help to allow users to create OkCupid-style essays from a mobile phone? Maybe. Although, a few discussions here on HN said that speech-to-text is still a super hard problem in 2023. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September
- lelanthran 3y ago
  I think that there is a reason that dating apps, dating sites and dating services all converge on a model which downranks intellect: the few humans who care about that characteristic are not enough to build a sustainable business. Literally everyone says that they are different and want a smart partner, but when they actually hook up they aren't ranking high intellect. I liked okcupids blogs. The maintakeaway I had from reading all of them was: 1. How much appearance played a role in being attractive. 2. 90+% of women attempted to hook up with the same 10% of men, while men were much more open to women not in the top 10%. 3. What people claimed they wanted in a partner had almost no relation to what they actually wanted, when looking at who they messaged, who they viewed, and who they responded to. All apps now are very aggressively tracking everything, so they have a much better idea of what makes people open their wallets, and intellect apparently isn't one of those things.
  - uoaei 3y ago
    http://web.archive.org/web/20100725135317/http://blog.okcupid.com/index.php/your-looks-and-online-dating http://web.archive.org/web/20100725135317/http://blog.okcupi... I don't think you're characterizing the results accurately, particularly point #2. I don't think they really had a way to measure #3. #1 is just obviously true but doesn't add much.
    - lelanthran 3y ago
Brajeshwar 3y ago
The best thing about OKCupid was the data-backed articles. It was our source of inspiration and data point to continue on a dating website we built. We started as a side project in 2006 but got shelved after my company was acquired. I returned to it in 2010-2011, and OKCupid was our constant fodder for data and inspiration.
swacket 3y ago
I met my wife on OKC. (we initially dated for a year, then split up, then got back together many years later after we both did some growing up). I moved someplace that OKC had no userbase in the intervening time and tried to use tinder. It was an absolute dumpster fire. Just a miserable experience. I was so sad to see it consume market share at the expense of sites like OKC. Ultimately OKC pulled through for me in the end! Anyway all of which is to say 1. OKC was great and thank you for working on it, and 2. your story resonates so much with my experience and observations from the other side of the equation.
cbeach 3y ago
Met my wife of 13 years on OkCupid. Data-driven matching works and I just want to say thank you for helping design such a great product. I’m sad to read that it’s gone downhill since it moved into new ownership.
phkahler 3y ago
>> The focus towards acquiring more mobile users meant stripping down and simplifying a product that previously demanded hundreds of words of essay writing, and answering hundreds of questions. The essay prompts became simpler, multiple choice asymmetric questions got deprioritized over reciprocal yes / no questions. A voice interface might help. By default in the app of course, not a phone feature the user has to use to TTS into the app.
michaelcampbell 3y ago
> in an effort to match their level of growth I feel this is the turning point leading to downfall of many companies.

Iulioh 3y ago

Thanks for sharing Another thing destroyed by the infinite growth model

pif 3y ago
You mean: another thing destroyed that a few people used to enjoy when the developers had no chance to have it economically better!
- Iulioh 3y ago
  Man, you can have a profitable thing and just..have that? Like if you have the same let's say 20% profit in the world of business is not enough, you want the RATE of your return to go higher even if the product allowed you to stay stupidity rich. Economically better is a good pair of words that leads to enshittification via greed
  - pif 3y ago
    Enshittification is only a problem from the point of view of the non-paying user. But the on-paying user has no say in what happens to the app. As they say, if you are not paying for the product, you are the product. Enjoying the generosity of other people is fine, but it gives you no right to expect it to last indefinitely.
    - Iulioh 3y ago
      That's not even remotely the point. Have you read the post or seen how the things go? The paying user get fucked too, just give it time.
  - pif 3y ago
    > enshittification via greed You are right. The greed of affectionate users who refuse to pay has destroyed many a service!

lr4444lr 3y ago

I met my wife on OkCupid. The original format attracted a much smarter and more worldly crowd of women, to put it bluntly, than the other services. I exited the dating game before Tinder, but if OkCupid lost that quirky, artsy, college educated crowd in the chase to compete, that's a real shame.

