Talk about starting the week off on a good note. Cyber Monday deals, preparing some exciting new reports for readers and to top it off OKCupid has released an iPhone application.
Team OKCupid did a great job at integrating just about every piece of website functionality on the iPhone. The home screen features recently updates profile. Chat window displays your bookmarked profiles, both online and off. Clicking on a profile brings up their profile page. Member chat features two tabs, essays and details. Profile display includes Message, Wink, Quiver, photos, ratings, send traditional message and the usual functionality available from the website. The messages tab displays, you guessed it, your messages, in chronological order. Search and matching based on criteria worked flawlessly.
Test taking is there, as is the ability to view my Stalkers (now called Visitors), viewing my profile and as an expected bonus, members can now upload photos taken on their iPhone. I took a photo of myself and it shows up on the website immediately, with a caption of “Uploaded from my iPhone.” I’d like to see the photo upload work on a timer as well, hunting for the shutter button while holding the lens facing me took a few tries, plenty of apps have a 3-2-1 countdown, with audibles to let you know when to stop moving around.
One thing I didn’t see was the ability to edit my profile on the iPhone. thats really not so much of a big deal to me. When I’m in major profile editing mode I’m at home in front of the big screen typing away on a real keyboard.
OKCupid has been growing steadily over the last few years. Sam and the team have done a terrific job improving the site. I used to say that Match was the gold standard that startups should emulate. People would tell me they took screenshots of Match, showed them to developers, and said, “Make it look and work like this.” These days, I’m not so sure. Match is certainly not sitting back on it’s laurels, it’s trying a few new features, mostly do-overs on features they tried and canned years ago, but OKCupid’s torrent of new features and refinements puts it right at the top of the class.
Given the amount of updates to the OKCupid site, the incredibly insightful blog posts about member racism, first email best practices and the statistics behind photos, it’s clear that this free dating site is effectively distancing itself from the competition. There will be people who argue that features and mobile and member transparency are not the only criteria for a successful online dating site, but I think the entire online dating industry could learn much from OKCupid.
Read the feature list download the OKCupid iPhone app and let us know what you think.
Given the number of dating sites launching mobile applications, the question becomes if and when is PlentyofFish going to follow suite?
