4 ms·

Funny things happen when companies get acquired. They stop acting like a startup and they start acting like large, slow companies, which is unfortunate. That bl

by jmtame 14y ago

Funny things happen when companies get acquired. They stop acting like a startup and they start acting like large, slow companies, which is unfortunate. That blog was single-handedly what drove their traffic more than anything. Everyone I talk to said they found out about OkCupid through that blog. OkCupid knows this. The founders said they almost quit and that blog was their saving grace. Is it any coincidence that the blog stopped around the same time they were acquired? It served its purpose and ran its course. They're done innovating in the space. We'll have to let startups lead the next wave of innovation in online dating.

rdl 14y ago
The quizzes, posted on livejournal, were what actually drove their early users. The blog came way later. Quizzes are non-dating/non-sexual, back in the early 2000s where among <25 year olds online dating was still something nerdy losers did (or old people who were desperate to get married, using sites like eHarm and Match). So, it brought a lot of girls. I honestly had no idea OKC was actually a dating site until I'd had an account for a year or two. I just had it to answer quizzes.
- jmtame 14y ago
  Very interesting. I recall watching an interview with Sam Yagan and he said they were about to give up, but that blog was the one thing that saved the company. The guy writing the blogs had a math background, and it worked tremendously well. I wish I had that link, but I'll have to look it up.
  - rdl 14y ago
    I think quizzes/etc. on LJ got them early users, but then there was a big decline in LJ around the time MySpace got popular (2005-2006?), which probably hurt OKC. FB becoming popular essentially killed it. The blog, IIRC, was around that time -- so for a while the "dating" site had a bunch of accounts of people who were originally there for quizzes, many of whom were no longer active.
chimeracoder 14y ago
> Is it any coincidence that the blog stopped around the same time they were acquired? It served its purpose and ran its course. They're done innovating in the space. We'll have to let startups lead the next wave of innovation in online dating. First, I used to work on the OkTrends team, but I'm speaking for myself, not on behalf of OkCupid. OkTrends didn't shut down after the acquisition - in fact, they made two posts afterwards (one several months afterwards). The fact that they haven't posted much recently has more to do with the available staff. It takes a LOT of work to make those posts. The research for "The Real Stuff White People Like" took me a month and a half of working full-time on that and not much else. (Remember that it's "easy" to solve a problem when you define the problem at the start, but with OkTrends, we weren't always starting with a specific problem - each post began as one idea, and then went through multiple iterations before we hit on the "real" question we wanted to answer.). Around that time, there were three of us working on OkTrends, two of us full-time and the third more-or-less full-time. Once the two full-timers left (for reasons unrelated to the acquisition - I went back to school to finish my degree), you can see why it became much harder to work on those posts. And before someone says that they could just hire someone else - yes, perhaps, but that's harder than it looks. Data scientist positions are already one of the most difficult to hire for (from a startup perspective), and OkCupid also sets the bar incredibly high. To date, I think that was probably my most intensive and comprehensive interview experience. Trust me, I give the OkCupid folks crap about this every time I see them (particularly my old boss), because I'd love to see more posts too. But don't think the timing of the hiatus has anything to do with the acquisition; it's truly coincidental. Many startups stop innovating after they're acquired - OkCupid is definitely not one of them.
- ios84dev 14y ago
  To be fair, from what I recall while I was there, the blog was also instead of paying for a PR firm and having Sam going on morning talk shows that didn't really hit our demographic or help our growth much. So once we got bought the need for it did decrease a lot. I heard there is a book containing a lot of similar information coming out though.
- derefr 14y ago
  Perhaps, instead of bringing someone in to crunch their numbers and look for interesting correlations--they might rather be willing to license their data out to some think-tank or newspaper/magazine or something, who would do that analysis for its own (readership's) sake?

by jmtame 14y ago

rdl 14y ago

The quizzes, posted on livejournal, were what actually drove their early users. The blog came way later. Quizzes are non-dating/non-sexual, back in the early 2000s where among <25 year olds online dating was still something nerdy losers did (or old people who were desperate to get married, using sites like eHarm and Match). So, it brought a lot of girls. I honestly had no idea OKC was actually a dating site until I'd had an account for a year or two. I just had it to answer quizzes.

jmtame 14y ago
Very interesting. I recall watching an interview with Sam Yagan and he said they were about to give up, but that blog was the one thing that saved the company. The guy writing the blogs had a math background, and it worked tremendously well. I wish I had that link, but I'll have to look it up.
- rdl 14y ago
  I think quizzes/etc. on LJ got them early users, but then there was a big decline in LJ around the time MySpace got popular (2005-2006?), which probably hurt OKC. FB becoming popular essentially killed it. The blog, IIRC, was around that time -- so for a while the "dating" site had a bunch of accounts of people who were originally there for quizzes, many of whom were no longer active.

chimeracoder 14y ago

> Is it any coincidence that the blog stopped around the same time they were acquired? It served its purpose and ran its course. They're done innovating in the space. We'll have to let startups lead the next wave of innovation in online dating. First, I used to work on the OkTrends team, but I'm speaking for myself, not on behalf of OkCupid. OkTrends didn't shut down after the acquisition - in fact, they made two posts afterwards (one several months afterwards). The fact that they haven't posted much recently has more to do with the available staff. It takes a LOT of work to make those posts. The research for "The Real Stuff White People Like" took me a month and a half of working full-time on that and not much else. (Remember that it's "easy" to solve a problem when you define the problem at the start, but with OkTrends, we weren't always starting with a specific problem - each post began as one idea, and then went through multiple iterations before we hit on the "real" question we wanted to answer.). Around that time, there were three of us working on OkTrends, two of us full-time and the third more-or-less full-time. Once the two full-timers left (for reasons unrelated to the acquisition - I went back to school to finish my degree), you can see why it became much harder to work on those posts. And before someone says that they could just hire someone else - yes, perhaps, but that's harder than it looks. Data scientist positions are already one of the most difficult to hire for (from a startup perspective), and OkCupid also sets the bar incredibly high. To date, I think that was probably my most intensive and comprehensive interview experience. Trust me, I give the OkCupid folks crap about this every time I see them (particularly my old boss), because I'd love to see more posts too. But don't think the timing of the hiatus has anything to do with the acquisition; it's truly coincidental. Many startups stop innovating after they're acquired - OkCupid is definitely not one of them.

ios84dev 14y ago
To be fair, from what I recall while I was there, the blog was also instead of paying for a PR firm and having Sam going on morning talk shows that didn't really hit our demographic or help our growth much. So once we got bought the need for it did decrease a lot. I heard there is a book containing a lot of similar information coming out though.
derefr 14y ago
Perhaps, instead of bringing someone in to crunch their numbers and look for interesting correlations--they might rather be willing to license their data out to some think-tank or newspaper/magazine or something, who would do that analysis for its own (readership's) sake?