Let's put aside the "Facebook is evil and therefore everything they do is evil" tangents for a minute since if you're in that boat then its hard to have a useful discussion about this specific feature. And I want to talk about the details of Dating.
Facebook is exactly the right company to pull this off in a way that actually changes the 'industry'. I really want this to be successful and as good as I hope it can be.
* Dating apps live and die by their userbase so we're already doing pretty good there.
* Using the social graph for matches is brilliant since its actually how people IRL do it and you have a built in endorsement system with mutual friends. Having what amounts to an audit trail of "I know this guy, he's cool" gives me a lot more confidence that I'm not getting into trouble.
* More than any other dating platform they have the tools to combat bots and fakes at scale.
* Strongly connecting dating with IRL identity is basically mandatory for safety.
* Facebook has huge potential to make dating safer by knowing when you're together detecting suspicious activity. Integrating their crisis response system would be a game changer.
* Dating apps necessarily collect a lot of user information, there isn't much way around it, and for all their faults Facebook has way more experience than anyone else in protecting it.
* Good on them for removing picture messages, I can't say I'm ever happy to receive unsolicited dick pics.
Are you sure facebook is the right app though? They obviously have a large user base, but is facebook really being used anymore?
This is anecdotal, but everyone in my social circle is considering quitting facebook. They stick around for the same reason I am, because events are planned on facebook, because everyone is there.
No one really uses the wall though, and messenger completely died when it started forcing you to use it on mobile and people simply started using other message services because half their friends wouldn't respond until they were at computers.
That's not to say facebook the company is struggling. The wall has moved to instagram and a lot of people obviously use watsapp, but facebook itself is almost exclusively a better meetup.
Maybe this is different in the US, and it's certainly anecdotal, but it's the story I hear everywhere.
The user base is big, like you've said, and that means facebook has better potential than almost everyone else, I'll agree with you there, at least in theory. I just don't think Facebook is really a company with enough vision to disrupt online dating. If they were, they probably wouldn't still be trying to push facebook as their core product, and certainly not at the expense of their new apps that people actually like. I mean, it feels like the world is moving on, and Facebook isn't realising it, maybe because of their company name, but it just feels like they don't have the or any vision anymore.
> messenger completely died when it started forcing you to use it on mobile and people simply started using other message services because half their friends wouldn't respond until they were at computers.
To counter this with my own personal anecdote, in my social circles this is not true at all, and messenger has become even more of the messaging standard in recent times.
A second anecdote, every single communication for me is over FB messenger or iMessage. I occasionally get SMS messages but I refuse to use SMS long-term with my android friends, you just miss out on too many features.
Encryption, authentication, delivery notifications, read receipts, typing indicators, group messaging, hyperlink previews, third party app integrations, (some) emojis, etc.
The experience of using SMS is spartan and incomparable to modern messaging applications like iMessage, Whatsapp or Facebook Messenger.
Plus, if you lose your phone and you don't have your SMS msgs backed up, they are lost forever pretty much. With messenger, because they are not device dependent, they are still there. You can access them from any device (mobile or desktop) which is connected to the net.
I haven't used an SMS in ages...can't even remember the last time I texted or received one.
Definitely. There are many friends and family members whose phone numbers I’ve lost track of I can easily contact via messenger. That’s amazingly useful.
At some point in the month those accounts make some kind of connection with Facebook’s auth system. Those accounts are almost certainly not 1:1 with people.
The real usage of Facebook is probably a fraction of that number. They have huge incentives to mislead about those figures.
A much better stat would be the number of individual people (eliminating known duplicates and businesses) who post an original post to their timeline each day, each week, and each month. Facebook don’t post those figures because they would be pretty darn low.
Just stand in a subway and see what apps people are using. I’m in Southeast Asia and it’s Facebook or Line all the time. I almost never use it myself any lots of friends don’t either but these things will be correlated with my own preferences by nature. I also don’t read tabloids or watch reality tv but I know people on aggregate consume those a bunch.
Facebook is still being used, the majority of users are between 18 to 44 as can be seen on statista thru google search. However there is basically no young people. Having this dating feature kind of matches with their adult demographic who likely can pay. After all fb is dying with no young people signing up in North America, its gotta find a way out. Note that around the world but not North America and Europe there are still many young people signing up for FB.
I'm pretty sure Facebook users aren't more married than the average person. And kids aren't really on Facebook, not sure where you got that impression from.
I spend 4-6 months at a time without logging in. I don't delete my facebook because I used as a kind of blog for years and don't want to delete all that content yet.
I find that feature of Facebook pretty distasteful. Someone at Facebook said “how can we use natural disasters and terrorist attacks to boost our engagement figures?”
I know where people live. I have a contacts list on my computer with phone numbers and email addresses. I don't use Facebook, WhatsApp, or any of those sites. There is a price for knowing exactly where everyone is at all times.
I don't see how, but if you feel so strongly about it you could put those cities in your address book as well.
It's still a huge stretch to call facebook essential. A growing number of peers and myself don't facebook, yet I don't know of anyone who has lost their home, job, and gone hungry because of it.
