OkCupid Admits It Experiments on Users, Founder Says Dating Site "Doesn't Really Know What It's Doing"

Website is one of the most popular of its kind

By Lily Harrison Jul 29, 2014 4:35 PMTags
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As if dating wasn't hard enough, amirite?!

One of the founders of the dating site OkCupid, Christian Rudder, wrote a company blog post about how it's been secretly experimenting with its members in order to find the best ways to match people.

Sound familiar? Well, just last month Facebook revealed that they were playing around with their members' news feeds to see if they could affect peoples' moods. As you can imagine, the reactions to both Facebook and OkCupid's announcement were less than stellar.

"I'm the first to admit it: we might be popular, we might create a lot of great relationships, we might blah blah blah," Rudder wrote. "But OkCupid doesn't really know what it's doing."

He continued, "Most ideas are bad. Even good ideas could be better. Experiments are how you sort all this out…We noticed that people didn't like it when Facebook 'experimented' with their news feed. Even the FTC is getting involved. But guess what, everybody: if you use the Internet, you're the subject of hundreds of experiments at any given time, on every site. That's how websites work."

His letter outlined three different main experiments that the company tested: love is blind, or should be; so what's a picture worth?; and the power of suggestion.

But before you go canceling your membership, keep in mind that the site claims they're trying to perfect their matchmaking skills to ensure that you live out your happily ever after. Because at the end of the day, it's not them…it's you.