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Comment by christophe971 | Hacker News Reader

$50M cash is a fantastic exit for a company created only 4 years ago, with one round of funding ($6M).

Congratulations to the team! I hope the guys at IAC won't destroy the brand/product though... I hope their blog OkTrends will continue to publish fascinating articles too, it would be a great loss.

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It looks like their other dating acquisitions, People Media, Singlesnet and Chemistry.com, haven't been ruined. However, they have shut down six other dating websites, including two of their free ones, Sir.com and Downtoearth.com, last year.

I think OkCupid is a strong brand and it'd be more valuable to keep not steam roll it into another one.

As a former employee of one of the recent acquisitions that you mentioned, yeah, it really was run into the ground. Almost the entirety of the development and operations staff left within a couple months. I don't expect it to last much longer.

Got any further info? What was the general attitude from up top? Not sure how much can be disclosed, but it would be interesting to have some data/first hand info on the approach.

They're a bit older than 4 years. I signed up there ca. 2005 and met the woman who'd become my wife in late 2007. Still though, good on them for a fantastic exit. There are some seriously clever people behind the site.

not 4 years, according to their whois the domain was created in March 2003. So 7..7.5 years.

First version seems to have gone online in early 2004.

http://web.archive.org/web/*/okcupid.com

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