Match Group

If anyone knows how online love works, it's Sam Yagan. Not only is Yagan the co-founder of OkCupid, he also runs all of Match Inc for IAC. Put it all together and Yagan is pretty much the most powerful man in the online dating biz.

Love is confusing at the best of times. Factor in online dating algorithms, which are so inscrutable that they might as well be matching prospective lovers with some kind of ancient magic, and the mystery of love gets even deeper. I know, at least once, you've wondered: How does it all work?

Business Insider asked Sam Yagan to shed some light on the inner workings of an online dating site. First, he noted, every dating site matches a little bit differently. That's why it's great for a company like IAC to have so many dating companies in its portfolio, and that's why it might be a good idea for you to be on more than one dating site. Each site opens you to a different world of romantic possibilities.

In spite of those differences, there's one thing every dating site has in common: the goal is to find you a good first date. After that, it's up to you and chemistry to take the relationship further.

Online dating sites start by filtering out incompatible partners based on characteristics that Yagan calls "hard filters." Age and location are the primary hard filters, followed by dealbreakers like smoking habits and children. Only when hard filters overlap does a dating site's algorithm take over to analyze other factors, like interests and hobbies.

Billions of data points are calculated to find potential matches for a user. Some are explicitly entered by the user, like religion and favorite pastimes. Others - and arguably the more important ones - are determined implicitly. Every dating site tracks the activity of its users to determine what they really want in a partner.

Yagan says that one of the great surprises of working in the online dating industry was the realization that people don't always know what's important to them. He offers politics as an example - though some politically passionate online daters say they could never date someone with opposing political views, Yagan finds that that's frequently not the case in practice. People are often wrong about themselves.

For that reason, it's imperative that online dating sites keep careful watch over users' activity. What profiles are you really clicking on? Who do you send messages to? Where do you spend the most time on the site?

By analyzing your behavior, a dating site develops a more accurate picture of the date you really want to meet. And because online dating brings together people who would never have met in the real world, it offers greater odds of finding that perfect partner.

For more information, you can read our review of the dating site Match.com

In Hollywood, everyone wants to be on the A-List. It means invites to the best parties, schmoozing with the biggest celebrities, and being showered with the most expensive swag.

Much to my dismay, the OkCupid A-List doesn't involve quite as many sexy movie stars and free Chanel clothes. Instead, the OkC A-List offers:

• Ad-free browsing
• Extra photo albums
• A-List only forums
• Enhanced search features
• Username change
• Anonymous browsing plus the ability to see who viewed your profile
• Unlimited message storage
• Protection against scammers, trolls, and fake users
• Private photos attached to messages
• Increased visibility on the site

The service launched in 2009 to mixed reviews. For those with very specific needs, A-List membership comes with useful perks. But for the majority of OkCupid users, A-List membership comes with nothing but a question: "What's the point?" The features are far from essential, and some users feel that the additional elements detract from their online dating experience.

On the plus side, there are a few genuine advantages to using the A-List service. The site can become a more effective matching tool when you can specify a search radius lower than 25 miles. Anonymous browsing means you can check back on a profile to remind yourself who someone is without looking like a creepy stalker. The advanced search features can come in handy, as can the increased mail box size for those who are prolific writers. The most intriguing benefit of A-List membership is the ability to change that stupid username you chose before you realized there was no going back.

Other A-List features are a little odder. One feature allows an A-List member to send email to a user whose mailbox is completely full. Another gives feedback from A-List users priority over feedback from free users. A third allows for the creation of adult photo albums.

On the negative side of things, A-List services hardly provide any extra value and may come with unwanted baggage. Harsher users may assume that anyone who pays for A-List membership is creepy, desperate, or needy. That's a big price to pay for something that doesn't offer much in return.

In the long run, A-List seems to be a needless expense. Deleting messages from a full inbox is hardly a chore, is it? Why add features that make your online dating experience more complex instead of simpler? And with so few differences between A-List memberships and standard memberships, why pay for something that you could get for free?

For more on this dating site you can take a look at our review of OkCupid.

