I'd like to garner your opinions: what else could IAC have done in this situation? Or perhaps a better question is what you would have done in their shoes.
One property is threatening the business model of another in a visible way (at least in search engine rankings). I propose that the readership of OkTrends is minimal compared to the wider online dating market, so was this the prudent course of action?
Well, let's assume for the sake of argument that the post was pulled as a result of pressure from IAC, Match.com, etc. I don't know that this is the case, but it certainly seems plausible.
So, what should IAC/Match.com/whoever have done in this situation? Leave it the heck alone! First of all, by owning two of the biggest players in online dating, customer acquisition is basically a zero-sum game as far as IAC is concerned- presumably, any customers lost to Match.com from OKCupid's blog post would end up going with OKCupid instead, and therefore either way IAC wins, so what does it matter? Of course, this assumes that an OKCupid customer is of equal value as a Match.com customer, which may or may not be true.
Secondly, it's important for IAC/Match.com to keep in mind larger question of why they felt like it was worthwhile to own OKCupid in the first place. Presumably, they wanted to own it because it targeted a different customer population than their other properties; part of the reason that it does so is because of its quirky, "edgy", and open image. It's 2011; people notice when companies take down influential and well-known blog posts, and their opinions of these companies change accordingly. Ergo, by pulling these sorts of shenanigans, IAC or Match.com is potentially undermining the very thing that made OKCupid attractive to them.
I suppose one could try and do some sort of calculation:
X = # customers lost to Match.com as a result of OKCupid's "don't pay for online dating" post;
Y = # customers alienated, amount of bad publicity, internal drama at OKCupid, bad karma, etc. resulting from taking down a well-known (and accurate) blog post
Is X > Y? Mazel tov, take down the post. Is Y > X? Leave it alone; monkeying with it will do more harm than good.
Note that this sort of calculation is essentially impossible to do in a principled way; as such, it seems to me that the sensible course would have been to just leave it alone and focus on making better products.
But what do I know? I'm just a informatics nerd, not a business expert, so maybe there's more to the situation than I'm seeing.
The blog is part of the OKC brand, possibly the part with the most integrity. Given this, the blog is part of the value that IAC was purchasing. Regardless of IAC's intentions, the OKC blog (and the pay-dating article) was part of the reason they were an attractive acquisition target.
I have to wonder whether this deal is related to the "should I sell to these guys?" question last week.
One property is threatening the business model of another in a visible way (at least in search engine rankings). I propose that the readership of OkTrends is minimal compared to the wider online dating market, so was this the prudent course of action?