My social life and productivity have greatly improved since I quit Facebook. I also started to read more books, because my general concentration is returning.
Every time you read an algorithmic news feed, ask yourself, "is this more educational than reading a great book?" The answer will nearly always be no.
I'm referring to the huge cost of Facebook in productivity and cognitive functioning.
I don't think there is a price for knowing phone numbers and email addresses. It's much more harmful for Facebook to have my data than for people who I care about to have my phone number or email address. (My email addresses are public anyway.)
The people I immediately care about being safe are people I can and will contact directly outside of Facebook. Everyone else, I’ll find out about eventually.
Both, plus Groups and Events - groups are actually a huge major contributor to the development of shared economics in our country, a lot of people stick around because they want to participate in the hundreds of various interesting and well moderated groups (local food, housing, cars, ...) that are available in our language - I tried to find similar ones in English or other languages but failed. There are a few, but nothing comparable, discussion quality is usually much worse and ads are scam.
Five out of your seven arguments are directly or indirectly linked to safety. This post right here is something Dating App entrepreneurs should take a note of.
>Dating apps live and die by their userbase so we're already doing pretty good there.
The only people on facebook are boomers arguing about politics. Dating is all about exclusivity and compartmentalization. Nobody wants to date in the same place they get happy birthday messages from their grandma.
>Using the social graph for matches is brilliant
Nobody wants to see their friend of friends on a dating site. Tinder tried this already and it bombed. The current meta for dating apps is to exclude anyone in your contacts or friendlists.
>More than any other dating platform they have the tools to combat bots and fakes at scale.
This is largely self-policing. Bots are in neither sides best interest so they get reported and removed quickly.
>Facebook has huge potential to make dating safer by knowing when you're together detecting suspicious activity
I barely want facebook to know my name, let alone when and where I'm on a first date. This, again, is largely self-policing. Meet in public places. Make sure your date passes the sniff-test. Yes there are bad actors out there, but there is also personal responsibility.
As for picture messages and data. I don't trust any company and its probably best to keep data from being centralized as best as possible. But that's just my opinion.
> Nobody wants to see their friend of friends on a dating site. Tinder tried this already and it bombed. The current meta for dating apps is to exclude anyone in your contacts or friendlists.
If you exclude your contacts and friend lists and exclude friend of friends, who does that leave? Friends of friends of friends? Complete strangers? I wonder what proportion of couples knew each other directly or indirectly before they got together: "Oh, you know Jack! Yeah, he's by father’s brother’s nephew’s cousin’s former roommate!"
Obviously I have no hard data, but it's not too difficult to imagine that couples come together with all sorts of varying prior knowledge of each other's existence.
That the current meta is this, doesn't mean that is the most successful strategy for all people at all times.
I think dating apps suffer from the public health policy vs. individualised medicine paradox: what might be good policy for people en masse might be terrible advice for any particular individual.
Why is that how it's "supposed" to work? Most couples I know met IRL, and from a close circle (direct friends/coworkers or friends-of-friends at most). I'm not sure I know any couples who were complete strangers before dating.
People tend to use dating websites/apps because they want to find someone _different_. People tend to have friends that are like them, but that is not always what you want in a relationship.
> I wonder what proportion of couples knew each other directly or indirectly before they go together:
A good proportion I bet, but they didn't meet on a dating app.
Dating apps are used by people trying to "catch other fish in the sea". They want to expand their selection to social groups outside their immediate one, and date in a way that doesn't impact their status within their current group. If all your friends know Jack, and you dump him, word will get around for better or worse.
You're making the case for why people don't want to match with their immediate friends, but there's a lot of value in matching with people just one degree of separation away, through a mutual friendship. After all, that's how a lot of dating already goes down in real life.
Your Jack example is true if you and Jack share a considerable amount of mutual friends. But almost all the people I meet on Tinder only have a couple mutual friends with me, no more. Often just one. Any sort of failures in our relationship don't have that much reach, yet I still have benefits like being able to query my mutual friend about that person, or leverage them in some other way like having them invite us both to an event to get the ball rolling.
Oh, I see now a thought-filter I was applying when I wrote my previous comment.
I live in Tasmania, the whole island has a population of about 512,000. If you exclude friends of friends of friends, that's pretty much everyone here.
Still, Australia's top 5 cities have about 64% of the population. If you live in any of the non-top-five and exclude friends of friends of friends, that's a fair chunk of the locals.
Centralization of data aside, playing non-devils advocate:
> The only people on facebook are boomers arguing about politics. Dating is all about exclusivity and compartmentalization. Nobody wants to date in the same place they get happy birthday messages from their grandma.
The Facebook you see is very different from the Facebook I see (which is the point I guess).
> Nobody wants to see their friend of friends on a dating site. Tinder tried this already and it bombed. The current meta for dating apps is to exclude anyone in your contacts or friendlists.
I think it depends on what we mean by "dating" and who we're talking about.
Dudes on Tinder and Grindr (hookups), sure, that could be awkward. I know people who opt for other apps because they're not trying to get laid, but rather want to find someone who they can form an actual meaningful connection with. In this case friend of friends are great. As OP mentioned, safety is also worth considering and something disproportionately worrying women: meeting people integrated in your near social graph keeps you safe both physically and emotionally.
