OKCupid, without the dating?

January 14, 2011 10:04 AM

Tell me about question-and-answer driven websites or games?

Are there any sites besides OKCupid that are built around a match algorithm driven by the activity of asking and answering questions? I am hoping that someone will tell me that there is a game built this way, since I'm not really looking for a date, but I really love the process of uncovering interesting people in this way.

AskMefi, for example, could have a matching feature...

I am not so interested in quizzes/polls; the feature that distinguishes OKCupid is never-ending flood of finer-grained custom questions. I know that polls and quizzes have been a very successful social networking offering, but they are a pretty blunt tool. It is the *matching* that I personally enjoy.

posted by MisterMo to computers & internet (4 answers total)

Netflix (and last.fm to a lesser degree) kinda has the same thing going on with their similarity ratings.
posted by clorox at 10:12 AM on January 14, 2011

Excellent point about NetFlix, yes. And people do obsess over the activity, which is proof of its success. But it is not question/answer driven in the way that I'm looking for.

To me, if the NetFlix users were able to create custom questions that teased out perceived subtleties of the films and that were used to find other like-minded (or ignorantly opposed) film buffs, *this* would be a great feature.
posted by MisterMo at 10:22 AM on January 14, 2011

Hunch.com does this in the process of constructing taste profiles. You can find other users who share your same interests. However, it's not really to the end of actually meeting any of the other users, although I suppose you could do that if you wanted to. Many of the THAY (Teach Hunch About You) questions are user-submitted and similar to the OkCupid match questions.

(disclaimer: I did some freelance work for Hunch last year but am not affiliated with them in any capacity.)
posted by Fuego at 11:36 AM on January 14, 2011

Google Reader has a "sort by magic" feature which can be selected for each feed. You can even apply it to AskMeFi.
posted by Nameless at 4:06 PM on January 14, 2011