9th January 2006
OkCupid review
OkCupid. Free online dating. Is it the best concept to hit the Internet since Google, or is it worth what you pay for it?
OkCupid is an online dating agency with a difference. You can choose not to pay anything to contact people. I say choose because the service is of course commercial in nature, as all such services have to be. (How else can the immense server storage requirement and the bandwidth be paid for?) OkCupid makes money by selling advertising, but you can subscribe to the site if you’re irritated by the adverts to stop them appearing. This is why you have a choice. The rates are reasonable (US$4 per month at the time of writing). Also, for a one-off fee of US$2, you get a mailbox that can store 5000 messages instead of the free offer of 300.
A word of warning: you must have a sense of humour and be OK with bad language if you’re going to use OkCupid! There are quite a few sexual jokes and four-letter words on the site, so if you’re prudish then OkCupid is probably not the place for you. This unfortunately does mean that the site would tend to filter out this type of person, who probably accounts for quite a large sector of the population. I found it somewhat marred the experience.
However, having said that, I did sign up, and I took a look around the site. OkCupid have a fascinating way of matching you with others. You have to ask, and answer, questions. It’s not like a typical online dating agency at all; you’re not asked what colours your eyes and hair are and for your height and weight before you begin. When you sign up, you can choose to type in a question that you would want others to answer, and a few example questions are shown.
So, once you’ve signed in, one of the first things you can do is to answer people’s questions. The answers you have to give to each question are as follows: your answer to the question, how your ideal match would answer the question, and how important the answer to the question is to you from a choice of irrelevant, a little important, somewhat important, very important or mandatory. You can skip any question that you feel uncomfortable with. This is how their matching technology works, which makes a refreshing change from other online dating agencies.
Another thing you can do is to take tests. There are a huge number of tests you can take! The idea is that you want to match with somebody who is similar to yourself, and getting similar scores on the tests and similar answers to questions are a good indicator of compatibility.
Of course, to get the most out of the site, you must answer questions honestly. I answered a survey honestly, and I was surprised at the statistics and don’t believe them! This could be an indicator that people are not taking the site seriously, or it could be an indicator that I am not nearly as adventurous as most people! I would find the latter unlikely, though.
Finally, it came to the acid test. How many matches did I get within 100 miles of where I live?
Er, none! Maybe the site doesn’t have the membership yet. You might have better luck than me, and maybe I’m too choosy. However, it doesn’t hurt to set up a profile at the site, even if you are already a paying member of other online dating agencies. For a brief review of some other popular online dating agencies, check out our article: Online Dating Service Reviews.
Comments
12th January 2006
David said:
Update: I tried looking at the matches available to me on a world-wide search, and the number came back as 5,000! However, if I search for matches within 1,000 miles of where I live in the UK, I get zero results. There seems to be something wrong with the search filter, because match number 2 on the world-wide search is indeed in the UK—107 miles from where I live.
23rd January 2006
CC said:
Hey David, I think you should sign in and search for matches again in your area. The site was upgrading to a new match system at that time last night and you caught it at a transitional time.
Most areas in the UK and the US have many users available. As for the 5,000 worldwide, it’s far more than that. The server gives you the best of 5,000 randomly if more than that qualify for your search criteria. E.g.: if you want straight females 18-30, you’ll find about 200,000 qualifying okcupid members. There are over 10,000 in the vicinity of London alone, and similar numbers in New York.
28th January 2006
David said:
Hi CC, thanks for commenting on the article. I tried OkCupid out again as you suggested. This time, the search was for people within 20 miles of Cardiff UK, female, aged 18 to 30. From that search, I arrived at 198 matches! That’s not bad at all. (Cardiff has a population of about 305,000 at the 2001 census.)
You’ve obviously fixed the problem I mentioned before, and I would now definitely recommend OkCupid to our readers.
6th March 2006
Stacy Smity said:
I think SmutVibes.com is way better than most of the other dating websites, such as OkCupid. Then again, you cannot compare the two, because SmutVibes.com is an adult social networking site… I think it’s going up against adultfriendfinder and sexsearch… but hey… let’s see, it seems already to be growing fast.
6th April 2006
thedoc said:
Well, I recently met a match from OkCupid. I was definitely pleased. I really like the matching system, it seems as though folks who are matched randomly according to criteria they set up themselves through honest answers to questions might be actually compatible. At least my opinion. Personally I love it!
