OKCupid, a free online dating site, found that users were not only interested in creating and taking its tests to establish their compatibility with others. They were also using them for a range of plutonic purposes out of general curiosity about themselves and how they compared to friends.
So the site spun off a new web property called HelloQuizzy that serves as both a destination for user generated quizzes, and an engine for 3rd-party websites to integrate quizzes into their own services.
OKCupid Co-Founder Sam Yagan explains that HelloQuizzy is meant bring a whole new level of functionality to the quizzes you’ll find on sites like Quizilla, Quiz Farm, and Tickle (recently deadpooled). For example, quizzes can include rich media like YouTube videos and results are displayed through informative graphs.
Like CrazyBlindDate, another OKCupid spinoff for setting up blind dates, HelloQuizzy retains OKCupid’s playful design and character. It also shares the same business model: driving traffic back to OKCupid. When HelloQuizzy users sign up and take tests, the site learns more about them (the sign up process even bluntly asks whether they’re single). This gives HelloQuizzy the opportunity later to suggest how OKCupid might help them find love or lust.
OKCupid is also the first site to implement HelloQuizzy’s engine. Staring today, users who create quizzes on OKCupid will actually do so through HelloQuizzy. The quizzes are made available on both sites, and HelloQuizzy benefits from being seeded with the 35,000+ quizzes created on OKCupid to date. Other sites that want to implement HelloQuizzy’s engine are encouraged to contact the company for more details. They will be able to easily import and export quizzes since HelloQuizzy’s tests are based in XML.
Also check out Y Combinator startup MightyQuiz for another Web 2.0 take on quizzes. And be sure to take The Silicon Strength Test on HelloQuizzy to show off how closely you’ve read TechCrunch over the past three years.