Same here. I'd rather not online date someone from my social circle. Sure, if it happens with someone I know offline, it will happen. But I don't want to turn FB into a pseudo-dating site as well. There's too much personal info on there for that kind of stuff. Plus scope for waaay too much drama, if things go south.
I disagree with your assertion that "Strongly connecting dating with IRL identity is basically mandatory for safety."
Strongly connecting anything with your IRL identity is a recipe for doxxing and stalking.
I think Facebook's biggest challenge with their dating platform will be convincing women that they will both get good matches and be able to stay safe on the platform.
Sex workers have a screening process that demands your IRL identity for safety.
Turns out doxxing/stalking can always happen, but knowing someone's identity still makes you safer. For one, it gives you recourse. In Facebook's case, it also gives people social proof and precisely helps avoid the sort of troglodyte that's going to stalk you. When I see that I have mutual friends with someone on Tinder, I certainly have asked my mutual friend about that person just like you would do when dating through your existing friends, like that woman you met at your friend's dinner party.
Also, most dating in human history has happened through immediate social channels where you know someone's identity. I don't see what alternative you're proposing except blind dating with strangers with zero social proof. Yeah, women aren't going to do that for safety concerns.
I don't see as much negative behaviour from people in Facebook, as I do in online platforms which are anonymous.
Maybe it's just my friends aren't a meaningful sample of people, or maybe it's that-- since you connect with your friends and a lot of people you know IRL, it's less common that these are people you'd hurt with impunity.
I manage online communities, and I saw many people behaving terribly on Facebook. Some people who were polite and well behaved under a pseudonym on my communities would become very unpleasant people when posting under their real names on Facebook. Many Facebook groups are toxic.
Communities aren't well behaved based on real names -- they are well behaved based on the culture that is created by the moderators.
While this is "true", this is already happening. In the vast majority of cases, your match's Facebook profile will both be there and have some public information. Also, a huge amount of the lack of safety from potentially fake profiles can be addressed more systematically and in a more scalable way.
> * Dating apps necessarily collect a lot of user information, there isn't much way around it, and for all their faults Facebook has way more experience than anyone else in protecting it.
Isn't Facebook famous for NOT protecting it? How is any other dating company worse?
I agree on most of the points you raised except this one:
> * More than any other dating platform they have the tools to combat bots and fakes at scale.
I'm not sure this is true. Bots and fakes are still a huge issue on Facebook. They might have more money to pour into the finding the solution, but doesn't mean they have a good one yet
> * Facebook has huge potential to make dating safer by knowing when you're together detecting suspicious activity. Integrating their crisis response system would be a game changer.
I didn't realize online dating is so unsafe that this would be a "game changer." Online dating is already safer than (for example) meeting some random person at a bar or party, assuming you first meet the person in public which is an obvious thing to do. Presumably you've exchanged phone numbers or have some kind of identity of the person you're going out with, should you go missing, people know who to look for. I suppose the contact info they're giving you could be faked, and they could be using Tor the entire time, but I'd say someone nefarious like that is far more likely to be picking up drunk people at bars who aren't even paying attention and not even thinking in that direction.
> Online dating is already safer than (for example) meeting some random person at a bar or party, assuming you first meet the person in public which is an obvious thing to do.
This is not necessarily true. I've been harassed by people who I've talked to online who have never even progressed to the meeting stage (we talk a little bit, I determine I'm not interested, a meeting never happens). They'll create fake accounts, message from their friends' accounts, etc. because some people don't know how to take no for an answer. People are a lot more willing to harass behind anonymity than to stalk people in person, because the bar and the resulting consequences are so much lower. Plus it's a lot easier to screen people in person than it is to assess potentially fake profiles.
That being said, I don't think that Facebook dating is the answer to this.
Most of your points are about safety and that's a concern many have. I'm curious though, do we know how big of a problem it actually is? What's the probability of an online date being unsafe vs a bar date?
How much of it is rational vs irrational fear. Is it more likely you'll get hurt driving on the way to the date?
FB has a few other things it can bring to the table, too. Assuming reasonable user engagement on the platform:
-They can match people with similar interests, or similar friend groups (or test the hypothesis that opposites attract).
-They can recommend good places for (individual or group) dates (with advertisers offering discounts).
-They could remind you when your anniversary or your SO has a birthday coming up and recommend gifts and locations.
-Also, it's actually one area where advertisers and FB users can actually be aligned. If you're just looking for casual dates, you could be recommended new clothes, grooming services, bed sheets (haha), or other things. If you're in a relationship, they could recommend occasional gifts that your SO might like, or restaurants.
Plus, they have a ton of experience with combatting harassment. The more I talk about this, the more I think they have a good shot of getting this to work.
"They could remind you when your anniversary or your SO has a birthday coming up and recommend gifts and locations."
I don't see how that's a relevant capability for dating.
You're not supposed to be dating lots of people at the same time, so you should be able to keep track. Furthermore, these dates should not last more than mere weeks in practice, otherwise you can be sure someone is sitting in your seat.