15th April 2006
Julian said:
After these superlative comments I was very disappointed by OKCupid. Most questions are about only two things: sexual proclivities and political opinions. The site can perhaps be useful for researchers trying to find correlations between sexual proclivities and politics, but as a dating site, the matching system is useless. After wading through hundreds of vapid and badly thought-out questions, I have yet to find such simple and very important questions as: how ambitious should your partner be? How intelligent? Extrovert/introvert? Tattoos and body piercing or not? Perhaps OKCupid should add these questions and make them non-skippable.
20th June 2006
Leilani said:
I think that okcupid is absolutely fantastic. I was matched with someone on the site, who was literally on the other side of the world. We’ve been “dating” for almost a year and we’ve even travelled great distances to see each other. We are currently considering marriage
4th July 2006
Alan Christopher Creaser said:
I think I will give okcupid a try.After all- what have I got to lose ?
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21st October 2006
Raksha said:
Okcupid is way better than plentyoffish. It caters to younger folks, whereas pof mostly has old whiny men and women on there. Okcupid is fun, lively, vibrant and has freedom of speech. Pof is a dictatorial site whereas on okcupid you are free to breathe and have fun. The people on ok cupid are much more openminded than on plentyoffish.
13th November 2006
Tony said:
I can’t even get into this site. All I get are blank pages when I click on topics at the top. I can’t get in to edit my profile (did succeed in signing up but that’s all); can’t get in to do any tests (which is why I joined - someone recommended a test that intrigued me, and I’m someone who likes surveys and online tests); cannot get into the FAQs, and finally, since I was tired of getting blank pages for 15 minutes or so, for the second day trying, once again tried to unsubscribe — nope, couldn’t do that either. And I have DSL, not dial-up.
18th November 2006
David said:
It’s always worked fine for me. The site relies heavily on your internet browsers ability to use javascript (which some people disable because it can be responsible for popups. Even though a popup blocker is better for that.) The tests are always very interesting, I know a few people who go to the site just to take the rather interesting personality tests.
24th January 2007
barista said:
I think okcupid is a good site. It’s not easy to attract quality hip profiles while have a free dating site. Hats off to their team and the harvard math grads.
27th February 2007
studystudystudy said:
God this is so good. i tried some of the other pay sights and honestly they suck. the variety of individuals who express themselves in journals is fabulous and the individuals whose photos appear on the homescreen provides wonderful research opportunities. i have not been successful in finding individuals who answer my thoughts, there are two or three staying in touch, but the opportunity to write about the thoughts expressed in profiles from everywhere makes me believe okcupid is a success for the thoughtful individual
24th April 2007
Bo said:
I have alot of trouble getting the site to open from a search engine. I can find many other sites during a search and open them from there but okcupid doesnt seem to want to do that
17th May 2007
MKD said:
OkCupid is great. Now in 2007 there are over 3000 questions on ALL topics. You have to answer 100+ questions if you want system to recommend you better matches. You can also see where do you stand in “world” statistics when you compare your profile with your own… There are many members that do not have answered any question ..wierd but probably do not know how the system work.
14th June 2007
Barry said:
DOES THIS WORK??
plentyoffish.com is the BEST 100% FREE site I have seen. NO silly tests to join. There are plenty of discussion boards you can post in. You can take silly test after you join if you want. To bad more people dont know about it.
3rd July 2007
Wing said:
yeah it does work Barry. You don’t have to take the okcupid test if you don’t want to, they have allowed people to do that for ages.
I have been with okcupid for ages– it started out as a procrastination tool when I was at school (five years ago!) and at that time it was just the okc test, not much more. It has came leaps and bounds, with lots more people and lots more functionality, while maintaining the same essential cheeriness and good humour. Although you can CHOOSE to donate to it, you can talk/message/browse as much as you like for free. I personally like the sensibility of not implementing a “who viewed me” option, knowing that there is a bottomline of privacy that is respected on the site, and that you are free (in a intellectual sense) to explore (and oogle ;o)).