switchbak 3y ago
As did I! OkCupid was a shining star of a product that treated its users with respect and provided a really valuable service. I didn't realize that it's no longer. I feel old pining for the internet of yesteryear. As is obvious only in retrospect, you don't realize when the golden years are!
- raisedbyninjas 3y ago
  Anybody else remember the data blog posts? Those were interesting and satisfying. It was another confirmation that I'd found the right dating site and probably a like-minded userbase.
  - dspillett 3y ago
    Particularly the one that was a tare-down of why paid dating sites like match.com where a mug's game for almost everyone. That somehow went AWOL fairly soon after the match.com take-over…
    - lolinder 3y ago
      This one, Why You Should Never Pay For Online Dating: http://web.archive.org/web/20100725135309/http://blog.okcupid.com/index.php/why-you-should-never-pay-for-online-dating/ http://web.archive.org/web/20100725135309/http://blog.okcupi...
      - dspillett 3y ago
        Very much sounds like the one. Can't double-check ATM as network I'm on blocks archive.org.

OkayPhysicist 3y ago

The upside of dating app bootstrapping is that it's an inherently local phenomenon. People want to meet people near them, which means you can gain traction one locale at a time. Maybe some kind of promotion where you cut deals with some local bars or restaurants to get some kind of discount / freebie if you match with someone (with the implication being that they'll use it for the date). Still takes capital, just not "nation-wide aggressive advertising push" levels of capital.

JCharante 3y ago
Nationwide is much easier in countries with a large primacy index, for example Thailand where Bangkok has 9x the population of Thailand’s second largest city, and Moscow where it has 4x the population of St Petersburg. Everybody is nearby when you have subway trains connecting half the people in your country together in under an hour.

carabiner 3y ago

I would pay $100/month for a site like the original okcupid, but I want Max Krohn, Christian Rudder and the rest of the original team running it.

pif 3y ago
> I would pay $100/month for a site like the original okcupid, but ... That you would not pay $100/month for a site like the original OkCupid.
genewitch 3y ago
you're in luck! OKCupid costs ~$44 a month, and you can add on "read receipts" for about $0.50 each, superboosts for $1-$3 each, the privacy (hidden) profile for $10/month. with some creativity you can have 0 real matches for ~$100!
- webninja 3y ago
  The matches are real. It’s just that you have to get on an airplane and fly to a new country to meet them. I’ve met my matches in person. One of the girls paid for almost everything too.
  - genewitch 3y ago
    is that where you disappeared to for 3 years?
    - webninja 3y ago
      It’s not where but yes it is why.

talldatethrow 3y ago

I remember being on SparkMatch when I was a 14-15 year old. A dating site meant for teens, from the makers of Spark Notes. I always had this weird vague hunch that spark match become OKCupid. Any info on this?

martey 3y ago
from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OkCupid https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OkCupid > SparkMatch debuted as a beta experiment of allowing registered users who had taken the Match Test to search for and contact each other based on their Match Test types. The popularity of SparkMatch took off and it was launched as its own site, later renamed OkCupid.
qingcharles 3y ago
The biggest online dating site in the 90s had a minimum age of 13 o_O. I thought that was weird, even back then. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matchmaker.com https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matchmaker.com
- talldatethrow 3y ago
  I remember I was 14-15 on SparkMatch because I had to convince my mom to drive me 30 miles to a mall so I could meet a girl from SparkMatch. To this day I was the most out of my league girl I ever 'dated' (only kissed a few times). I soon acted too sweet and too lame and lost her. But it taught me a lot to always be cooler and I cleaned up in the coming OkCupid/PlentyofFish revolution, and doubly so by the time Tinder came around. I still think about that girl sometimes, which makes sense, because she was somewhat unique to be online constantly back in 1999-2000.

sirspacey 3y ago

A somewhat natural conclusion is that mobile killed the thoughtful internet. Ouch.

