Editor’s note: This article was first published in February 2011. It is news of the deal: the description of OkCupid as a small, free, ad-funded site and the speculation about Match.com’s motives reflect that moment.
The giant of online dating and relationships has acquired the small OkCupid for $50 million.
OkCupid was created by three young entrepreneurs when the success of Match.com and Meetic, both subscription-based (paid) online dating sites, was already evident, so they decided to build a similar site offering a free service.
Growth was immediate, and they started calling themselves “the Google of dating“, attracting a much younger audience than the other sites and funding the project solely with advertising revenue.
In the United States, people can’t quite explain why the site was bought, since it wasn’t really competition for these portals, which bring in billions every year.
It’s probably a way to reach a different kind of audience and add premium services, although it’s also possible that in the long run it would have become a tough competitor, so putting $50 million on the table now could save them larger sums in the future.
What is clear is that these three entrepreneurs got what they were after, since they built the site with the idea of reaching a sizeable number of users and then selling it to another company. What they didn’t expect was such fast growth, let alone a sale for $50 million. May all of life’s surprises be like that one.
Further reading
Featured image: Gregory Rothstein, CC0 1.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