Let's be honest, if your date hasn't let you know about her upcoming birthday, then it means you're not invited.
It’s relevant because the whole point of the service, clearly stated, is long-term relationships. My point is that not only can they help you out with the initial matchmaking, but they could also help you maintain your relationship. Other products like tinder/bumble/etc are standalone and have to maximize engagement even after their initial matchmaking, but FB does not.
Well I’m not sure about all of that stuff, but Facebook is definitely going to be able to monetize the ad inventory a lot better than Match Group. Dating app behavior doesn’t look much different to me than people obsessively viewing a Facebook or Instagram feed.
Dating apps are more directed towards younger generations ( Millennials, Generation Z) and if you look at recent use those generations seem to be dropping Facebook.
No. Dating "apps" live and die by their customers. The bulk of the dating app industry is powered by bots, false accounts and professional "trainers". Some are real, but the majority of the industry is a scam.
I don't understand. Bots aren't that big of a deal, and it's not unlike encountering a woman who doesn't want to meet up: you find out very quickly and you move on.
Until bots are going on dates and sleeping with you, I don't see how online dating is "powered by bots." You glaze over them the same way you ignore a spam post on a forum.
>>“Chatbots” — computer programs that use artificial intelligence to strike up conversations with dating site users — enable scammers to “talk” with multiple potential victims at once. They’re particularly active on the Tinder dating app, which employs users’ locations and Facebook profiles to try to link them with nearby online romance seekers.
The big takeaway from the Ashley Madison hack was that nobody was actually having any affairs. All those men were paying for a dream. There were next to zero real women on the site. It was all bots and fake accounts. And that company, ironically a Canadian company, was being called a potential pre-IPO unicorn.
I'm not sure what you're trying to prove. That article even enumerates the trivial ways in which you can detect these scams.
Is email "powered by bots" because spam/phishing/scams happen there, too? Seems like a worthless distinction to me. What about in real life when someone scams you by asking for bus money but they didn't actually need it for the bus? Hell, maybe you even have to mess up a few times before you learn. So what?
It's pretty easy to evaluate the utility of a dating service: are you actually meeting people? That's not something bots can fake, yet.
Have you actually used Tinder and found yourself talking to a bot enough times for it to challenge your entire objective? Because I have a very hard time believing that just like I doubt you've fallen for an adultfriendfinder "girls in your area" advertisement more than once.
Some live, human women on dating apps even ask you to Venmo them some money. Well, you unmatch with them and move on. No dating app can give you an unending consecutive succession of mates that will blossom into an in-person meet-up and then a relationship. Real life can't give you that, either. You already have to deal with the interactions that fizzle out, whether it's someone who never even responded to you, a chat bot that drops you an adultfriendfinder link, or someone you ended up not clicking with after all. That's life.
Internet dating is one of those businesses that superficially seems like it makes sense; aka "hey, let's use data and statistics to fix people up" -but ultimately couldn't possibly work to the benefit of the people it purports to fix up. Two main reasons.
1) Histocompatibility -some people smell right. Some people don't. Chemistry isn't something you're gonna capture over the internet, even if you enjoy the online bantz and have tons of stuff in common. Barring breakthroughs in genetics and even more privacy invasions, the FBs of the world can't help here.
2) Principal agent problem: for all payment techniques thus explored for online dating, the interests of the dating service are not in alignment with daters who want a monogamous LTR. Dating apps who collect monthly fees want to continue to collect monthly fees. Dating apps that rely on advertising want continued obsessive engagement. Alignment of interests would look something like an old school matchmaker who only gets paid if they succeed in making a match -you're not going to pull this off with an app. Facebook, of course wants to keep you on their platform.
(1) is like saying that job ads don't work, because you still have to interview candidates. Dating apps get you to meet more people so you can test that chemistry and have an higher change of finding a match.
Job matching is drastically asymmetric, though. For a company, it may work, but from a person's perspective, I wouldn't describe it that way. I don't want a dating website to treat me as poorly as any job website does.
Simply meeting more people isn't useful unless you have reason to believe the people are good potential matches -- even if you're on the strong side of the asymmetry. Companies don't find their new CTO by going through the phone book in order and interviewing every person.
>Principal agent problem: for all payment techniques thus explored for online dating, the interests of the dating service are not in alignment with daters who want a monogamous LTR.
The principle agent problem is a general refutation of the free market - why would a lawyer try to help you, when that means you won't need their service anymore? It is solved by the fact that people eventually realize when a service isn't working in their interest, and switch to another, and tend to recommend those services that worked best to their friends. For facebook in particular, they are interested not in having you use their service as a dating platform, but having you use their platform for anything. If you use facebook to meet people, you will be more likely to use their service for other tasks as well, like messaging your new friends, or organizing events with them. Purposefully handicapping their service would lead to people leaving all of facebook in despair when they find themselves unsuccessful.
>the statistics back this up
and yet you've failed to recognize the statistics related to replication in psychology.
>1) Histocompatibility -some people smell right. Some people don't. Chemistry isn't something you're gonna capture over the internet
Presumably AI could be used to filter for this. The way someone smells is no doubt related to various other factors - their family, their diet - which facebook could pull in as datapoints. By analysing the history of all successful relationships in america for the past decade, they can see which datapoints predict a successful relationship and which don't. This would then be used to suggest potential partners. If not, then this will have to be figured out on the first date instead.
