I worked on the OkTrends team at OkCupid during the year before the acquisition, and I can assure you that that timing is definitely a coincidence.
The posts took a lot of work to create. When I was there, there were two and a half people working full-time[0] just on OkTrends (two engineers full time, and one founder part-time).
I can't give an average time per post, but to give you an idea, "The Real Stuff White People Like"[1] was predominantly my work[2], and it took almost two months, from start to finish.
If you're wondering why it took so long to create that, remember that we started each blog post as a blank slate - at most, we had a vague question that we wanted to explore, and it took several iteration for us to hit upon anything closely resembling the analysis that you'd end up seeing in one of the OkTrends reports.
It might be easy to create something if you have a specific destination in mind at the start, but the key to making OkTrends posts work was not having a specific result in mind - instead, letting the journey guide the process.
Anyway, I left to go back to school, and around that time, the other engineer on the data team started having to do more internal data work on top of the OkTrends research (he stayed at OkCupid for over a year after I left, but he's since moved on as well). That's what caused the slowdown in the posts during late 2010 to early 2011, not the sale to Match.com. As noted below, Christian is working on other projects as well, which have unfortunately left little time for OkTrends.
It's very unfortunate that the timing makes it look like Match.com put the kibosh on OkTrends, because that's not at all what happened, though I definitely see why people would make that mistake.
[0] By "half", I mean that we two engineers spent close to all of our time working on the data/stats, and the founder spent about half his time working with us on the projects and writing the posts.
Definitely good to know. It certainly looked the other way from an external viewpoint given the really close timing. That being said, I'd love it if they'd start up again it was always fascinating from a sociological perspective at what was working for people and what wasn't (It never helped me though, I ended up meeting my SO over IRC instead...)
You're not the first person to tell me that! A friend of mine met his husband on #gaynyc. I still love OkCupid, but I always idle in that chan now, just in case.... :)
Comments
I worked on the OkTrends team at OkCupid during the year before the acquisition, and I can assure you that that timing is definitely a coincidence.
The posts took a lot of work to create. When I was there, there were two and a half people working full-time[0] just on OkTrends (two engineers full time, and one founder part-time).
I can't give an average time per post, but to give you an idea, "The Real Stuff White People Like"[1] was predominantly my work[2], and it took almost two months, from start to finish.
If you're wondering why it took so long to create that, remember that we started each blog post as a blank slate - at most, we had a vague question that we wanted to explore, and it took several iteration for us to hit upon anything closely resembling the analysis that you'd end up seeing in one of the OkTrends reports.
It might be easy to create something if you have a specific destination in mind at the start, but the key to making OkTrends posts work was not having a specific result in mind - instead, letting the journey guide the process.
Anyway, I left to go back to school, and around that time, the other engineer on the data team started having to do more internal data work on top of the OkTrends research (he stayed at OkCupid for over a year after I left, but he's since moved on as well). That's what caused the slowdown in the posts during late 2010 to early 2011, not the sale to Match.com. As noted below, Christian is working on other projects as well, which have unfortunately left little time for OkTrends.
It's very unfortunate that the timing makes it look like Match.com put the kibosh on OkTrends, because that's not at all what happened, though I definitely see why people would make that mistake.
[0] By "half", I mean that we two engineers spent close to all of our time working on the data/stats, and the founder spent about half his time working with us on the projects and writing the posts.
[1] http://blog.okcupid.com/index.php/the-real-stuff-white-peopl...
[2] I did the stats/munging/research - none of the writing. Christian is a much funnier writer than I am.
Definitely good to know. It certainly looked the other way from an external viewpoint given the really close timing. That being said, I'd love it if they'd start up again it was always fascinating from a sociological perspective at what was working for people and what wasn't (It never helped me though, I ended up meeting my SO over IRC instead...)
You're not the first person to tell me that! A friend of mine met his husband on #gaynyc. I still love OkCupid, but I always idle in that chan now, just in case.... :)
IMHO, that was the best blog on the Internet at the time. Thanks for all that work. :-)
Wow. This is hilarious and I can't believe I missed it the first time around. Thanks for caring enough to make this.
That's in footnote [1], not the text comment, above. And yes, its brilliant when seen in context. So I won't spoil it. ;D