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Facebook Dating

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Re: Facebook Dating

#321

Post by mav3rick »

kinkrtyavimoodh wrote: post #283

I think HN should in particular not feel informed enough to comment on strategic benefit of product decisions like these, because the general HN opinion of FB which is at such odds at FB's place in society is enough to conclude that HN doesn't really understand FB. HN is a SV or SV-adjacent bubble that takes pride in not having social media profiles and doesn't hesitate in boasting about it in every frigging thread,…

Totally agree. People on here saying it won't work. The first thing people from other apps check is a potential date's Instagram.

Re: Facebook Dating

#322

Post by phil248 »

donatj wrote: post #12

This seems like something they should have added ten plus years ago, when their demo was primarily college kids. I know many people who were clamoring for it at the time. It would have been an obvious addition as dating and relationships were a large part of the reason a lot of people used Facebook. I half suspect this is an attempt to pull college kids back into Facebook. I think they missed their chance with this b…

Older people need to date too. Maybe that's part of their angle? The existing dating app ecosystem doesn't seem great for older demographics.

Re: Facebook Dating

#323

Post by aylmao »

estsauver wrote: post #16

I think this might be a (relatively) rare strategy error for Facebook. If the success of Snapchat, LinkedIn, and also the separate WhatsApp/Instagram properties proves anything, it's that there are very different faces of ourselves that we show to the professional world, to our friends, to partners, and to the world at large. If I was facebook, I would very explicitly announce this as a spin out project, under a diff…

I actually think it's a strange but probably a solid strategy under a couple of assumptions:

1. They want to differentiate their dating product. 2. There's a sector of the population interested in dating but that at the moment is underserved, too shy to try it, or just on the fence about putting the effort to try it out.

What this does is it essentially puts a dating app on everyone's phone, reducing the friction it takes to give online dating a shot.

It also "feels" different and more serious. Anecdotally Facebook seems to be, amongst my circles, a lot about life events or important stuff and less about the casual, funny, edgy, etc persona. By associating that image with their dating platform, they give it a strong identity for the get go as a place for serious relationships.

> Even announcing this through the instagram brand would have made more sense to me.

Would it? I feel like Instagram is better off being about friends and oneself, and it could be tarnished by involving dating. What dating "identity" would befall upon it? Would it lean on the side of Tinder— superficial, more about hookups than long-lasting relationships, etc? I associate instagram with influencers, young people (as in, teens), etc a lot so branding-wise it doesn't make that much sense to me personally, though of course, this is just my opinion.

Re: Facebook Dating

#324

Post by aylmao »

n8henry wrote: post #96
taude wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't think young people used the Facebook brand anymore? If all the stories that have been published about that are to be believed.

They don't. They should have called this Instagram Dating, but Zuck doesn't want to admit that the Facebook brand is no longer "cool"

I think dating being "cool" is dangerous territory, and probably why Facebook dating didn't exist until now.

That's Tinder territory, and tinder doesn't have a great reputation as an app that's "healthy".

Re: Facebook Dating

#325

Post by chillacy »

henrikschroder wrote: post #290
johnisgood wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article says this: Facebook Dating won’t match you with friends , unless you choose to use Secret Crush and you both add each other to your list. All of your Dating activity will stay in Facebook Dating. It won’t be shared to the rest of Facebook.

> unless you choose to use Secret Crush Add all your friends to Secret Crush. Watch who matched you. "Sorry buddy, I wasn't really using the thing, I just added everyone, but thanks for letting me know you like me!" Idiots. And this is why the shared identity is a terrible idea for dating sites. You want dating profiles to be throwaway, and you want it to be hard for your friends to find your dating persona for this…

> "Sorry buddy, I wasn't really using the thing, I just added everyone, but thanks for letting me know you like me!"

I feel bad for anyone secretly in love with someone like that. That's not a conversation I'd like to have.

Re: Facebook Dating

#326

Post by deftnerd »

With Facebook's embracing of machine learning and their very deep dataset of personal information about users, this could be quite an amazing user experience and quite a terrifying prospect for privacy.

Facebook has a wealth of information on social relationship interactions and also on personal interests. Adding in information on romantic relationship interactions will allow them to (eventually, when the ML models are well-trained) provide amazing matches for users. The downside is that they'll now have a deep understanding of yet another aspect of your persona.

What are the dangers? How can they monetize this new relationship knowledge?