Re: the principal agent problem - doesn’t this actually give FB an advantage? An effective dating app would just be another feature that may actually help with user retention. They don’t need to optimize for ongoing engagement for individual users.
The offering will support text-only conversations between matches in an effort to minimize "casual encounters" by building long-term relationships instead
What's to prevent two people from having similar interests and deciding they actually only want a casual encounter? Would that be against terms of using the feature?
I'm sure fb is probably just trying to absolve themselves of the chances someone will hook up with a child on the platform but there's probably better ways, already built into the site, no?
I guess I'm just wondering why Facebook cares if someone just wants a non committed hookup partner or not. Why do they want even want the burden of adjudicating completely normal dating and sexual choices?
"Dating" tends to be an asymmetrical market where you cannot be successful (as a service) unless you can get the heterosexual women to opt in (in sufficiently large numbers to make the thing make sense). Guys tend to be openly looking for hookups. Women who are amenable to hookups tend to have zero problem arranging that. So the people you need to appeal to are the women looking for a relationship, not a hookup, and who want assurances this will be wholesome and not another means for total strangers to sexually harass them with dick pics and the like.
Though I have read a few things that indicate that dating sites have helped increase the number of interracial marriages and made it much easier for gays to find a mate. If you are gay and not out to your family or whatever, you can go on a dating site and admit that you are gay there and it vastly simplifies navigating a complex situation like that. Some gays still pretend they are straight and their lover is just a roommate to help make life in the big city affordable or whatever.
This is why I love Bumble. Women have to reach out first, so its much less hassle (as a male) of messaging over and over and over again into a black hole with no response.
> So the people you need to appeal to are the women looking for a relationship, not a hookup, and who want assurances this will be wholesome and not another means for total strangers to
Not in the casual case. You simply say, "Only looking for hook ups, something casual, etc". No one's time is wasted. When my Bumble push notification comes in, I know it's someone who finds me attractive based on my honest photos and okay with something casual. It's the perfect filter for all involved.
Disclaimer: Still have a Facebook account, but rarely log in.
Dating is an imprecise word that covers both more casual relationships and the process more rightly called courtship. I am not familiar with any sites that list themselves as courtship sites. (Sites offering that service are typically listed as dating sites, though some dating sites explicitly cater to either/both.) Courtship is the process of sorting out who is a good match for a long term relationship and forming that bond and so forth.
Courtship typically requires one to also sort out how you fit into the larger social fabric of each other's lives. In contrast, hookups or casual flings typically are looking to cut you out of the fabric of their social lives. People generally don't want to introduce casual sexual relationships to important people in their lives, thus expressions like "The kind you don't take home to mother."
Facebook is a social network. Their value position naturally readily aligns with the idea of courtship and they are apparently going with that.
I don't use either dating sites or hookup sites. I'm not the target market. I'm just making observations based on reading up on how asymmetrical markets work and this is a standard thing that you run across. I have read that it is why you see "Ladies night" at bars. The guys are going to be there anyway. You need to find some means to entice the women to show up.
(Disclaimer: I also don't drink, so this is just stuff I have read about working with asymmetrical markets and developing a service when you have a chicken-and-egg problem.)
Agree entirely. If I had to do it all over again, I'd want a co-parenting website, to find a partner of sufficient character and grit to have kids with, but we'd both be free to date other people while raising our kids together. Who I want to have kids with, have a casual relationship with, or enjoy activities together with might not be the same person.
Social networks are part of the problem, but people not knowing what they want is also part of the problem. People are hard, and cannot be solved with engineering.
People are hard, and cannot be solved with engineering.
I just realized this was the force behind it the whole time, when I read the line about casual versus long-term relationships that made an eyebrow arch up, what you just said is what made me so skeptical.
Reading everyone else's thoughtful responses: of course Facebook doesn't want to adjudicate dating choices, Facebook employs engineers who need $stuff to work on. 'Dating' is another feature for a tech company that sells ads.
That sounds nice in theory, but why do you think your coparent would be interested in such an arrangement? Dating your spouse is far easier logisitically than dating anyone else, once you have kids eating up your time.
> When my Bumble push notification comes in, I know it's someone who finds me attractive based on my honest photos and okay with something casual. It's the perfect filter for all involved.
I've never used Bumble before but my understanding is that males in the top 20% of physical attractiveness get nearly all of the requests and that males in the bottom 80% get nearly none. Does that sound accurate?
I think one of the things that really hampered me was believing that attractiveness is:
1. always universal/objective
2. one dimensional
I took myself out of dating for a long time because of that set of beliefs combined with stats like the one you've posted. The truth is that different people find different types of people attractive. There are a few people who are just attractive (ironically a good number of those people are rather lonely because their good looks are intimidating) but the vast majority of people are attractive to some and not to others. Also, even how you present yourself matters a lot. Making yourself appear attractive does require some effort but it's not something you're stuck with.