Don't you wish online dating came with an instruction manual?

Oh wait - it does!

Well, sorta. If what you're looking for is "a complete step by step guide on how someone would seduce you," then yes...online dating comes with an instruction manual. It's called the Seduction Style Guide, and you can find it (where else?) on POF.com.

Get those grains of salt ready, and let's dive in...

The first section of the test is called "Flirting." Choose up to three of the listed flirting styles that appeal most to you, and up to three that don't interest you. Do you prefer your dates "Playful," "Confident," "Coy," "Charming," or "Prim and Proper?" Then answer a question about your communication preferences. How would you like a date to ask you out? By phone? By email? In person at a dating event?

Section three delves deeper into your personality. Read each statement and indicate the degree to which it describes you: "Strongly agree," "Disagree," "Agree," or "Strongly agree." Statements to rate cover topics like humor and spontaneity:

• I enjoy trying different kinds of ethnic foods
• I brood for a long time in an attempt to solve some fundamental problem
• There is humor to be seen in just about everything

Of course, it wouldn't be a Seduction Style test without questions about seduction! The next sections ask questions about your first date habits and your sexuality. Again, you must rate the accuracy of words used describe your sexuality. Are you the "Sultry" type? Or maybe you're better described as "Adorable?"

The test wraps up with a free response section and the most salacious section of all. The free response questions inquire about what you most and least enjoy while on a date, and your turn ons/offs. Answer each with three responses, all in your own words.

The final section...well...let's just say it's a pretty intimate look at your favorite kinks, fetishes, and fantasies.

Put it all together and you get POF's take on how best to woo you. Got that salt ready?

The results page is surprisingly detailed. First, there's The Big Picture. Apparently people like me "tend to love life with zeal, often living in the moment and trying not to let experiences pass them by." (All true, as far as I'm concerned...perhaps POF knows me better than I would like to admit.)

Then there's the three step seduction plan: Approach Me, How To Date Me, and How To Sexually Seduce Me. Much to my surprise, POF also manages to sneak in some genuinely useful information amongst all the silly stuff. The report includes info on favorite dating conversation topics, online dating safety, preferred dating activities, and do's and don'ts.

To show others your results, send the link included at the bottom of the results page (and consider sending some salt with it).

To find out more about this popular dating site you can take a look at our Plentyoffish review.

OkCupid has always been known for its cutting-edge approach to online dating. That edge became even more cutting earlier this month when The Coinbase Blog made an exciting announcement:

We're proud to announce you can now find true love with Bitcoin by using OKCupid! This is one more step forward for bringing Bitcoin to the masses - one date at a time.

That's right, OkCupid has just become the latest company to accept the controversial digital currency. The site's 4 million active members can now use Bitcoin to pay for "A-List" extra features, making OkCupid one of the largest sites to accept Bitcoin in the world. The real price will continue to be displayed officially in dollars on the site, and will be adjusted for Bitcoin users in real time to reflect the present exchange rate from Coinbase.

Coinbase is a Y Combinator startup that calls itself "the simplest way to buy, use, and accept Bitcoin." The platform to buy and sell the digital currency will keep a 1% transaction fee from all dealings with OkCupid.

OKCupid CEO Sam Yagan spoke to Ars Technica about the company's big news. "Our plan is to liquidate our holdings daily and turn them into US dollars," he said. "There's an open question as to how much liquidity there is. I think there's going to be a tremendous amount of volatility. One of the reasons why we want to be early in the mix is so we can learn."

OkCupid users had shown little interest in incorporating Bitcoins into their online dating experience - the number of requests for Bitcoin integration barely reached double digits - but Yagan is determined to keep OkCupid ahead of the pack.

"There's no question that these digital currencies are going to be the future," he said in a quote on Forbes.com. "Whether it's actually the form of Bitcoins or evolves into something else, we want to be out in front. We want to be the ones who have the experience. There's a lot to learn."

It is, without a doubt, a move in an interesting direction. There's certainly a degree of irony in an online dating site - where trust is a big factor and users are often concerned about scams - adopting an anonymous currency as a payment option. But it's a massive win for Bitcoin, which has already been enjoying a boost in mainstream attention and legitimacy.

