This is unsolicited spam. And likely against OkCupid's terms of use.
That's BS and you know it. If that were the case, OP's startup should've bought ads on OKC and OKC would be glad to sell ad space. I really doubt that OKC or its parent company will sell ads to a competitor dating site.
1. OKC is a listing of profiles where the lister is expected to manage the transaction 2. The management of the transaction is a huge friction and pain point for a significant number of people (as is writing a profile, taking pics, etc...for which there are also people that help). 3. this service reduces/removes that friction/pain point for okc. 4. this service is NOT a listing of profiles (as far as I can tell) 5. this service does NOT discourage people from signing up for OKC, Match, POF, etc...in my view it encourages participation in those services (whether implicitly or explicitly).
If I'm missing the mark on any of the above, feel free to correct me.
As far as I understand it from the copy on Dating Ring's web page, their service is meant to replace all those dating sites. It's a fire-and-forget product that frees you from the need of maintaining an on-line profile and visiting a dating site - discouraging people from singing up for OKC is exactly what it is meant to do.
The thing is, marketing is mostly zero-sum game; people are stuck in a negative feedback loop of throwing more and more money to one-up their competitors at attracting customers from the same limited pool. It's an unlimited resource sink, but it's a) what you have to do lest you get outcompeted by others, and b) profitable for those who facilitate advertising.
Weixiyen is also right that this "growth hack" is effective, but remember that "growth hacking" is mostly a fancy term for spamming / abusing trust. Every new way to trick people into buying something will work for a while, until everyone else starts doing the same and the ROI drops to zero.
Once upon a time, a pop-up banner was the clever growth hacking trick. As HN's idlewords tells the story,
"One of the first banner ads had a click-through rate of 78%. That's mind-boggling. Do you know what two words were on that banner ad?
"Shop Naked!" CLICK!
But banner ads turned out to be like poison ivy. People clicked them once, and learned never to touch them again. The industry collapsed in a flurry of pop-overs, pop-unders, and shame."
I guess the better way to put it is that if your startup has to resort to paid advertising as the main user acquisition funnel, you probably already lost unless you have ridiculous conversion and LTV on each user.
If it was just generic "come sign up for our new dating service!" messages, I'd agree with you, but that's not what they were doing.
If it were to become more common (not sure how common it is actually...probably very), that could result in an overall poor experience for OKCupid users who would associate using the service with receiving spam that never netted out to anything.
There is nothing wrong with OKCupid drawing the line on another service trying to get "free" marketing on its dime and at the expense of its user experience.
That said, if it never amounted to anything -- as in, I got Dating Ring spam promising dates that never materialized, I would be pretty pissed.
However my point was that it is not exclusively Dating Ring doing this. It is important to consider the overall signal to noise ratio when you factor in the messages from Dating Ring and any other company out there trying to use OKCupid's platform to promote themselves.
OkCupid, barring the creation of a program/partnership specific to this case, has decided that overall, it is worth filtering out. If they thought it added value based on the data they had, they would try to partner with Dating Ring. Heck, it would likely have been fine if Dating Ring purchased ad inventory on their site. As it stands, it seems they view this approach as spam per the OP. If it is against their terms, Dating Ring doesn't have much leg to stand on as that would make it a pretty black and white situation.
Part of me wonders if a Cease & Desist is en route to Dating Ring's office.
Such situations are exactly the kind where Kant's categorical imperative applies. If something is clearly wrong when everyone does it, it should not be OK for a particular company to do.
Just off the top of my head. And then consider that, by the context, they probably meant anyone who hasn't had a new message in a while. Yeah.
TL;DR: Lots of good reasons.
Yeah, from a prospective date, not a matchmaker.
A similar situation: posting a job ad and having a recruiter reply to it trying to sell you their services, rather than a prospective employee. If you've ever been in that situation you'd know that it isn't a comparable response, and is just irritating spam that results in an instant delete.
The downvote button is to the left....fire away.
That's exactly what a recruiter does, though.
There are plenty of international recruiting firms that just spam short to mid length contract jobs in places nobody wants to move to at hourly rates nobody would take. Those are the ones you want to ignore.
For example, if you contact someone with a message along the lines of, "Hi, we're _____, and we've got someone who's perfect for you. Just sign up for our service at _______ to get started!" that's definitely spam. No question about it.
On the other hand, if the message is more like, "Hi, we're _____. We think one our clients, ________ would be a great match for you. You both enjoy _______, and in particular, he(she) like that you mentioned _________. Here's a link to his(her) profile. You can contact him(her) at _______." that doesn't look like spam to me at all. Effectively you're just acting as a proxy in that situation. The OKC user is indeed getting exactly what they're looking for.
So I guess my point is, it all depends on the message. If you make them sign up for your service, spam. If your message is generic, spam. But if you give them information about a real person, and a way to contact them - ie exactly what they would expect to get in a message directly from another user - that seems fine from the user's perspective.
Of course, OKC would likely still not appreciate your use of their service to facilitate competition. In that case, a better model might be to strictly act as the agent of your user; search OKC for them, and if you find a good match, help them create an account and message the user directly. Obviously this might require tweaking your model a bit.
I hope you realize that this is almost word-for-word what any telemarketer or spammer will say about what they do. They're just trying to help you!
I've never used it, but I'm guessing that people don't sign up for OkCupid because they want messages from Premium Matchmakers. You're spamming them. It doesn't matter how much you think you're helping.