User:Zach the TA

OkCupid is a free dating and social networking website that features member-created quizzes. The site supports various modes of communication, including personal blogs, public forums, instant messages, emails, and "winks." OkCupid was listed in TIME's 2007 Top 10 dating sites.

Overview
OkCupid facilitates both heterosexual and same-sex relationships. OkCupid claims 3.5 million active users as of September 2010. According to Compete.com, OkCupid attracted 1.3 million unique visitors in February 2011.

The site boasts a highly active journal/blogging community as well. Journals are not easily available to new members; the feature is stated as "retired." Members have the option of saving favorite users' profiles, which displays the favorited person's new journal entries as well as comments on others' entries on the member's front page.

OkCupid is entirely free to use and does not place any restrictions on messaging or searching for non-paying users. The registration process is quick with no restrictions on who may join the site. A-List members see no advertising and have more filtering options, the ability to separate photos into photo albums, and preferential placement in an "A-List Matches" section of search results. A-list members can also browse openly while choosing whether or not their profile is displayed to those they visited.

OkTrends, the official blog of OkCupid, shows statistical observations from OkCupid user interactions, to explore the data side of the online dating world.

OkTrends articles have had over a million unique readers since July 2009.

Functional Tiers

 * 1) Presentation - This is the topmost level of the application. The presentation tier displays information related to such services as profile information aggregation. It communicates with other tiers by outputting results to the browser/client tier and all other tiers in the network. Presentation information is how you would want the user to view it.
 * 2) Processing - The processing tier is defined by algorithm analysis. It controls an application’s functionality by performing detailed processing. For this social networking system, the inserted data is processed through comparative algorithms to set a criteria for each user. For example, a user can input a preference and other users with the same preference show up in the results.Processing information is organized through algorithms.
 * 3) Data - This tier consists of database servers. Here information is stored and retrieved. This tier keeps data neutral and independent from application servers or business logic. Giving data its own tier also improves scalability and performance. The Data in our system uses information- It collects information through user input. Data is raw stored information derived from database tables.

Feature 1: Match Search
Users can search for other users based on their preferences, the questions that they have answered, and the filter that they apply. The user interface is similiar to other advanced search interfaces. The filters are shown at the top of the page, with results following below in order of best match. Some of the filters include: ethnicity, sex, orientation, and age. The basic idea behind how the results are displayed is that the system matches you based on questions you have answered about your outlook on life. For instance, one of the questions is “Do spelling mistakes annoy you?” If other users answered similarly then they have a higher chance of showing up in the search results. In order for this function to work, the person infotype and question infotype must be used together. There are partial views of the person infotype and the question infotype is used in the algorithm for choosing who gets displayed.

Feature 2: Messaging
Users are able to message one another which is the system’s primary method of connection. Users use this function to express interest in a profile by sending a private message to initiate contact. The thread of information is stored so that users can track their communication with multiple recipients. The interface used for this feature consists of a message window that feeds to a thread- with each post displaying the date and time, along with the profile picture that is associated with each user. The messaging function also has the ability to attach an image, block the other user, and delete all messages in the thread. The site uses a one to one relationship for this function and alerts the other user when a new message has arrived in their inbox. The info types that are used include user and message.

Feature 3: Quickmatch
Quickmatch is a feature where users are given random profiles and the user can then rate the profile to show interest or not. This is a feature which allows a user to connect with many other users in a short amount of time. The user interface is a full view of the users profile with their match score to your profile. The algorithm used in Quickmatch does a random quiry which will pull up a random selection of users which is filtered based on of the users location, gender and sexual preference. Info types here are Person infotype and the Question infotype. The feature gives your a full view of the Person info type and a partial view of the Question infotype.

Person Infotype
Attributes -> value pattern:

Username -> characters, less than 16

Picture -> image file

Self Summary -> text, less than 500 characters

Ethnicity -> taxonomy

Height -> feet/inches, meters

Question Infotype
Attributes -> value pattern:

Question -> text, less than 200 characters

Possible answers -> True/False Values

Weight of the question -> numerical, 0-5

Message Infotype
Attributes -> value pattern:

Message -> text, less than 10,000 characters

Sender -> Person infotype with unique ID

Receiver -> Person infotype with unique ID

Match Search Results - Sequence
Match Search results organizes the Person info type based on the filter and the effectiveness of their match. This takes into account the Question Infotype to determine the effectiveness of their match. The design on the sequence is similar to that of search engines. the person’s picture is displayed with a blurb about who they are. It fits well with the overall design of the site.

Similar Users - Links
Similar users use the Person info type from the profile your currently in and use an algorithm to find users with similar user data and retrieve their information as a suggestion. The similar users function also adds a caption on their profile which indicates differences between the current user and the suggested ones. This can be captions such as "more adventures", "less political" and "more desiring of sex".