OkCupid users: How do you feel about using a digital currency to pay for A-List subscriptions?

A concerned visitor sent me an email the other day asking what has happened to the Plenty of fish forums? Did they shut down? I was like oh no not again, they have done something to the forums on POF. I still noticed the forums coming up in the search results so I visited forums.plentyoffish.com directly and was greeted with a nasty server run time error.

Now I know a bit about web servers and this is a Microsoft Internet Information Server (IIS) error. This is not good (see the full explanation below) because it indicates to me that the files for the Plenty of fish forum website has been removed. After further investigation it looks like this may have happened at least a week ago, since visitors have been searching our site about the Plenty of fish forums being removed for that long.

I am surprised that POF hasn’t addressed the problem. They must know about it as I am sure a large number of people have already complained about the issue as it has been a week now already. Also the POF forums are still very popular even though they are not directly linked to the main POF.com site anymore (I think POF wants to slowly kill the forums). What has me puzzled though is if they had plan to stop providing the forum, why not remove the website and domain record all together or at least display a nice message about the situation and the reason for the removal (which would take 2 minutes to do). Displaying a runtime error isn’t very professional. Heck even a redirect to the main POF dating site would have been better.

Update: After checking the POF forums off and on for the last hour it appears that this is an intermediate problem. About half the time I get a runtime error, about a quarter of the time I get some other one line text error and for the other quarter of the time the forums actually work. As I said before this has been happening for at least a week since others have reported on it.

I have a thought, let’s start a campaign to see if we can get Plenty of fish to fix the forums. I am going to tweet about this story on Twitter using the hashtag #FixForumsOnPOF. If you want POF to keep the forums alive like I do, then re-tweet my tweet or post your own using the hashtag. Maybe if POF is listening they will do something about it and fix the problem with the forums. 😊

In the meantime since you can’t use the POF forums all of the time you are more than welcome to post your relationship and online dating questions and observations in our dating forums. We have a number of forum categories you can post in about a whole pile of different topics.

So, what does the runtime IIS error mean that most people seem to be getting? It actually is 2 errors in one. The web server is complaining first about their not being a custom error file in the location specified to display to visitors when an error happens. The second error actually triggered the first error. The second error is harder to figure out since the current error message is all about the first error. The second error is some sort of application error which could be anything from the actual website files not being available to a coding error in the requested web file. Since an error message is displayed it does indicate that webserver is working properly and that there is nothing wrong with the domain record.

If you are looking for a popular free dating site to try and want some more information then you should read our Plenty of fish review.

The Harlem Shake has been sweeping the nation and the world. Everyone from universities to Jimmy Fallon have released a video. So how did these Harlem Shake viral videos become a YouTube craze?

It looks like the first Harlem Shake video was uploaded on Jan. 30, 2013 (see Video). As of today it has over 24 million views. The video that really got the ball rolling and set the format for future videos was this one released on Feb. 2, 2013 by a group of teenagers from Australia calling themselves TheSunnyCoastSkate. Basically a Harlem Shake video is about 30 seconds long with the first 15 seconds of a lone masked person dancing with people around him not paying attention. The video then cuts to the entire group of people doing a crazy dance with most dressed in costumes. During the video samples of the 2011 song "Harlem Shake” released by Baauer are played.

By Feb.11, 2013 approximately 4 thousand Harlem Shake videos where being uploaded to YouTube everyday making 12 thousand total videos with 44 million views. By this time companies had started to take notice and where releasing their own videos. When February 15th rolled around there was a total of 40,000 videos that had been viewed 175 million times. The song “Harlem Shake also reached number 1 on iTunes in America.

Not to be left out a number of dating sites and social networks have also released their own Harlem Shake videos. Here they are:

Match.com does the Harlem Shake

Plenty of Fish does the Harlem Shake

Mate1 does the Harlem Shake

Facebook does the Harlem Shake

For more on the Harlem Shake phenomena you can check out Wikipedia.