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Comment by dangero | Hacker News Reader

I have liked OKCupid's posts in the past, but this one is clearly propaganda. There's a pretty obvious flaw in this argument:

"It turns out you are 12.4 times more likely to get married this year if you don't subscribe to Match.com."

The data to back it up is based on Match.com press kit:

"12 couples got married or engaged today thanks to Match.com"

What they're missing is that a lot of people get married or engaged while subscribing to Match.com, but not due to Match.com. Heck, my roommate did. It's not an exclusive arrangement. In fact, it's pretty likely that if someone is subscribing to Match.com they are also dating outside of Match.com.

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The other flaw is that by definition people on dating sites are not currently in a relationship (well, usually), so of course they're less likely to get married in the near future. I suspect the 12.4 ratio would be similar for active OKCupid users.

> (well, usually),

Not true for OKC. Very poly friendly.

It might appear so, but a friend of mine who's in a poly relationship gets harassed fairly frequently on OKC because she's married.

I've been on OKC for about 8 years, been poly on there, met poly girls there, had poly friends there, never once heard of anyone getting harassed for polyitude.

I'm not saying it didn't happen... but it might be kind of like saying "planes aren't safe, I had a friend that was in a plane crash."

Sorry if it came off as me saying that people in poly relationships aren't at all welcome on OKC, just that it's not universally welcoming.

I'd imagine how welcoming people are to others in poly relationships largely depends on where you are. People in El Paso, TX (where my friend and I live) are likely less open to that sort of thing than people elsewhere.

Oh yeah? I've only ever ...heard otherwise, and I'm pretty sure that several of the founders are poly as well. I could be remembering that incorrectly...

If you advertise that you lead to a marrige then its not about you getting married today, its that x people who use site y get married every day. Of course there is no garantee that the marrige had anything to do with the site. If person x and y are on a dating site, there is no reason to assume that it MUST be true that if x and y met/get merried it is due to the site. They could meet outside. With 20 million accounts it is VERY likely that you got married to someone with an account on that site.

I like the corelation you can build from the site: By giving you bad matches to increase business, each person looking gets less likely to find someone because they have to send so many emails. Note that the 30% chance to get a response * 1/30 chance that an account is not active != 1/100 chance of a response. The 30% chance to get a response can already take into account that a bunch of people may not be active.

You can play with the numbers. I think the final guesses are not that accurate, but it does put things into perspective regarding the marketing numbers.

Still, it would mean that registering on match.com only increases your chances by 0.4%

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