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December 9, 2011

OKCupid Integrates Location Based Dating

Filed under: Uncategorized — Tags: apps, dating, location, matches, mobile, nearby, okcupid, people — admin @ 6:34 pm

Online dating site OkCupid is making a big move today in the mobile space—the service is adding location-based functionality to its Android and iOS mobile apps. For background, OkCupid singles tend to be younger, which is one of the reasons why IAC’s Match.com decided to buy the dating startup for $50 million earlier this year.

The use of mobile apps for dating and even meeting friends is definitely on the rise, and it seems that the future of this industry could lie in mobile platforms. Co-founder Sam Yagan agrees, and says that Grindr, a dating app for Gay men, helped pioneer this. But there’s still room left for innovation in other markets, he says.

Which is why OkCupid is bringing location to the mix with the latest version of its mobile apps. You can now broadcast if you are free, want others to join in plans and more. The bonus of OkCupid is that you can set up the feature to only send these broadcasts to people who are personality and interets matches for you in your location.

Other functionality includes the ability to chat with other people nearby, share photos, and more. If OkCupid finds a good match for you in their database for someone who lives nearby, the app will recommend the potential date. You’ll also be able to browse all your matches nearby.

There’s no doubt that the trend of matching people based on their interests and location is catching on. Andreessen Horowitz-backed LikeALittle is a startup that is also playing in this space. And it would make sense for more dating apps to start including location in their mobile offerings.

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August 28, 2011

Odds For Sex Are Best On Wednesdays

Filed under: course, data, evening, index, measures, night, okcupid, people, singles — Tags: course, data, evening, index, measures, night, okcupid, people, singles — admin @ 7:34 pm

By Rosa Golijan

Most of us tend to schedule our dates on Friday or Saturday nights, but it turns out that if we’re looking for some — ahem — action we should meet up with our potential bed partners on Wednesdays.

The New York Times reports that dating site OKCupid has come up with something it’s calling the “sexual availability index” after collecting data from its users. According to the site’s co-founder Christian Rudder, this index is “not unlike the Dow, if the stock market were about sex.”

Why should you care about this index? Because it tells you when your odds of ending the night with a naughty snuggle buddy are best:

Rudder started by finding out, based on OkCupid’s mobile service, which customers in New York, Boston and Washington were out on the town on a given night. From these people’s profile data, Rudder then built a composite of four sets of personal characteristics that might correlate with openness toward new (but not necessarily long-lasting) relationships.

Two measures he studied were explicitly concerned with sex: what percentage of singles out on a given evening listed casual sex as a “romantic priority” and what percentage was willing to sleep with someone on a first date. The other two measures were less sex-centric: what percentage described themselves as extroverted and what percentage fancied themselves as adventurous.

When he put all the numbers together, he got a curious result. Weekdays, not weekends, are better for singles on the prowl — and the mix of people out on Wednesday nights are the friskiest. (The least surprising bit of data is that someone’s chances of success increase over the course of an evening.)

Of course there’s no good way to check how accurate this data is — unless Rudder were to reach out to every OKCupid user and ask whether or not they had sex on any particular night. But based on an informal survey of bartenders by New York Times writer Nate Silver, you should consider setting aside a few Wednesday nights and trying your luck.

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August 21, 2011

OKCupid Adds Location to Mobile App

Filed under: date, features, iphone, location, matches, okcupid, suggest, users — Tags: date, features, iphone, location, matches, okcupid, suggest, users — admin @ 4:35 pm

OKCupid has added a handful of location-based features to make spur-of-the-moment dating easier.

As of last week, OKCupid started beta testing three location features within its mobile app (iPhone and Android):

1) Broadcasts. This allows you to let your best matches know that you’re free now and suggest activities. You can even include photos. Other users can browse your Broadcasts — and vice-versa — and reply to those they find interesting.

2). Locals. This shows you matches nearby (this is handy, considering OKCupid only lets you search for matches within a 25- to 500-mile radius). One can then indicate that they would like to meet those locals, and chosen folks will get a notification.

3). Notifications. OKCupid will let you know when a good match is nearby.

We can see these new features posing a threat to pre-existing location-based dating apps, which can sometimes function as hookup services more than anything else. Yes, the whole “clicking and letting someone know you want to meet them now” thing is a little creepy, but the Broadcast feature, which allows users to suggest specific, date-like activities seems a bit more structured. Suggest a date, and see who bites.

In fact, “Broadcasts” strongly recalls HowAboutWe’s new iPhone app, which allows users to suggest dates tied to locations. Still, HowAboutWe’s offering is less about in-the-moment meetings than it is about planning interesting dates.

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February 24, 2010

Five Photos That Actually Get Responses

Filed under: responses, study, women — Tags: bodies, cleavage, face, looking, okcupid, olds, photo, photos, responses, revealed, shocked, show, study, turn, women, works, year — admin @ 1:38 am

Dating site OkCupid conducted a sizable study to unearth what types of photos garner the most responses. And everything I thought was a turn-off is actually a turn-on, at least if you’re measuring turn-ons by quantity of messages and not quality, which the study did.

By looking at profiles for 18-32 year olds with only one photo — and removing the worst- and best-looking people — the study revealed these terrifying truths about what attracts men and women.

Duckfaces. We don’t want to encourage this, since we wished duckfaces out with the last decade, but now it’s scientifically proven that the duckface works for women. Men? Nope. Look away from the camera. No smiling.
Coy self-portraits. OkCupid calls it the “Myspace photo” You know it. Camera held above the head, and the face looks so thin and so sassy. Believe it or not, these things work. In fact, OkCupid was so shocked by the findings that it removed all photos that revealed cleavage from the equation, but the Myspace photo triumphed.
Shirtless photos for men. Is OkCupid creepin’ with guidettes? Guys (caveat: with great bodies) get more responses with shirts off than on. There is one silver six pack: the ab photo’s effectiveness decreases with age.
Cleavage shots. The cleavage shot — surprise — works, drawing in 49 percent more responses than other photos. What is news is that it works better for older women. Of course by older, I mean like 30, since the study only looked at 18-32 year olds. OkCupid hypothesizes that the uptick is because women show off their bodies less by their mid-20s, so those who do reap the awards. If an award is the type of guy who’d contact you for showing cleavage.
Show your face… or not. It doesn’t really matter. OkCupid thought it did, advising users to use pictures that show their faces, but its study found that responses remained the same whether you showed your face or not.

One glimmer of hope is that while posing with your pet or doing something interesting got the fewest responses, they also got the highest quality of responses, which was measured by whether or not a conversation started.

Are you shocked? Disgusted? Never dating again?

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