I'm not quite sure what the problem is. OkCupid's goal is to help its users find dates. People rarely date someone who's very significantly more or less attractive than they are. Directing people to users with whom they're much likelier to find success actually seems quite sensible, not "less than OK".
Hell, I would like if OKCupid let me know my percentile. If I thought I had a hot shit profile that actually rather sucks (by real user analytics feedback), it would benefit me to know.
[edit] People are taking this far too personally. You didn't get rejected as unattractive, your profile got rejected as unattractive. There are more ways than one to rectify this. Remember, these people don't know you, they can only view a tiny slice of you via your profile - one that you are in 100% control of. Perhaps your failure is not that you're irredeemably ugly, but rather that your profile inspires no attraction. Conversely, if you "won" the profile attractiveness game, it may not mean you're nearly as attractive in real life as your profile suggests.
This reminds of the PUA mantra as it has been related to me: "she didn't reject you, she rejected your approach"
It makes me wonder why these people are running something as small-time as a dating website. I haven't seen so much useful creativity and cool new ideas and openness since Google got bigger.
Not that it's small money, or not important. They are just so refreshing, and from what I've seen of them, I wish we had teams like that in places such as our government.
I'm not insulting their business. It is pretty perfect for collecting some of the data they have found.
It might make sense behind the scenes, but was it a mistake for them to actually tell their users about it? They must have known the uglies would find out about it, so you've gotta balance out the fact that you've just flattered some of your users with the fact that you've insulted the rest.
Besides, ugly users are probably a lot more profitable than good-looking ones.
As you might have noticed from OKCupid's copious release of cross-racial dating data, and similar "Skipping through a minefield" marketing activities, I think they've decided "You know, dating is crowded. Better to be loved by many and hated passionately by a few than to be unknown by all and crushed by Match.com's nine figure AdWords spend."
Cutting the userbase sharply in half, with ugly on one side and attractive on the other, is probably a bad way for them to explain it to people. They'd be better off saying something like "we show you other users based on how much you have in common, including age, interests, attractiveness, personality, etc."
True, but they already say that. I don't think that they stop showing you 'ugly' people, they just shift the distribution. In any case, the bottom 50% of users are probably cluttered with abandoned profiles, joke profiles, people with serious personality defects that can't get a date, et cetera. If you're an active serious user, you probably only have to be in the to 70-90% of active serious users to meet the criteria.
We know they run statistics all the time from their blog, so they probably saw something like 90% of active users are in the top 50% and saw it as a way to flatter them and keep them engaged with the site.
Yup, I think this is the main reason why they implemented it.
To elaborate a little further on this point from a guy's perspective (this might sound controversial)..
1. You risk scaring off attractive girls if they are bombarded by mail from a wider range of less attractive guys
2. The less attractive girls will get less attention as the guys will try their chances with the hotter girls
3. And all the girls would have a worse experience, ugly or hot, which might result in them leaving.
Although the article is not completely accurate ("Those in the dreaded bottom 50% presumably do not have access to potential matches in the top 50%" -- not true from what was in the email), it does bring up valid points. How much should physical attractiveness play a role in relationships? Is it smart to isolate a part of your user base with such an email?
And who is Okcupid to make judgement calls on who I may find attractive?
I know what the problem is... After seeing some of the pictures of the people who got that letter, I'm pretty convinced they gave it to the bottom half.
People rarely date someone who's very significantly more or less attractive than they are.
People are also much more likely to date someone of their own race. Should OkCupid segregate by race as well? Oh wait, that's a social taboo, whereas discriminating against the ugly is considered perfectly acceptable.
If the methods by which they measure attractiveness overlap with the methods by which they measure racial bias (covered in one of their blog posts), then they could very well be implying (whether they mean to or not) that attractiveness is correlated with race.