If you're into long term relationships, you really only need a handful of people to find your attractive. The odds are actually in your favor when your sample size is large enough, which on a dating app it usually is.
I can't speak for other users, but I get at least one request per week. Make of that what you will (I'm a solid 6/10 on a good day). Putting yourself out there costs you nothing.
1. They don't want underage nudes on their servers, even if they are exchanged between consenting 17 year olds.
2. They got feedback from some focus group who said the worst part about other online dating apps is being given unsolicited pics or being asked for more pics.
This "casual encounter" bit is their chosen marketing-approved euphemism to explain this, or maybe it tested the best. I honestly don't think they care how this gets used, but I'm sure they tested all kinds of language and this did the best.
Its an implication of the target market, and it goes hand in hand with facebook itself: if you’re looking for casual hookups, you probably dont want to be openly exposed to friends/family. But if you’re doing something far more wholesome, like looking for a full relationship, then its perfectly fine for friends/family to be aware. And facebook hosting a dating app would be totally unnotable if there was no chance to for friends/family to find out: the whole point is that fb can filter onto your friends, and friends of friends, and so on, to naturally limit your possible matches to something far better than “kind of close to you”.
The friend-links allow you to verify the target human yourself (ask your chain how they are), it limits misbehavior (you’re sending dick picks to your friend’s best friend, not a random stranger), you’re naturally liklier to share a social circle or taste or whatever (you’re friends with the intermediate person for some reason).
So it has to be marketed and tuned towards something that is palatable to your broader social circle, because they are, more likely than not, going to find out.
And while you might accept casual dating, and people often don’t care, its still a broadly negative thing to be going around with. The general expectation (at least in the us) is that eventually you’ll stop, and have a serious relationship, and you don’t really go around showing off your casual relationships (at best, you pretend externally that its possibly serious until the day you break it up), and you certainly dont go around telling people you’re currently looking for a fuckbuddy (and your friend might be the one!), at least not directly, and certainly not broadly.
You don’t want to find your teacher on tinder/grindr, and you really don’t want to find your friends on it. (As always, in general, and especially post-teenage, and a US opinion)
Facebook cares deeply about "family values." We had to remove the ability for people to mark their profiles "married" or "in relationship" before they'd let us advertise on Facebook.
Well, they’re making a product choice to bias to aiming at one direction. That’s just a product choice that’s a useful differentiator when the most recent successful dating apps have been hookup apps.
I'm speaking as a long term and paid user of both Tinder and OKC. Online dating is complete garbage and I feel regret every time I open the services. The fact that Facebook is joining the game makes my stomach churn.
I didn't know my socially liberal city was secretly racist until I joined Tinder and OKC.
Unfiltered, unbiased, completely raw racism against Asian males.
Sometimes I wonder if it's worth continue living as a North American. There's just institutionalized racism from Hollywood, which everybody takes cue from.
Especially when there's a vacuum of identity due to the mosaic nature of Canadian identity, it creates ethnic silos, and just an air of unfriendly unwelcoming misery that is Vancouver, BC.
Or maybe everybody is house poor and blame it on Asians in Ferraris.....whyflag
I'm pretty jaded on the modernity of dating in general. OKC, Tinder, others haven't really helped that, and maybe it's generational or maybe it isn't--doesn't feel like many in my age group (27) are really that much interested in relationships of substance and trend more towards relationships because 'relationship'.
But again, jaded on dating in general, pretty darn content with everything else otherwise if I'm being honest (except the cat really does need to get a job and start pulling his weight around here).
I can see where you’re coming from. My armchair hypothesis is that people aren’t being taught how to have healthy long term monogamous relationships and why being in one (a healthy ltmr) can be so amazing. I won’t speculate on the cause, beyond suggesting that there is a negatively correlated social trend (based on no actual data) that seems like a logical inference.
This hypothetical situation implies that it is much less likely for people to find another party interested in teaming up. Luckily if both sides: know how to identify a healthy ltmr, know how to & will participate in a healthy ltmr, will keep testing partners until a healthy ltmr is formed, and are balanced population size (and more), everyone interested and capable will end up in a healthy ltmr. The regressions in this scenario are longer expected time to relationship and the emotional cost of testing potential partners. (Probably significant enough to address).
Based on the above scenario actionable advice is to do one’s best to satisfy the assumptions, weather the regression costs, and try to optimize your strategy to minimize the costs (becareful not to become a bad actor/violate the assumptions).
This scenario & strategy is likely full of holes, but maybe it can provide hope that there is a strategy that offers a high success rate.
Fair enough. I believe that iron sharpens iron as person sharpens person; and if a person is looking for sharpening, a strong partner is the best tool. Also a cook needs more than just sharp knives. :)
if a person is looking for sharpening, a strong partner is the best tool.
I kind of disagree with this notion, personal enrichment can come from all sorts of sources and places, and ins't reliant on having a significant other, but your point is taken for what it is.
I think FB is well-positioned to provide a better online dating experience than specialized online dating platforms. Specialized online dating platforms have a disincentive to cater to people looking for stable relationships, since these people typically stop using the platform once they have found a match. For example, I find that OkCupid's redesign last year/earlier this year (I forget the exact time interval when) smells of a reorientation towards catering to heavy users of the platform.
