Data Dating

They can teach you how to get a date

OkCupid Is Easy to Cheat On, Mathematically Speaking

OkCupid has earned a reputation for its fun and insightful use of data, playing with the mountains of statistics it has on the science of love. But today it met its match in the mathematics blog Isomorphismes.

The main thrust of the argument here is that the mandatory questions users need to answer when creating a profile and finding a match really skew the system. They are often rather sensitive questions, for example Isomorphismes’ mandatories include: Do you think homosexuality is a sin, would you try to control your mate with suicide, would the world be a better place if people with low IQs were not allowed to reproduce (yikes!). Read More

Sex

(OKtrends)

OKCupid’s Brilliant ‘OKTrends’ Blog Continues To Inspire Lesser Imitators

Has any startup company blog ever been as ripped off as OKTrends? OKCupid started compiling statistics about its users, thanks to Harvard data nerd and cofounder Christian Rudder, and releasing those stats as press releases and blog posts. Due to the subject matter–iPhone users have more sex!–the posts were sticky and fun and got picked up by bloggers everywhere. Read More

New Frontiers

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Impersonated On OKCupid! Blogger Awakens to Find 8-Hour-Old Account Under His Email, Messaging People About Rape

It’s possible to set up and use an account on OKCupid using someone else’s email address, as comedian and blogger Adam Heath Avitable discovered last week when he woke up to emails from the dating site addressed to “gayasssfuck,” thanking him for creating a profile. And what a profile! “Someone put my real address, with my photo, in a dating profile on OkCupid, using my real email address, and invited people to come rape me. Oh, and they actually sent out messages to 24 different men as well,” Mr. Avitable writes. Read More

Makeouts To Go

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In Which Sam Yagan Tries to Convince Us OkCupid’s New Local Dating App Is the Anti-Grindr

When OkCupid co-founder Sam Yagan announced yesterday that the company’s mobile app would now let users connect with members “near you, right now, on the fly,” he did so with no small measure of chutzpah. Along with revealing a “Twitter-like” broadcast feature to plan your night and an integration with Foursquare’s venue database, the headline for the press release came out swinging at the competition: “OkCupid Goes Local with Mobile Dating that People Will Actually Use.” Zing!

Betabeat got Mr. Yagan on the phone to find out what exactly he meant by that, what makes OkCupid Locals any different, a time before smartphones (yes, Virginia, it did exist), and why we may soon see the resurrection of  CrazyBlindDate, a dating service before its time. Read More

The Internet Makes You Mean

forever alone

“Forever Alone” Involuntary Flash Mob Is Tonight

Welcome to the most depressing internet prank ever: Someone, probably from 4chan, put out a call to get “forever alone” male members of online dating sites to gather in Times Square in an involuntary flash mob. “Create fake online dating profile as mildly cute woman from NYC–just use some chick’s facebook to get several believable pics,” the instructions say. “Find forever alone guys from NYC online dating sites, get them to believe you’re interested. Once forever alone guy takes the bait, suggest you meet for a date at the payphones at 46th and broadway at 7:30 on Friday, May 13.” Read More

Antisocial Media

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4chan Luring Single Dudes to Times Square with Fake OkCupid

The mischievous denizens of web forum 4Chan are plotting to create a strange sort of flash mob.

Using fake OkCupid profiles, the group hopes to lure a group of single guys to Times Square at the same time, then to revel in their discomfort, thanks to public webcam, when they discover the date is a fraud.

Hmmm…a bunch of lonely, single dudes wandering around Times Square hoping for something exciting to happen. Sounds like the good old days.

via Urlesque

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Taylor Tees Off

The future is here, drunk and deluded.

Abolish South by Southwest!

If there’s one thing I hate more than spilling a Shiner Bock on my iPhone 4 just after I just downloaded the newest OkCupid update, it’s South by Southwest, especially the Interactive part, a supposedly technology-oriented appendage of the days-long party.

Let’s destroy this sham of a technological confabulation once and for all. But before Read More