The matching system is intelligent, and though you cannot “hard filter” people as Julian above mentioned, I think it is not a bad thing. This site encourages open-mindedness, aren’t we all on online dating to “meet someone new”? Plus, people aren’t one dimensional entities and might not fit easily into the traditional labels, eg introvert/extrovert, intelligent/dumb…
I have met a lot of interesting people on okc, some I dated, some are friends. Like all sites there is a dodgy character here and there, but if you trust in the system it is a site that will give you what you want.
19th July 2007
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5th August 2007
Deb said:
I have just discovered this site and I am getting a kick out of it! I have a profile on eHarmony and it just seems like a way for me to pay for sanctimonious people to snub me. OKCupid is great because, not only is it free, but it has better profiles and a MUCH better matching system. I think the survey-system of matching is the most accurate I’ve encountered thus far because the quesions are so diverse and much more specific than rating yourself on a scale of 1 to 5!
7th August 2007
okcupidisgarbage said:
OKCUPID IS THE WORSE DATING SITE ON THIS PLANET SECOND ONLY TO PLENTYOFISH.
I cannot believe the bullsh*t Im reading from the above reviewers. Okcupid may have been a good site 2-3 yrs ago…but now it only attracts polyamorous bicurious bored drug addict chain smoking students looking for cyber sex. Theres so many fake profiles made by idiots who have nothing better to do, there are fake profiles of squirrels and animals looking a date!! You call this a serious dating site??? Even myspace is more serious than okcupid. I mean the admin staff on the site just don’t care what garbage gets on there. I was on OKcupid for over 4 months and I did not find one single female who was willing to meet up in person. Its not even a dating site, most of the people on the site only signed up to do the tests and quizzes, once they finish with the tests they dont ever log on ever again. And what tests and quizzes am I talking about? I’m a whore Test, How much of a slut are you Test, How good do you give oral sex Test. yes theyre on there if you take a look.
I’ve not heard any success stories from the site of people getting married, if there were some they would have published it. Its full of timewasters and people just looking for online penpal friends who have no intention of ever meeting up in person. And if you look at the profiles, there are some that have not been logged on for yrs and everyone on the site who is still on there is still single! hardly surprising.
okcupidisgarbage said:
23rd January 2006 CC said:…”if you want straight females 18-30, you’ll find about 200,000 qualifying okcupid members. There are over 10,000 in the vicinity of London alone, and similar numbers in New York. ”
What absolute crap, if you look at the dates of when these 10,000 actually last logged on you’ll find that about 99% of them are defunct and havent logged on for months or yrs. The remaining 1% about 4/5 of those are only looking for online penpals/friends and don’t want to meet anyone in person, the ones who say they want to meet someone don’t actually have the guts to meet and the others are drug addicts, smokers, polyamorous or just incompatibly weird.
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Clay said:
In my experience, OkCupid is better than every other dating site. There are a few reasons for this:
It takes awhile to get up enough of a profile to actually get a decent match percentage. This deters spamming, as there’s something that’s obviously different about them — their 0% match percentage.
The matching works well; I’ve met a few people with match percentages in the high-80s, and they’ve been reliably good matches for me. On the other hand, I’ve spent a decent amount of time at Plentyoffish, and I spend large amounts of time randomly clicking on photos, reading a bit of a profile, then going on to the next one. Then, when I log in again a couple of weeks later, I forget that I’ve already clicked on their pictures, and thus I have to go through the same sorting again, with only my memory of pictures to help. On OkCupid, not only is there a “dead to me” option, there’s the point that I never even SEE the bad matches, as their match percentage is just too low to bother with.
It’s transparent — if someone doesn’t respond to you, it’s because they’re not going to respond to you, not because they failed to pay the entry fee. Also, they have FAQs that describe exactly how the matching works(pointing out things like how the questions are generally presented by how likely they are to cause differences in the match percentage).
It doesn’t censor; If you write a letter to someone that says “OkCupid” in it on PlentyofFish, “OkCupid” gets changed to “spam” or “some spam site”, without any notice to you. OkCupid? You can have your profile talk about how you really prefer to use PlentyofFish, and have a link to it.
Mind you, that last bit is probably in part due to the fact that PlentyOfFish’s system practically begs to have spammers, as people click on profiles based on pictures, and nothing else. It’s significantly harder to get eyeballs on your profile in OkCupid, because of the amount of effort required to have a decent profile.
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