FB users, on the other hand, probably do not see (or see as much) a decrease in activity if/when they enter a stable relationship, and so FB can be more well-aligned with the relationship goals of its users.
Within, you'll find both facts and my own opinions.
I believe that, in the beginning, Tinder shocked women because they a) were reaffirmed that they were held in high value, and b) a subset of men will ruin a good chance (i.e. matching with someone) by sending unwanted dickpicks or just bring gross.
Over time, women felt jaded while also being put on a pedestal, a confusing situation no doubt. Now it's women's responsibility to avoid that, and they do so by being very selective with who they swipe on. As another commenter said, only the top percentage of men will regularly get matches while majority of women will easily match. (Anecdotal experience of mine and friends I talk with)
This leads to men having to liberally swipe right, while women can be very selective. At the same time, cultural standards say men have to be the first ones to message when a match occurs, which furthers the disadvantage, and requires even more work from men before a connection is even made. And if your message doesn't meet the usually high bar, then too bad sucker. Even if you do, there's a decent chance you'll get ghosted after a few messages. I won't even go into the societal norms of men having to pay for the dates. (mostly because this is slightly shifting)
Not to mention some of the seriously rude things I've found from the experience: "I'll always Love my dog more than you", "queen of xyz", "you better be this tall with this size of d!@$", direct racism against both black and white folks, saying "you have to put in more work than just saying hi" but then gives minimal effort in return. I also see a lot of "I love honestly, respect, love, kindness", being virtuous essentially, but then interacting with them gives me the entirely opposite vibe.
OKC is a different bag of nonsense. They've really screwed the messaging system recently. First you have to "like" someone before you can message them, then you get one message to send before their profile disappears from you -unless- they like/message you back. If you made an error or forgot something in your initial message, too bad. If you want to talk with someone without "liking" them, too bad. Further, the message you send doesn't even end up in their inbox- the message replaces your profile card when you're searching the general pool. (I.e. the recieving party didn't get an alert when they have a message, they have to stumble across it on the website)
Essentially, it feels like women hold all the chips for interaction, but they're also not being considerate about how they play the game. Both application boundaries and social boundaries give women the winning favor in online and regular dating. I believe there's an art for men to matching with women in the modern day, but I also believe that's it's based on a lot of shallow crap that women shouldn't be looking for in the first place.
I used to take 100-level electives in college, just to meet attractive women. It also fulfilled criteria for my degree and general interests, but I could have taken the 200-level class where-in-which all the attractive women had already transferred out of the school, dropped out, or found a husband and dropped out. Also note, this form of attraction was just as visual as the dating apps are today and there is a night and day difference with who remains.
I now take 100-level courses and also meet attractive women in a variety of age ranges. Many of them are there for recreation too.
Try doing something extracurricular where women would also have a common interest.
I don't get "swiped-right" on dating apps. I can still go out with the most attractive woman in a room. And by attractive, I mean visually attractive by male consensus, just like what is experienced both ways on dating apps.
Don't get me wrong, I have great luck interacting with women in person. The online service is supposed to make it easier for people to meet, but quite honestly, that doesn't earn money. The plan becomes to make it difficult on purpose, then sell you features that take away some difficulty.
Yeah, its kind of interesting how the cultural nuances of talking about dating frustrations is what allows these dating apps to function this way, leaving a large underserved audience.
I met a few friends and two ex-girlfriends on OKC and, after returning to online dating recently, I am shocked by how garbage it has become. It definitely used to be a community / social network where conversations were less casual and more in-depth.
It wasn't even elitist or anything, it's just straight up you would actually talk with someone and find out a lot about them before meeting up. Now it's… ergh. Now it's Tinder with a couple of slightly different features.
Does anything like the old OKC still exist? I remember there were a lot of alternatives even back then that were trying to be niche-oriented but AFAIK they all died to make room for OKC.
Bumble is supposed to solve the problem, by allowing the women to make the first move, but 90% of first messages are: "Hi", "Hey", or "How is it going", and the ball is on you court again to keep the convo going.
My friends using it are having the same experience.
Saying "Hi" is a relatively good case. They bothered to type two characters. In my case, I have received a few times, a single dot (".") as their first message.
I am happily married now (and haven’t used FB in a year) but this strikes me as a terrible idea. Why would you want dating and current and previous partners integrated with the entire rest of your social life? This just has drama written all over it. Then again it’s good for engagement I guess.
> Why would you want dating and current and previous partners integrated with the entire rest of your social life?
I mean, isn't your dating already integrated with a lot of your social life? That's part of why breakups are tough, no?
Making a comment on the product, it makes sense to me since it mimics how things work in real life. A lot of people meet their significant other through friends and given your social sphere.
So I read up on this. If FB Dating is almost a separate network (you have to opt-in) then what's the point?
Given the profile example, it seems hard to be somewhat pseudonymous... I could probably look that person up as a 2nd - 3rd order connection on FB or e.g. Linkedin.
Tinder used to require a connection with your Facebook account so that you could only use pictures that you've used in your profile-picture history on Facebook.
