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
See full article at Mashable
This post also appears on SocialNetworkingWatch.
Definitely cause for concern for iDating. But people go to idating sites when they're not just single, but when they're single, available and motivated. That's a pretty focused intent.
Posted by: Mark Brooks | Jan 22, 2013 at 06:14 PM
Facebook has the opportunity to disrupt a myriad of lucrative verticals; iDating clearly being one of them. That said, they make so much (passive) money from dating sites advertising on their platform, is it worth the risk of cutting your nose to spite your face? Maybe.
The more they deviate/stray from their bread and butter of being a network for close friends, the greater the risks for watering down the value proposition and core appeal of FBook. That said, they should and will continue to explore new opportunities. Nothing lost, nothing gained. They have plenty of room/time (and cash) to make mistakes and learn from them.
Cause for concern, yes. But that's not a bad thing. Pushes us iDating operators to get better at what we do; helping singles.
Posted by: Saïd Amin | Jan 23, 2013 at 01:10 AM
That sounds like a nice concept for beginners, but may not last long. Online Dating Sites are dedicated to people looking for love, whereas that is not the case with fb.
Posted by: Jenni K | Jan 24, 2013 at 11:08 AM
I do not think that it will have any impact.
"Standard" Dating-Sites serve a distinct use case, plus: Most people are not happy to be single - and these people are not pushing out that information with a pleasured face to facebook (most people instead say "its complicated" on facebook, just not to tell the world that they are [unhappy] single)
Sure, Facebook will(!) grab something more of the dating traffic, but its by far not the end of dating sites... (plus: Facebook does not do any advertising - but dating sites do)
Regards
Florian
Posted by: Vomitorium | Jan 25, 2013 at 01:55 PM