fiddlerwoaroof 3y ago
I find I comment and write much less on mobile than on a computer, because the writing experience on mobile is still very sub-par.
- wvenable 3y ago
  This is very true. And now think of all the people who's only Internet experience is on mobile. They exist entirely within that sub-par writing universe.
  - bigstrat2003 3y ago
    I actually feel really bad for the younger generation, actually. There's a whole bunch of teenagers who have no idea how good and useful computers can actually be, because all they ever have known is the shitty watered down mobile version of computing. Even desktops aren't as good as they used to be (thanks, Electron), but they're still a damn sight better than mobile. But if one grew up thinking that a phone/tablet is the end-all of computing, they have no idea what they're even missing.
    - vore 3y ago
      This is a ridiculous out of touch take. Of course young people know what desktop computing is like: they use it at school for class and use it at home for gaming. Have you considered that people might prefer mobile is preferable because it’s, well, mobile and you don’t have to lug a big ol’ machine around?
      - bigstrat2003 3y ago
        I'm skeptical of your claim that young people are actually using desktops in those situations. As far as I've seen, young people are primarily gaming on consoles and are using stripped down devices like Chromebooks at school. It's also been noted that computer skills have gotten markedly worse among young people in recent years, which suggests they are not in fact being exposed to desktops regularly. And I definitely think you're off base about mobile devices being popular because they're mobile. People will sit at home and use a phone that is an incredibly worse experience than using an actual computer, and think it's an adequate substitute. They don't need the mobility in that situation, but they really think there's nothing wrong with the user experience.

scoofy 3y ago

OkCupid had the best damn blog on the internet. They were obviously extremely thoughtful folks. I was genuinely sad when it was discontinued.

bunabhucan 3y ago
Founder wrote a book. Blog is still at archive.org

oxfordmale 3y ago

Almost all internet algorithms seem to converge around maximising time spend on the app in question. A dating website simply doesn't want to be too effective, as you would lose two customers every successful match. Similar to the approach used in slot machines, you want to give the illusion of winning, but I'm reality only provide moderately succesful matches rather than perfect ones. Of course there is a human element too. Dating sites give the illusion of choice, and a result a lot of potential matches aren't realised on, as the partner is good looking enough.

wbobeirne 3y ago
I always push back on this argument, because it came up a lot. As someone higher up at the company once put it, if people are sufficiently convinced that you can find them what they're looking for in a dating app, there's almost no amount of money they wouldn't spend. People churn after not getting what they want out of an app. And relationships end, and people will return to apps they felt they had success with. Word of mouth successes were the ultimate marketing tool, OkCupid didn't have really any ad spend for the first year or two I was there (and apparently the hadn't in the years past.)
- oasisaimlessly 3y ago
  > people will return to apps they felt they had success with So then the trick is to provide the illusion of successful relationships (but of course not ones that actually pan out in the long term).
  - oxfordmale 3y ago
    Long lasting relationships are based on common values. However, you can have succesful medium term relationships based on common interests and good looks. OkCupid, in its heydays, indeed managed to match people on common values by asking detailed questions. A lot of modern dating apps are far more focus on looks and common interests. Yes they look cute, and love rock climbing too, but hate children, and never want any. It will result in a good match in your mid twenties, but likely going to result in irreconcilable differences when you approach 30. Unless of course you both hate children :-)

kromem 3y ago

I feel a twinge of guilt whenever I see things about how OKC got crappy. Not that long before the acquisition a certain jackass brought in as a consultant (ahem) happened to point to OkC as the leading competitor against the acquiring company's properties specifically for mobile. Sorry everyone... If it makes it any better, I've had to use the product since then too, and suffered alongside all the rest of you.

