I’m an off-the-charts introvert. To me, being around groups of strangers is exhausting. I’ve had to sort of train myself to think about two tactics: finding common ground and invoking humor.
New Year’s Eve to Valentine’s Day is our peak season, and in many ways, Valentine’s Day is our Christmas. Everybody in the world makes the same three New Year’s resolutions: health, career and money, and love.
OKCupid’s model is almost entirely based on advertising, which is the way most online media is monetized these days, whether it’s the news or whether it’s sports, and we think online dating is going to evolve in the exact same way.
I think for marketplace businesses, and when you think about online dating, it’s not a social network. It’s not a place where you go to talk to people you already know; it’s a place you go to interact with someone you’ve never met before.
When you’re thinking about building your own online dating profile, especially on OkCupid, you should go through the same steps you’re thinking about when you’re going out to meet someone new. You want to put your best foot forward.
Your goal in an online dating profile and in your first message to somebody is to strike up a conversation.
We sold OkCupid to Match in January of 2011. In September of 2012, I became CEO of all of Match, which is the operating segment of IAC that contains all of the dating properties.
I get to be the nosiest friend or acquaintance that anyone has because it’s – my job is to ask you about your dating life all the time.
One thing matters more than anything else for a dating product, and that is the quantity and quality of the people who use the product. It’s really freaking hard to get critical mass.
We were intrigued by the fact that we had so much actual behavior among people on our dating site, OKCupid.
My work involves online dating, but I believe almost every behavior exhibited online has an offline corollary. Really, the medium doesn’t change human nature.
Dating is a numbers game. What we try to promise is good first dates. Once that first date happens, it’s really up to you.
When people talk about the impact of mobile dating, everyone focuses on real-time meeting – this idea that my pocket will vibrate every time a hot girl walks by. That’s important. But it’s not transformative.
In dating, the question is how many Tinder knockoffs are we going to have, and are any of them going to take off?
I think of OkCupid as an online bar; a place where singles can go, have fun with each other and in the process hopefully meet new people, some of whom might turn into a romantic relationship.