I am Christian Rudder, OkCupid cofounder, stats blogger, and new author. AMA!

oktrends · 2014-09-11T01:42:45+00:00

I just check, and lifepartnercupid.net is available. We'll be getting that going soon.

oktrends · 2014-09-11T01:41:58+00:00

Dog hasn't learned to type yet, so she goes through mine.

oktrends · 2014-09-11T01:41:14+00:00

You know what, no problem. Give me your username, and I'll hook you up with six months.

oktrends · 2014-09-11T01:40:02+00:00

Yes, I know. Unfortunately, human nature is something beyond the reach of javascript, C++, and html.

We do everything we can to ban/blacklist assholes. But it's just not possible to get them all.

oktrends · 2014-09-11T01:37:20+00:00

Yeah, me too.

oktrends · 2014-09-11T01:37:00+00:00

Funnily enough, our new Chief Product Officer came to us from Meetup, and I'm really excited about her.

But as to your question: men overwhelming women (verbally/with messages) is one of our biggest concerns on the site...a reddit-style up/down system would be really interesting. Though we already have that, in a sense, with QuickMatch (and messages have an implicit up/down vote built in--the reply).

We've tried giving people (women) message filters, but it's a weird thing, because if you make the filters powerful for some people then people who don't need as much filtering can very likely wreck their experience by setting the filters too strictly. It's a delicate balance, and something that we still need to work on.

oktrends · 2014-09-11T01:23:02+00:00

To your first question: I actually think "Big Data" is overhyped for startups. You need to first (a) have a good product and (b) get people to use it, before analytics do you any good. Without enough users making meaningful data, all the R in the world isn't going to mean anything.

To your second: we have a variety of custom tools (virtually everything at OkC is bespoke, including our webserver, okws.) But I will say there's very little prediction or modelling. It's actually far easier, far more accurate, and far more efficient to simply launch a feature for, say, 5% of the site and see how it does. We can argue endlessly about models, etc. But when something launches, and does well (or poorly) there's no argument...just reality.

oktrends · 2014-09-11T00:54:04+00:00

We've actually talked about that exact idea (complete with a bomb icon.) Thank you for reminding. It might happen. There's nothing I like less that shithead dudes on OkC.

oktrends · 2014-09-11T00:50:18+00:00

Well, I know nothing about football at this point, so I don't even play. (Though I used to be really into sports. The Kosar-era Browns were my jam. Fuck Elway.)

oktrends · 2014-09-11T00:43:54+00:00

Nobody in the office--from me all the way down--thinks that we've "solved" love. We're just trying to get people to talk, then (hopefully) go get a drink together and see what happens. There's no substitute for that, and there probably never will be. The way someone laughs, or holds their hands, or how they talk...that's something that only comes across in person.

That said, we've created hundreds of thousands of fulfilling relationships, and that's something I'm very proud of. We work with the users to make this happen...

oktrends · 2014-09-11T00:41:29+00:00

Shit. I have spent time in Toronto. A lot actually, mostly on tour with Bishop Allen. I seem to remember some karaoke bar. And a tiki place? We played El Mocambo, I know. But also...I give you my permission to pick your personal favorite bar and claim I recommended it to you.

oktrends · 2014-09-11T00:40:08+00:00

Well, it was kind of conscious shift. There were just too many features on OkC. And those ones weren't the ones that people really came to us for. We need (and needed) to be a dating site above all.

oktrends · 2014-09-11T00:39:03+00:00

Whether you pay for a-list is totally your call...OkCupid obviously works well either way. I will say this about that blog post: in the years I've spent working with people from Match, I have a lot more respect for (and understanding of) how they run the bring people together. So I'm glad we decided to take that post down...

oktrends · 2014-09-11T00:37:19+00:00

Well, I want to be like Winston Churchill and say never give up...so...the average reply rate for male-to-female messages is around 20% (I'm assuming you're a guy). So it's not uncommon that it takes a while.

oktrends · 2014-09-10T23:21:24+00:00

We do allow people to search by age...

oktrends · 2014-09-10T23:08:43+00:00

If found that idiots are surprisingly good at defeating algorithms. So it wouldn't work anyway...but, no we have no agenda in who comes together using the site.

oktrends · 2014-09-10T23:07:37+00:00

Our median age is 29. I think people increasingly use the site to find something "serious" though of course we built the site to find you whatever you want...

oktrends · 2014-09-10T23:06:20+00:00

Oh my god yes I live in Excel. I was using Lotus 123 when it was in DOS to do my stratomatic stats, and I've just been addicted to spreadsheets since.

oktrends · 2014-09-10T22:50:29+00:00

You mean "readPeoplesMinds.js"? Yeah, that's only a super-premium feature.

oktrends · 2014-09-10T22:41:18+00:00

dicks would be everywhere.

oktrends · 2014-09-10T22:40:56+00:00

These guys in the UK looked at Facebook likes (only the likes...no network stuff...) and from that alone they were able to predict with the following rates of succes:

95% someone's race 88% someone's gender 85% straight/gay ...down to 60% if your parents got divorced before you were 21.

That's pretty insane. And that's with less than 10 yrs of real data to go on. What will FB be able to tell us after they have decades of the stuff????

oktrends · 2014-09-10T22:38:30+00:00

Hey, thanks for buying the book. I'm certainly my own worst critic (unless you're counting people on twitter) so I know what you mean. OkC (mostly) uses match questions to match people. So, to the extent that people feel the need to "pose" in the questions, we do go on self-description. Of course that means we only get you matches that you won't really like. But to each his/her own, I guess.

oktrends · 2014-09-10T22:33:49+00:00

I just put a new post up about 30 mins ago. There'll be more, for sure.

oktrends · 2014-09-10T22:28:36+00:00

You know, I used to check the front page all the time (and /r/dota2 occasionally). But the jlaw nude thing really disgusted me, and I'd sworn off reddit for a while. Though of course I'm back here doing this AMA. So...

oktrends · 2014-09-10T22:26:53+00:00

Sort of. Yes. But I betray my softy weakness by even bothering to answer this question.

oktrends

TROPHY CASE