MASHABLE - Jan 22 - Last week Facebook reps demonstrated several uses for Graph Search, ranging from recruiting to searching for restaurant recommendations. Then a Facebook employee stood on stage and searched for friends of my friends who are single and living in San Fran. "Facebook is moving in on the essence of online dating," said Dan Slater, author of Love in the Time of Algorithms, a history of online dating and its impact on our culture, which comes out on Thursday. With Graph Search, Facebook members can search for other singles based on their interests, education, age, hometown, current city and more. Kingfish Labs raised $500K in early 2012 to use Facebook for dating, but its first Facebook app, Yoke, struggled to take off. "Facebook Like data was often not fresh or comprehensive enough to serve as a match-making tool", the company says. The stock for IAC, the parent company of Match and OkCupid, dropped by ~ 2% after Facebook announced Graph Search. "For online dating businesses it could either be the best thing ever, or it could be the beginning of the end," Slater says. Facebook could potentially help the industry by removing whatever "cultural barrier" remains for online dating.
by Seth Fiegerman
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This post also appears on SocialNetworkingWatch.
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