Pretty useless for any average looking guy who was able to punch above his weight through better written messages. Now their messages probably won't even be seen at all, so, why bother putting in the effort to write one? Most likely outcome: the few high quality openers that were being written evaporate entirely.

In a world where Gmail can classify arbitrary mail on any topic into important, not important and spam it seems unlikely that OkCupid was unable to order received messages by quality. Seems more like an attempt to Tinderize themselves. The repeated but dubious references to how dating has been changing back this up. Has dating been changing? Or has the market been changing and OkCupid felt left out?

Too bad. I don't need to use dating sites anymore but years ago when I did OkCupid was one of the better ones. And there's nothing women appreciate more on those sites than a funny and well written opening message.

edit: Wow, just reading the responses to the blog post, every single response is negative. Not a single positive response to this change

> And there's nothing women appreciate more on those sites than a funny and well written opening message.

Sure there is, a good looking guy messaging them.

I agree it's a shame, I enjoyed OKC as it was, met my current partner on their in fact.

I don't use the site now, but it's almost certainly intended to solve the problem that women get deluged with hundreds of messages a week, making so much noise that it's impossible to not be ignored as a guy, and it's annoying as a woman. In the new framework women can receive as many messages as matches, like a rate limiting, which might make for more participation.

I don't think it'll have any more of in impact on the primacy of physical attributes, because those already deeply mattered.