OkCupid

History

OkCupid was originally owned by Humor Rainbow, Inc. OkCupid's founders (Chris Coyne, Christian Rudder, Sam Yagan, and Max Krohn) were students at Harvard University when they gained recognition for their creation of TheSpark and, later, SparkNotes. Among other things, TheSpark.com featured a number of humorous self-quizzes and personality tests, including the four-variable Myers-Briggs style Match Test. SparkMatch debuted as a beta experiment of allowing registered users who had taken the Match Test to search for and contact each other based on their Match Test types. The popularity of SparkMatch took off and it was launched as its own site, later renamed OkCupid. In 2001, they sold SparkNotes to Barnes & Noble, and began work on OkCupid.

In November 2007, OkCupid launched Crazy Blind Date, a no-cost dating service that set people up on blind dates with little to no notice. The site served people in Boston, San Francisco, Austin, New York City, Chicago, Washington, D.C., and Los Angeles. Daters would complete an optional questionnaire about their availability, preferred neighborhood for dates and their preferred type of date. They would meet up at an agreed upon location without knowing how their date would look ahead of time. In April 2010, Time Out reported that the website was under construction for updates, but would remain free once it resumed operation. In 2013, it was relaunched and integrated into the OkCupid platform as an app for iPhone and Android devices.

In 2008, OkCupid spun off its test-design portion under the name Hello Quizzy (HQ), while keeping it inextricably linked to OkCupid and reserving existent OkCupid users' names on HQ. However, the original Dating Persona Test has since been removed.

Since August 2009, an "A-list" account option is available to users of OkCupid and provides additional services for monthly fees.

In February 2011, OkCupid was acquired by IAC/InterActiveCorp, operators of Match.com, for US$50 million. Editorial posts from 2010 by an OkCupid founder in which Match.com and pay-dating were criticized for exploiting users and being "fundamentally broken" were removed from the OkCupid blog at the time of the acquisition. In a press response, OkCupid's CEO explained that the removal was voluntary.