* Life insurance companies might want to know if someone is prone to date adrenaline junkies and be easily coerced into participating. * Insurance might want to know if someone "hooks up" frequently, which could indicate that the person is at risk of medical problems OR has issues with impulse control. * Dating profiles often match people by self-reported social activities like doing drugs, drinking, etc. That might be of interest to lots of companies. * Relationship going well? Expect to see a lot of ads related to co-habitation (joint checking accounts, moving services, etc) * If the dating service has a "feedback" component to allow people who go on dates to give information on aspects of the other persons personality, facebook might get information about a person that they don't even realize themselves and thus don't self-report. Such as the other person dresses badly, smells funny, needs dental work, tips well, etc. * If facebook determines that you tend to fall for a certain types of physical traits, ads featuring models with those traits will become a thing. * People don't give facebook every bit of information about themselves, but they do give it to dating services.

Think of all those questionnaires that ask about your opinions on abortion, if you want to have kids, if dating someone with different political beliefs is a hard pass, etc. Dating services use it to match people up who might be compatible, but Facebook will use it help advertisers get even more granular controls over their targeted users.

Even worse, if Facebook wants a certain political party to win, they could match up people who are firmly established in the political party they choose with people who are on the fence in order to let the dominant personality win.

Re: Facebook Dating

#327

Post by kelnos »

asdfman123 wrote: post #179
estsauver wrote: post #16

I think this might be a (relatively) rare strategy error for Facebook. If the success of Snapchat, LinkedIn, and also the separate WhatsApp/Instagram properties proves anything, it's that there are very different faces of ourselves that we show to the professional world, to our friends, to partners, and to the world at large. If I was facebook, I would very explicitly announce this as a spin out project, under a diff…

> it's that there are very different faces of ourselves that we show to the professional world, to our friends, to partners, and to the world at large I think Facebook's goal is to make it so that you have one persona you show to everyone. To me, that seems like a cultural thing unique to Silicon Valley that the rest of the world does not necessarily want. It seems like a mistake. If you have one persona, that means…

> I think Facebook's goal is to make it so that you have one persona you show to everyone. To me, that seems like a cultural thing unique to Silicon Valley that the rest of the world does not necessarily want.

I disagree with this characterization. I live in SV and literally everyone I've talked to about privacy/anonymity on the internet sees the value in being able to partition one's life into different buckets for different audiences, and many of them actively maintain such partitions.

This has nothing to do with culture; this is about technology limitations and laziness. Companies like FB want to make it easier to track people online and tie everything you do to a single identity. They can certainly do a lot to link supposedly-unrelated personas through various forms of fingerprinting, but it's never perfect, and they'd love for things to be simpler.

There's also the issue of anon/pseudonymity: companies like FB don't like that because they want an indentifiable real-world person to be accountable for the things they do online.

(Really, think about it: the idea that the people who live in Silicon Valley have some magical weirdo culture where social and professional partitioning doesn't exist... well, that's absurd and doesn't even pass the smell test.)

Re: Facebook Dating

#328

Post by mtberatwork »

magashna wrote: post #240
LyndsySimon wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Okay, try putting "Card-carrying gun owner and anti-abortion activist" on your resume and apply for big tech companies. Well, a resume isn't a place for that sort of thing at all, but I do pretty much that now. My name is unique - look me up. For what that's worth, a good portion of my posts even here on HN have something to do with guns. I try to be more "informative" than "confrontational", but that's because of…

>I'm an anarchist. The license plate on my Jeep is literally "ANARCHY." Paying the government a premium to say you don't believe in it, that's rich.

Reminds me of the people who pay extra to the state to have the Gadsden flag license plate.

Re: Facebook Dating

#329

Post by phil248 »

cameronbrown wrote: post #51
strikelaserclaw wrote: post #14

Finally, all the tracking they've done on their users over many years could yield the best matching algorithm :|

Dating sucks, but I'm still more uncomfortable with the idea of somebody's initial meeting being reduced to matching algorithms.

I think you're overstating the use of "algorithms" in these apps. They just throw people at you that you haven't set up any filters to avoid seeing, and vice versa. The algorithm appears to be "people you didn't explicitly rule out based on a small handful of criteria you provided, and they didn't rule you out too".

Re: Facebook Dating

#330

Post by mdpye »

r00fus wrote: post #305
mdpye wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is WeChat a social network or a messaging platform? I realise it is expanding, but I'd have no problem doing talking business on WhatsApp (which is the closest analogue to what I understand it to be for).

The answer is both. Look at FB - major usage is FB messenger.

Which is a separate app and doesn't leak much to the people you talk to (does it? I don't really use FB or Messenger anymore, I don't remember if you have to be friends to get messages delivered)

Obviously, it leaks loads to Facebook.

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