OkCupid enslaved (I mean purchased) by Match.com

There's been some stuff flying around the internet now that OkCupid has been purchased by Match.com for something like $50 million. Meaning one of the largest free dating sites is now owned by one of the largest not free dating sites. While Match.com CEO guy says that they intend to keep OkCupid free b/c it serves a different demographic than Match.com I'm not sure that OkCupid users will be best served by the purchase. As an independent company, it is it's own priority, but I would assume that Match.com as a subscription based company generates more revenue than any website which runs off of ad revenue. Therefore it's in Match's best interest to funnel OkCupid's users to Match.com. This article from the Atlantic says what we all just said.

I believe it's just a fundamental conflict of interest. Companies are out there to make money, not to matchmake for free b/c they love romance. And more paid subscribers equals more money. So what does OkCupid think about it? Well although they have denied that it has anything to do with the aquisition by Match, they have taken down their OkTrends blog post on Why You Should Never Pay for Dating Sites, so I have included a link to a screen shot of it. While I don't necessarily agree with all of their logic about being "better than Match or Eharmony" I do agree that OkCupid serves a different market of broke ass young people looking to date/hook up.

So how will it play out? Do I think they'll leave OkCupid alone forever? I doubt it, it's like when China got Hong Kong back...it's sorta seperate but sorta under China's control but it certainly ain't as "free" as it used to be. I think Match may start to restrict features that are currently free on OkCupid, either encouraging you to pay for 'gold status' for access or to move to Match which has that feature. In that case, I think that users will move to a new dating community which is free b/c while many companies want us to pay for internet content...most of us probably won't.

What's interesting is the blog that they wrote about subscription based dating is still fundamentally true. Even if some of the numbers are off, just from experience, we all know that this is basically correct. That there are way too many nerdy guys online looking for love and way too many picky ass girls who don't necessarily want to date geeks. But this is true I think of all dating sites. Most girls get bombarded with messages and guys have to send out billions of messages to girls that will probably never respond.

What's the solution? Figure out where the heck all the women have gone! Probably people need to work on removing the stigma of online dating. If it became more widely known that yes, normal people can meet online, and not just creepy dudes, maybe more women would sign up, but according to this (possibly) authoratitve article says, guys sign up for sites with free pictures of women and women sign up for dating sites that involve fees and a longer registration form. They took it to mean that women actually want to date (or love filling out forms) on a dating site and that men just want free pictures of chicks. And that is not going to help the remove the image of the skeezy guy online.

Oh, so what's the point of this blog post? Uh, I guess, that nothing in life is free?