I have a friend in NYC who is a old-school matchmaker (sole proprietor). If she told me that she was doing a search for a client and looking on dating sites for prospects, I wouldn't blink. I guess that I trust she is trying to act in the best interests of the two people in the potential match.

Is this substantially different?

The interests of the clients are irrelevant. If you owned a business and your competitor used your business's facilities to promote his to your detriment, you'd understandably be upset. That's precisely what the poster is being accused of.

I think it depends - would your friend message the prospects on okcupid/POF, or tell her client "here are some great profiles, you should message these people"? Those are very different; I suspect dating sites would have a problem with the former and not the latter.

> Unless they're on OKC to look for dates, they have no business being there.

This isn't true. Some look for companionship on OKC. Why they use OKC for it, I have no idea but 100% of the user base isn't strictly for dates/hooking up.

I think you're arguing semantics here (or trolling). The point is that users shouldn't be sending messages as a proxy.

Exactly!

The right way to go about helping out their clients without potentially spamming OKC users would be to message their client on their own site that they have found someone for them on OkCupid. They could then ask their client to sign up to OkCupid to view the account and message the user.

Some people look for friends on OKC. While I wouldn't say they have no businesses being there - they definitely shouldn't spam users.