snerbles 3y ago
Hey, at least you can say you had a direct role in how couples meet and their resulting progeny. Our personal misery and loneliness aside, the long-term societal effects as generations wear on will be fascinating.
uoaei 3y ago
I appreciate your candor. Though I am upset, I realize this is the kind of thing that would be hard to see coming.
- sambazi 3y ago
  huh? the top point is that more users usually lead to a worse product, no?
  - uoaei 3y ago
    Speaking specifically to the short-sighted nature of business objectives and the enshittification of good services via acquisition and repurposing.
  - dredds 3y ago
    The perfect matching service would lose 2 new users every login. No different to selling an everlasting lightbulb. The only salvation of such a perfect product would be a "de-networking effect" whereby newly-happy couples would auto-evangelize the site for bringing them together in the first place, but that wouldn't grow the site much. The success of the "nightclub app" is that people feel they are a match only as long as they "drink", and by morning they are thirsty for more. Growth comes from the heartache of loneliness, failed relationships, and divorce. A worse product (poor matching, and stifled communication) is the actual goal of a more profitable dating app, not simply being a consequence of having more users.

Angostura 3y ago

You raise a really interesting point that I hadn't really thought about before - the possibility that the move to mobile first is directly responsible for making things worse, dumber, simpler with less functionality.

doctorpangloss 3y ago

> OkCupid had excellent growth in the first half of the 2010s, but as that growth started to plateau, it was pretty clear that the focus moved to following Tinder's trends in an effort to match their level of growth. Okay... what was the ratio of active men to women on OkCupid each year? How about on Tinder? You worked there, and that's an unfair assessment of Tinder. The fundamental trend in these dating apps is that ratio, and the relative growth (or decline!) of that gender's active user base. And it's not something Match, or for that matter Dataclysm ever discussed, even though it's kind of the most important single metric for a dating app. I mean ask demographers, they talk about 3m:2f being a crisis ratio [1]. And on Tinder it's probably closer to 10:1-20:1, I'm sure they pay AppAnnie (or whatever they're called now) to push out some fake ass numbers here and there. If it wasn't a horrible number - anything worse than 3m:2f is pretty horrible! - they would write about it, and they simply won't. On the one hand I really liked Dataclysm, and I was bought into the ideas it put forward. There's this post from 2018 by the author that used to say, oh well the reply rate to black women was 20 percentage points lower, which is the same in 2008. Well, trends showed about 18 percentage points more interracial marriages, the data was totally counter to trend: that indicated a problem in OkCupid, not in the user base as the author claimed. The Tinder PR team kind of put the kibosh on that kind of transparency for the wrong reasons, but it was the right idea. So this big essay prompt format that the app used to use, I don't know if it was part of the problem where OkCupid was fundamentally against trend. In some respects, clearly, the essays versus swiping didn't matter. It certainly seems intuitive that the essays matter, it appeals to a sense of superiority in a particular audience's way of believing how online dating should work, but those guys are operating in the vacuum of the single most important data point (the actual ratio) and are forced to essentially generate fictions for why the apps work the way they do and why it worked for them. I appreciate that from your point of view, 2013-2017 was a focus on "mobile" and that in your opinion that was "bad." But c'mon, show me a category of free app that didn't have a focus on "mobile." I personally think the apps are doing the best given the circumstances - the ratio! - and that everything else is dancing around this because, if people knew, you know, they'd stop using them. [1] https://www.google.com/books/edition/Date_onomics/7GDVBgAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&bsq=3%20men https://www.google.com/books/edition/Date_onomics/7GDVBgAAQB... (page 22)

wvenable 3y ago

I don't understand why so many companies are against simply developing a new product with a new brand instead of lobotomizing their own product. It seems to have over and over where a product and brand that makes decent profit is utterly destroyed in an attempt to acquire a new market.

