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OKCupid is looking more and more like PlentyOfFish every day. First came the sex ads and now we have forums. I trolled the forums this morning for a bit and came away with my head spinning. Where do people have the time to write things like “looking for someone to sever my spinal cord”, which received a ton of responses.

Someone recently tried to describe to me the primary difference between OKCupid and PlentyOfFish members. They said that OKCupid members are in general overeducated and somewhat elitist and artsy whereas PlentyOfFish is like a cross-section of a McCain rally held next to a NASCAR race. That’s a bit over the top for me given the broad reach of both sites but I think it’s important for people to be able to categorize the general populace of dating sites.

The explanation the person gave me is exactly why PlentyOfFish will for the foreseeable future remain the top free site while OkCupid corners the smaller market for sophisticated singles. It makes sense that the mass market for a generic dating site like PlentyOfFish will always be larger than the smaller OKCupid market. They can both be successful, it’s just that they go after totally different demographics.

I have to give OKCupid the feature of the week award.

I loved it when OKCupid gently corrected me when I used the word “funny” in my profile. Being chided by a computer for my lack of originality was brilliant and made my day. I’ve tried to talk scores of dating sites into implementing this simple functionality and I never understood why they didn’t go out and do it immediately. Perhaps I need to explain the benefit of the feature better. It’s cheap and simple, the value outweighs the resources required to implement and it shows that the site is different from all the other sites out there. Any site smart enough to do this has a lot to offer, because this is only the first step towards better profiles. Remember, OKCupid let’s people each other’s profiles, although this functionality hasn’t caught on as quickly as I expected, much like the Match testimonial feature. Give it some time though, it takes people a long to to notice new features on dating sites.

I loved this ad on PlentyOfFish, hilarious.

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