By ditching usernames, OKCupid is removing a crucial protective barrier
If you think <i>this</i> is big, by the way, make sure you take a look at their post from December 11th:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;theblog.okcupid.com&#x2F;why-okcupid-is-changing-how-you-message-f14d492e7853" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;theblog.okcupid.com&#x2F;why-okcupid-is-changing-how-you-...</a><p>They&#x27;ve completely obliterated the way messaging works. You will never see a message from someone unless you&#x27;re either looking at their profile or you&#x27;ve &quot;liked&quot; them.<p>It&#x27;s an interesting model. But it&#x27;s also essentially driving interaction through the matching bottleneck, which is at odds with the substance-over-selfie slogan, since it turns  incentives towards profile enhancement rather than investment in messaging. And it&#x27;s also the kind of change you can&#x27;t just blog-post explain away and expect to keep your existing users, just like the name change. It would be better suited for a new product than an existing one.<p>Then again, maybe dating sites work best with massive turnover in userbase anyway.  And even if not, that doesn&#x27;t mean this isn&#x27;t some of the sharpest possible product management out there. At least in the sense of responding to the incentives for people who want to develop their product careers, not necessarily in terms of actually improving the product.