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Facebook Dating

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Re: Facebook Dating

#331

Post by phil248 »

empath75 wrote: post #268
b_tterc_p wrote: post #175

It sounds to me like a primary use case of this would be... cheating... Unlike other dating platforms, this one is integrated with your supposedly up to date profile. Being able to set up a low risk secret crush with a known friend seems likely to be popular to those interested in doing so. That is to say, a person who wants to cheat has no problem having a Facebook profile, so there’s not a need for anonymity agains…

Yeah, this is going to break up a lot of marriages, imo. People are going to get suspicious of their spouses facebook activity in a way that they aren't currently.

Not to be pedantic, but websites don't break up marriages. Married people break up marriages.

Re: Facebook Dating

#332

Post by kelnos »

kostarelo wrote: post #208
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 am not sure about this, I used to think like that but the older I grow the less I care. I even embrace the fact to show the same persona everywhere. I haven't been actively using FB for the past few years though but maybe this is something that newer generations have…

This is a very personal thing. For some people (I would guess most people), it matters, and they -- at the very least -- present a different face when at work vs. out with friends. Many people have further stratification.

I do get what you mean, though. As I've gotten older, I've found that maintaining different personas is just exhausting and not really worth it. But I also don't have anything in my life that I'd be embarrassed about depending on audience, and I don't consider myself a member of any underrepresented groups or subcultures that the mainstream would consider "weird" or somehow undesirable. So it's easy for me, which isn't true for everyone else.

Re: Facebook Dating

#333

Post by CamperBob2 »

LyndsySimon wrote: post #246
magashna wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

The delicious irony did not escape me: https://www.reddit.com/r/Anarcho_Capitalism/comments/8qur2z/...

It's massively OT for this thread, but it's interesting that you consider anarchy the natural state. Aren't humans absolutely hardwired to form hierarchies and seek leaders?

It seems that we're just as compelled to create presidents, kings, and gods for ourselves as pack animals are to follow their alphas. The lone wolf is the vanishingly-rare exception in the animal kingdom, just as the anarchist is in the realm of human politics. NTTAWWT as far as having a lone-wolf personality type is concerned, but any model of human interaction that seeks to exalt the lone-wolf nature in each of us seems bound to fail. (Small-scale egalitarianism is just a separate case of that, since the same hierarchies will inevitably emerge between groups.)

If this condition isn't "natural," then why do things always -- virtually without exception and never sustainably so -- turn out that way?

Re: Facebook Dating

#334

Post by henrikschroder »

gamblor956 wrote: post #311
henrikschroder wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

You can only have 9 Secret Crushes at a time. Believe it or not, they actually have put some thought into their final product based on the beta tests conducted in smaller international markets.

Ok, so then you rotate that list through your friends. They might make it tedious to go through all my friends, but if I'm determined enough, I can do it.

Re: Facebook Dating

#335

Post by kelnos »

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,…

Agreed, though I would take the (possibly) more charitable interpretation that many HNers get that FB understands the mainstream, but struggle to understand why the mainstream is the way it is. Or they do understand the mainstream, but feel the need to rail against them for what they view as naïveté and short-term thinking.

For me, I'm surprised it took FB this long to launch a dating feature. Despite their decline in some demographics, they are still uniquely positioned to do a much more comprehensive (I hesitate to say "better") job of connecting people on the romantic side than a random new dating startup, or even possibly one of the giants like Match.

Perhaps they've hesitated for so long because they were afraid FB users would be afraid of mixing their public FB life too closely with their dating life?

Re: Facebook Dating

#336

Post by kelnos »

paxys wrote: post #298
WhompingWindows wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is that correct? 10 years ago, it was mostly young folks, college, HS, 20-somethings. There was a good deal of dating-related activity happening, but the vast majority of FB back then was not related to dating.

The scene in The Social Network about adding relationship status to users' profile sums it up perfectly. Facebook was a large catalog of your friends, friends' friends, classmates, coworkers etc., and showed you their profiles, pictures, if they were dating, who they were dating, their interests and more. Facebook was the largest dating site in the world the moment it got popular.

I don't agree. Allowing someone to list their relationship status on their otherwise-non-dating-site profile is a far far cry from providing tools and UX to help people match with others they might be interested in.

Certainly people have found romantic partners on FB in the past 15 years, but I would view that as in spite of the lack of dating-related features. Up until now, FB has not been geared toward or especially useful as a dating platform, especially given the availability of dating apps that actually fill that niche.

I think FB Dating has the potential to be way more successful to a mainstream audience than nearly any dating app built to date, though.

Re: Facebook Dating

#338

Post by ansible »

passivepinetree wrote: post #177
jonnycomputer wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The ad's photograph isn't targeted at older people.

That's a common mistake. Ads don't always (and you could argue rarely) show their target demographic. Easy example: ever seen an overweight person in a fast food commercial?

Easier example: toys for kids.

They'll usually use slightly older kids in a toy advertisement than the actual target demographic they're trying to sell to.

Part of that is that kids generally don't want to be seen as playing with toys for younger kids.

Re: Facebook Dating

#339

Post by suyash »

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 think you misunderstood Facebook's strategy here completely. The whole point of this feature is to add value to Facebook's main app, as this is a feature in the app and not a separate app itself, it makes the product more sticky and less likely people will delete their facebook account in future.

Re: Facebook Dating

#340

Post by penagwin »

roblabla wrote: post #197
beowulfey wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>To me, that seems like a cultural thing unique to Silicon Valley that the rest of the world does not necessarily want. It makes a ton of sense from their business perspective, which is to sell highly personalized ads. If you have one single internet persona, it is far easier to tailor ads to you.

Not really no. If you have only one online persona, then you'll only show one angle of your life, and the rest will simply become invisible to facebook. People are unlikely to change how they are, they'll just change how they use the tool. Letting people show different angles of themselves through differently branded websites makes it much easier for facebook to build complete, thorough profiles of people.

> then you'll only show one angle of your life, and the rest will simply become invisible to facebook.

I feel like the opposite may happen? I.e. instead of only showing one angle of their life, the idea is that people share _all_ angles of their lives. Either way you end up with the same result "one persona".

The only people who care this deeply I think are the same ones who block ads or don't use facebook anyway.

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