User engagement and user engagements: the data of online dating

In the age of Big Data, Christian Rudder stands out. Rudder is in possession of one of the richest data sets in the world, accumulated from the dating site he co-founded, OkCupid. In his 2014 book, Dataclysm, he uses this (and other) data to show us the human behaviour behind the numbers: a revolutionary look at who we truly are. He still runs OkCupid (which was sold to IAC in 2011) day-to-day, while also heading a small data-mining team that scours the digital universe for meaningful trends on important sites. The original outlet for Rudder’s research took place on OKCupid’s blog, OKTrends, which was not only read by millions of people, but also changed the way companies approach data as a media-relations strategy. His research and findings have been featured repeatedly in The New York Times, Harper’s, The Atlantic, and were the subject of a New Yorker feature. Graduating Harvard cum laude with a math degree, Christian Rudder got his start as the Creative Director for SparkNotes, a sort of 21st century Cliff’s Notes for the Internet, which was sold to Barnes & Noble in 2001. He sold Dataclysm for a seven-figure deal—an usually unheard of amount for a first time author.