Okcupid Dating Review: All About the Dating Sites and Real-Life Stories

In today’s day and age, everything is at your fingertips. Science has made life easy for us in every aspect, including our love lives. Even if you can’t get out of your house or don’t have time to go out and meet new people, dating sites make it easier for you to interact with people while sitting in the comfort of your home.

As the world progresses, people have realized how important having a meaningful relationship is to leading a fulfilled, happy life. Life is tough as it is, and being alone makes facing problems that much harder. Then again, being in a bad relationship is just as terrible if not worse than being alone. This is why dating sites such as OkCupid, involve science in matchmaking as well. This makes the whole process as accurate as possible and saves you from unnecessary heartache. 

That being said, love is indeed a complicated emotion, and sometimes, science doesn’t always get it right. However, the numbers and success stories make giving some of the legitimate dating sites like OkCupid a shot, worth your while. 

Unlike other dating sites, OkCupid has a one of a kind algorithm - which has remained unmatched since its inception. The entire site’s ethos is built around this algorithm. It is the only dating app that has an intensive, and thorough questionnaire with thousands of questions to get to the nitty-gritty details of your personality, likes, and dislikes. 

After all, the pitfall of any dating website would be to match people who have no signs of compatibility and get into a relationship that is doomed to fail.

The questionnaires at OkCupid include details as trivial as your preference of cilantro to tough life questions such as your beliefs about contraception. Considering if you’ve answered yes to “are you capable of being faithful even when your lover is away for long periods”, you would expect your partner to have the same opinion. 

That being said, OkCupid is programmed to encourage spontaneity and healthy differences in opinion that lead to meaningful conversations and new experiences. 

On OkCupid, you can define the importance of a question from “A little,” to “somewhat” and to “Very,” so that the site understands what things are compromisable and what, for you, is set in stone. The versatility of these questions make your match that much more exciting and give you plenty to explore in your relationship.

For these reasons and more OkCupid has made over 91 million connections every year and has an average of 50 Thousand dates every week! It also has the most mentions in NewYork Time’s wedding sections!  Making a difference in people’s lives isn’t an easy feat, and if an app is successful in doing so, then it deserves every bit of praise it has garnered. 

OkCupid is the brainchild of four Harvard University graduates Chris Coyne, Christian Rudder, Sam Yagan, and Max Krohn. 

The four friends gained popularity while still students through their creation of TheSpark and later SparkNotes - a website that provided study guides for literature, poetry, history, film, and philosophy. Among other things, TheSpark.com contained many entertaining quizzes and personality tests. Including the psychology backed four-variable Myers-Briggs style Match Test. 

A beta experiment named SparkMatch was then put in motion to allow users who had taken the Match Test to contact each other based on their Match types. The experiment was a huge success and thus began SparkMatch, a separate increasingly popular dating website that was later renamed OkCupid. In 2001 the founders of SparkNotes sold the site to the multinational group Barnes & Noble for approximately 3.5 million USD and began working exclusively on OkCupid. Since it’s launch, OkCupid has undergone numerous reforms and essential updates to make it one of the most lucrative online dating websites today. 

OkCupid was acquired by IAC/InterActiveCorp, operators of Match.com, on February 2011 for US$50 million. 

The website strived to be as inclusive and diverse as possible and hence added a bevy of non-traditional gender profiles for users to choose from in 2014. A controversial move in the eyes of some, and a revolutionary one in the eyes of many.  These 22 gender identity and 13 sexual orientation profile options helped users express themselves and find like-minded people without having to worry about societal pressures. By encouraging users to explore their options, OkCupid inadvertently popularized the concept of sapiosexuality as well, which is sexual attraction based on intellect rather than physicality. 

OkCupid conducted various psychological experiments as well to improve their matchmaking abilities and provide users with the most accurate matches. 

“We met at a French cafe that we both loved! He was so sweet and charming and there was no lack of conversation. He made me laugh and I felt a connection immediately! Since that day we've spent a lot of time together and I've fallen in love with this person. We have so much in common it's unrealistic! I'll never be able to thank OkCupid for bringing us together! I've met the man that I've been looking for online and you brought him to me!”

“It was an incredible experience... to find someone your 98% match. We had both had answered over 200 questions (!). 

Said found me. We started talking about nights and days, finding out more and more similarities and starting to be very interested in each other. In a few weeks, we realized we wanted to be in an exclusive relationship. 

Back then, I was living in Cyprus and Said was in Lebanon. So, it took us 2 months until we met in person as he was tied up with business traveling. We chatted every night on Skype for a minimum of 2 hours. Our total record once was 4.20 minutes :). It was never boring and is never boring now. 

Said visited me in Cyprus in October 2012, and that journey sealed the deal :)

Since then, I have moved to Lebanon, met his lovely family, and we are making plans for the future. Our First Anniversary will be on the 27th of August, 2013. 

THANK YOU, OK Cupid! We can't help but think every day how amazing that is that we met. And it is all because of YOU! Thanks, amazing talented OKCupid team, for this amazing tool that you created. We are very grateful. Nothing like finding your other true half... 

P.S. I advise your website to ALL my single friends as I have personally discovered the POWER of this online magic. Good luck to all out there! Don't settle for someone who isn't right for you while there is your soul-mate waiting to be found! :) Give it a go!!”

“Jaya was the one to first contact me, curious as to why some blonde chick claimed to be Hindu. He had just moved to San Diego, and I was always interested in making a new friend. Neither of us was looking for a relationship at the time, but I guess fate knew better than we. :) 

Our first "date" of sorts was to get groceries (I don't drive, and Jaya is always down to eat), and we were inseparable after our first meeting. Our interests, values, and personalities complemented each other, and our families got along perfectly. We moved in together after six months of dating, and on March 15th of 2012, Jaya asked me to marry him. Naturally, I said yes. 

It is close to impossible to find two people who complement each other as well as Jaya and I do, and we would have never found each other if it wasn't for OkCupid.”

As we’ve mentioned before, OkCupid strives to be one of the most inclusive dating platforms out there and boasts 22 gender and 13 orientation options! No other free dating website can beat the diversity OkCupid offers.

OkCupid recently removed random messaging, which means random people can no longer message you until you two have matched. This is great for the ladies, especially since they’re bombarded with inappropriate messages ALL THE TIME. This process may make the matching process a little bit slower but is a lot better than having an inbox filled with creeps. Other free dating sites such as eHarmony don’t offer any such protection against predators.  

Unlike the obnoxiously long profiles most free dating websites offer, OkCupid has short yet insightful profiles to help you navigate through their interface with ease.  
OkCupid’s algorithm is the star of the show here. Most free dating websites don’t have such sensitive algorithms and careful monitoring systems. 

Online dating websites and apps have made it much easier to find a partner and meet like-minded people. If you’re still single and looking for love, we suggest giving OkCupid a try, who knows, the next OkCupid success story could be yours.