The popular dating site, OKCupid, announced that it had experimented on its subscribers by matching incompatible people together and seeing if they would have chemistry.

The site determines compatibility by asking its users questions and matching them to potential partners who have the same preferences and answers.

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OKCupid said that the bad-match experiment wasn't unusual and, that every site experiments on every internet user, stating "That's how websites work."

The experiment revealed that users just apparently looked at the pictures of other people, instead of really reading their profiles.

What OKCupid did was to get two individuals who matched low, around 30% compatibility, and told them that they were 90% compatible.

Christian Rudder, one of the founders of OKCupid, shared, "Not surprisingly, the users sent more first messages when we said they were compatible."

He further revealed that as the experiment progressed, they discovered that when people were told that they were compatible, they acted as if they were a good match despite the fact that they really were incompatible when it came to background and preferences.

The company eventually told the participants about the secret experiment.

In a previous experiment, OKCupid discovered that although they put up profiles which had photos but incomplete answers, people still responded purely based on the pictures. "Your actual words are worth... almost nothing," Rudder commented.

OKCupid's admissions come after the major scrutiny on Facebook with regards to its "manipulative" decision to change news feeds found on the main page, which were said "to control the emotional expressions the users were exposed to".

Rudder reiterated that experiments such as OKCupid's and Facebook's are necessary in order for companies to determine what works and what doesn't, and which aspects of the sites are good and which are bad. It is after all still business - run by people who have to determine what other people want and like.

IAC/InterActive Corp owns OKCupid, as well as other major dating sites such as Match.com.