Facebook Dating

It’s official - Facebook Dating is finally here. Well, not here per se, because it’s not available outside of the countries selected for the initial rollout phase, which excludes the UK, but here as in, on-the-internet, hope-you’re-excited-for-everyone-to-complain-about-it here. I usually try to avoid following the herd and only write about things where my voice might not get lost in the din of others all shouting the same thing, but with FB Dating I really can’t resist.

The obvious point to make is that Facebook is almost comedically bad at handling their users data at this point. I’m sure that malicious actors are putting a disproportionate amount of effort into attacking FB compared to other sites, but after everybody’s favourite Cambridge Analytica scandal which seemed far more driven by greed than incompetence, and the fact that just leave their unsecured servers exposed on the internet (which is definitely borne of incompetence), it’s tough to feel like they’re going to respect my data choices in the dating arena. The kind of information shared on a dating platform is inherently more sensitive than other kinds of data, making it very appealing to advertisers, and FB’s claim that there will essentially be no direct revenue stream from FB Dating sounds like a big fat lie to me. That is all notwithstanding the fact that there is a massive market for selling dating profiles online - a quick search for ‘buy dating profiles’ will show you exactly what I mean.

I can’t help but FB have missed their (approximately decade long) window of opportunity here. In the past, it would’ve been a neat feature to add “Secret Crushes” to a list that’d tell you if your affection was reciprocated in the same manner, and the built-in network of FB could have made the whole process easier than trying to form connections with strangers. But now, Tinder has already scarfed a huge amount of the market, with its brand significantly less tarnished, there are a large number of more innovative takes on the dating app format out there competing, and FB’s demographic is skewing older and older, and presumably therefor not-singler and not-singler.

Part of me hopes that this will be a huge failure and will cede some of FB’s market dominance to smaller, less-evil entities, but given the way that Google has shutdown projects left, right and centre over the past few years, sadly I don’t think it’ll have any effect on the stock if FB Dating is a flop. Maybe if they get hit with enough jumbo fine, and Libra turns out to be a massive flop, which makes me think…

Blockchain dating app anyone?