bc11hn 3y ago
Because creating a new product is harder and more expensive than changing an existing one, even if it does destroy it. Advertising, novel technical infrastructure, new branding, etc... all of this needs to be done for a new brand -- and then who knows if any one will come visit? Or, you can just make whatever short-term changes to your existing successful product, juice the metric you're looking to juice, and (in theory) cashout before the long term repercussions take affect.
- wvenable 3y ago
  New branding isn't necessarily bad; it can make a new product seem fresh. Technical infrastructure, both hardware and software, can be reused. You don't have destroy one software product to make another. Take this OkCupid example; they had their website model. They could have just created "OkCupid Nights" as a separate Tinder-like product reusing as much of their tech as possible.
Cthulhu_ 3y ago
Well, the existing product already has critical mass, a new product - like the various Instagram clones, then the various Tiktok clones, then the various Twitter clones - all have to acquire their own customer base. That said, other point: Why not just accept you're no longer growing? The company would've stayed solvent for years yet, with a steady group of users coming in and out over time as the brand becomes synonymous with thoughtful dating profiles instead of the rapid fire hot-or-not that is Tinder.
- wvenable 3y ago
  The endless pursuit of growth is incredibly destructive. A consistent profitable business is considered a failure. Instragram was able to pull their users into Threads pretty easily without making Threads a direct part of Instragram. It is still it's own thing with it's own brand.

throwaway2037 3y ago

This post reads like Eternal September[1], and I write that without any cynicism or snark. It makes good sense that text-heavy web apps would fall prey to image-heavy mobile apps. I still think there is potential for dating apps that target higher intellect users. Most of the dominant apps today are mobile-first, largely visual, and disappointing for both sides. One idea: Could speech-to-text technology help to allow users to create OkCupid-style essays from a mobile phone? Maybe. Although, a few discussions here on HN said that speech-to-text is still a super hard problem in 2023. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September

lelanthran 3y ago
I think that there is a reason that dating apps, dating sites and dating services all converge on a model which downranks intellect: the few humans who care about that characteristic are not enough to build a sustainable business. Literally everyone says that they are different and want a smart partner, but when they actually hook up they aren't ranking high intellect. I liked okcupids blogs. The maintakeaway I had from reading all of them was: 1. How much appearance played a role in being attractive. 2. 90+% of women attempted to hook up with the same 10% of men, while men were much more open to women not in the top 10%. 3. What people claimed they wanted in a partner had almost no relation to what they actually wanted, when looking at who they messaged, who they viewed, and who they responded to. All apps now are very aggressively tracking everything, so they have a much better idea of what makes people open their wallets, and intellect apparently isn't one of those things.
- uoaei 3y ago
  http://web.archive.org/web/20100725135317/http://blog.okcupid.com/index.php/your-looks-and-online-dating http://web.archive.org/web/20100725135317/http://blog.okcupi... I don't think you're characterizing the results accurately, particularly point #2. I don't think they really had a way to measure #3. #1 is just obviously true but doesn't add much.
  - lelanthran 3y ago

Brajeshwar 3y ago

The best thing about OKCupid was the data-backed articles. It was our source of inspiration and data point to continue on a dating website we built. We started as a side project in 2006 but got shelved after my company was acquired. I returned to it in 2010-2011, and OKCupid was our constant fodder for data and inspiration.

swacket 3y ago

I met my wife on OKC. (we initially dated for a year, then split up, then got back together many years later after we both did some growing up). I moved someplace that OKC had no userbase in the intervening time and tried to use tinder. It was an absolute dumpster fire. Just a miserable experience. I was so sad to see it consume market share at the expense of sites like OKC. Ultimately OKC pulled through for me in the end! Anyway all of which is to say 1. OKC was great and thank you for working on it, and 2. your story resonates so much with my experience and observations from the other side of the equation.

cbeach 3y ago

Met my wife of 13 years on OkCupid. Data-driven matching works and I just want to say thank you for helping design such a great product. I’m sad to read that it’s gone downhill since it moved into new ownership.

phkahler 3y ago

>> The focus towards acquiring more mobile users meant stripping down and simplifying a product that previously demanded hundreds of words of essay writing, and answering hundreds of questions. The essay prompts became simpler, multiple choice asymmetric questions got deprioritized over reciprocal yes / no questions. A voice interface might help. By default in the app of course, not a phone feature the user has to use to TTS into the app.

michaelcampbell 3y ago

> in an effort to match their level of growth I feel this is the turning point leading to downfall of many companies.