I thought it was brilliant because now all pictures have to at least pass the social proof of being one of your public profile pics. It's more trustworthy. Though they've since relaxed the requirement, probably because they didn't want to be so tied to Facebook.
It's true that you can often google/facebook search matches on dating sites. I have done that before just to get a better idea of who someone is. But that already exists.
But I think there is value in enforcing a Facebook profile linkage to a dating profile. It's hard to bullshit, and it's harder for someone to then waste your time.
This is kind orthogonal to comments about the FB dating features, but my company chose to launch a major feature this week in Canada as well. I guess it is the natural choice as: 1) it is English speaking, so it is easier for our English speaking employees to diagnose, 2) it is small enough that the traffic won't be too much, 3) roughly the same time zones as our devs so we can be online at the same time.
* Diverse enough to extrapolate findings specific to other communities (e.g. the huge Chinese and South Indian population in urban Canada are still culturally very similar to China and India, despite being in Canada).
* Toothless privacy legislation and enforcement.
* A historic lack of global attention means they will bend over backwards to attract "prestige" projects (see: Sidewalk Labs)
Sure, of course you're right. Our website is in 26 languages, so they would have been accommodated. I was just meaning Canada would allow English speaking developers to use the site and debug issues.
The problem with apps like Tinder is that they focus essentially only on your skill at taking photos, posing for them and retouching them and secondarily on your appearance, and obviously photo-taking skills are completely irrelevant and appearance is at best secondary even for one-night stands.
Hopefully Facebook can actually deliver matches based more on personality, what someone is looking for and how pleasant a person is in general.
> The offering will support text-only conversations between matches in an effort to minimize "casual encounters" by building long-term relationships instead
But then showed a screenshot similar to Tinder, with pictures and stuff. What exactly is it, text-only or tinder-copy?
I've used tinder/bumble since their inception, even had 3 long(ish) relationships form. I think the value the apps bring is connecting people who would never meet irl (i.e many degrees of social separation). I don't like the idea of only connecting friends of friends, it promotes insular social circles, harder for bigger cities to become open when everyone stays in their cliche. I feel this becoming more of a thing with social media, people are losing the ability to branch out.
Like others have already commented, the apps also put females on a pedestal to a ridiculous degree. I'm (barely) in the range of "top" males and even getting a lot of matches (~10-20 a day), the number of girls who are open and willing to create a genuine connection (on the app) is approaching 1 in 100.
I think FB is well-positioned to provide a better online dating experience than specialized online dating platforms. Specialized online dating platforms have a disincentive to cater to people looking for stable relationships, since these people typically stop using the platform once they have found a match. For example, I find that OkCupid's redesign last year/earlier this year (I forget the exact time interval when) smells of a reorientation towards catering to heavy users of the platform.
FB users, on the other hand, probably do not see (or see as much) a decrease in activity if/when they enter a stable relationship, and so FB can be more well-aligned with the relationship goals of its users.
I don't want my friend circles anywhere near my dating. I'd be terrified to even try, lest Facebook try to optimize some synergy and starts suggesting to girls that I want to go on dates with them.
> "Arguably folks should be more comfortable with Facebook now given all the scrutiny they have gone through in terms of their recent missteps because everyone is watching everything they have done,"
That's quite the logic we have here. I feel sorry for anyone who buys it.
Facebook Dating is going to encounter the exact same problem all dating apps do – too many men aggressively soliciting their matches and too few women responding to such solicitations.
By the way, did anyone notice the linked CBC article has nearly all paragraphs consisting of a single sentence, two at most?
It's gonna be interesting to see how existing dating services who use Facebook/other social graphs (like Coffee Meets Bagel) will react to this new service.
I don't think that's a thing. These traits are not inheritable as these are predominantly shaped by parents/school/other kids/culture.
However I most certainly hope they will try to introduce a "genetic mate" feature - that finds someone who is a good mate based on both genetic AND social factors.
Even better if they analyze what I like - including appearance.
I disagree. My parents emigrated to different lands (with me) to provide me additional opportunity to excel. I'm early into my career and have a higher salary [6fig] than my parents', primarily due to the sacrifices they made over the years.
My job, life and other attributes couldn't have been predicted by salary nor any other vanity metric.
Facebook is exactly the right company to pull this off in a way that actually changes the 'industry'. I really want this to be successful and as good as I hope it can be.
* Dating apps live and die by their userbase so we're already doing pretty good there.
* Using the social graph for matches is brilliant since its actually how people IRL do it and you have a built in endorsement system with mutual friends. Having what amounts to an audit trail of "I know this guy, he's cool" gives me a lot more confidence that I'm not getting into trouble.
* More than any other dating platform they have the tools to combat bots and fakes at scale.
* Strongly connecting dating with IRL identity is basically mandatory for safety.
* Facebook has huge potential to make dating safer by knowing when you're together detecting suspicious activity. Integrating their crisis response system would be a game changer.
* Dating apps necessarily collect a lot of user information, there isn't much way around it, and for all their faults Facebook has way more experience than anyone else in protecting it.
* Good on them for removing picture messages, I can't say I'm ever happy to receive unsolicited dick pics.