13 ms·

Facebook chooses Canada for Dating feature launch

120 points by Futurebot 8y ago

analyst74 8y ago
I'm a little confused, the article mentioned that > The offering will support text-only conversations between matches in an effort to minimize "casual encounters" by building long-term relationships instead But then showed a screenshot similar to Tinder, with pictures and stuff. What exactly is it, text-only or tinder-copy?
- dao- 8y ago
  I think it means people can't send pictures (of their penises etc.). Profile pictures are public anyway.
dvtrn 8y ago
The offering will support text-only conversations between matches in an effort to minimize "casual encounters" by building long-term relationships instead What's to prevent two people from having similar interests and deciding they actually only want a casual encounter? Would that be against terms of using the feature? I'm sure fb is probably just trying to absolve themselves of the chances someone will hook up with a child on the platform but there's probably better ways, already built into the site, no? I guess I'm just wondering why Facebook cares if someone just wants a non committed hookup partner or not. Why do they want even want the burden of adjudicating completely normal dating and sexual choices?
- otoburb 8y ago
  >>I guess I'm just wondering why Facebook cares if someone just wants a non committed hookup partner or not. Why do they want that burden? Probably PR and brand optics given their recent public mis-steps.
  - dvtrn 8y ago
    This is where I stopped short because it felt too cynical right off the hip. But maybe Facebook deserves the cynicism.
- curuinor 8y ago
  it's pr speak for "there will be no dick pics"
- dfxm12 8y ago
  I can think of two things: 1. They don't want underage nudes on their servers, even if they are exchanged between consenting 17 year olds. 2. They got feedback from some focus group who said the worst part about other online dating apps is being given unsolicited pics or being asked for more pics. This "casual encounter" bit is their chosen marketing-approved euphemism to explain this, or maybe it tested the best. I honestly don't think they care how this gets used, but I'm sure they tested all kinds of language and this did the best.
  - woolvalley 8y ago
    They already have those underage pictures via fb, whatsapp and instagram messenger... Made me realize this is a good reason to have end to end encryption on for everything as a chat provider, since it reduces your liability.
- DoreenMichele 8y ago
  "Dating" tends to be an asymmetrical market where you cannot be successful (as a service) unless you can get the heterosexual women to opt in (in sufficiently large numbers to make the thing make sense). Guys tend to be openly looking for hookups. Women who are amenable to hookups tend to have zero problem arranging that. So the people you need to appeal to are the women looking for a relationship, not a hookup, and who want assurances this will be wholesome and not another means for total strangers to sexually harass them with dick pics and the like. Though I have read a few things that indicate that dating sites have helped increase the number of interracial marriages and made it much easier for gays to find a mate. If you are gay and not out to your family or whatever, you can go on a dating site and admit that you are gay there and it vastly simplifies navigating a complex situation like that. Some gays still pretend they are straight and their lover is just a roommate to help make life in the big city affordable or whatever.
  - toomuchtodo 8y ago
    This is why I love Bumble. Women have to reach out first, so its much less hassle (as a male) of messaging over and over and over again into a black hole with no response. > So the people you need to appeal to are the women looking for a relationship, not a hookup, and who want assurances this will be wholesome and not another means for total strangers to Not in the casual case. You simply say, "Only looking for hook ups, something casual, etc". No one's time is wasted. When my Bumble push notification comes in, I know it's someone who finds me attractive based on my honest photos and okay with something casual. It's the perfect filter for all involved. Disclaimer: Still have a Facebook account, but rarely log in.
    - DoreenMichele 8y ago
      Dating is an imprecise word that covers both more casual relationships and the process more rightly called courtship. I am not familiar with any sites that list themselves as courtship sites. (Sites offering that service are typically listed as dating sites, though some dating sites explicitly cater to either/both.) Courtship is the process of sorting out who is a good match for a long term relationship and forming that bond and so forth. Courtship typically requires one to also sort out how you fit into the larger social fabric of each other's lives. In contrast, hookups or casual flings typically are looking to cut you out of the fabric of their social lives. People generally don't want to introduce casual sexual relationships to important people in their lives, thus expressions like "The kind you don't take home to mother." Facebook is a social network. Their value position naturally readily aligns with the idea of courtship and they are apparently going with that. I don't use either dating sites or hookup sites. I'm not the target market. I'm just making observations based on reading up on how asymmetrical markets work and this is a standard thing that you run across. I have read that it is why you see "Ladies night" at bars. The guys are going to be there anyway. You need to find some means to entice the women to show up. (Disclaimer: I also don't drink, so this is just stuff I have read about working with asymmetrical markets and developing a service when you have a chicken-and-egg problem.)
- samontar 8y ago
  Well, they’re making a product choice to bias to aiming at one direction. That’s just a product choice that’s a useful differentiator when the most recent successful dating apps have been hookup apps.
- setr 8y ago
  Its an implication of the target market, and it goes hand in hand with facebook itself: if you’re looking for casual hookups, you probably dont want to be openly exposed to friends/family. But if you’re doing something far more wholesome, like looking for a full relationship, then its perfectly fine for friends/family to be aware. And facebook hosting a dating app would be totally unnotable if there was no chance to for friends/family to find out: the whole point is that fb can filter onto your friends, and friends of friends, and so on, to naturally limit your possible matches to something far better than “kind of close to you”. The friend-links allow you to verify the target human yourself (ask your chain how they are), it limits misbehavior (you’re sending dick picks to your friend’s best friend, not a random stranger), you’re naturally liklier to share a social circle or taste or whatever (you’re friends with the intermediate person for some reason). So it has to be marketed and tuned towards something that is palatable to your broader social circle, because they are, more likely than not, going to find out. And while you might accept casual dating, and people often don’t care, its still a broadly negative thing to be going around with. The general expectation (at least in the us) is that eventually you’ll stop, and have a serious relationship, and you don’t really go around showing off your casual relationships (at best, you pretend externally that its possibly serious until the day you break it up), and you certainly dont go around telling people you’re currently looking for a fuckbuddy (and your friend might be the one!), at least not directly, and certainly not broadly. You don’t want to find your teacher on tinder/grindr, and you really don’t want to find your friends on it. (As always, in general, and especially post-teenage, and a US opinion)
- nasalgoat 8y ago
  Facebook cares deeply about "family values." We had to remove the ability for people to mark their profiles "married" or "in relationship" before they'd let us advertise on Facebook.
simlevesque 8y ago
How can I enable it ?
Spivak 8y ago
Let's put aside the "Facebook is evil and therefore everything they do is evil" tangents for a minute since if you're in that boat then its hard to have a useful discussion about this specific feature. And I want to talk about the details of Dating. Facebook is exactly the right company to pull this off in a way that actually changes the 'industry'. I really want this to be successful and as good as I hope it can be. * Dating apps live and die by their userbase so we're already doing pretty good there. * Using the social graph for matches is brilliant since its actually how people IRL do it and you have a built in endorsement system with mutual friends. Having what amounts to an audit trail of "I know this guy, he's cool" gives me a lot more confidence that I'm not getting into trouble. * More than any other dating platform they have the tools to combat bots and fakes at scale. * Strongly connecting dating with IRL identity is basically mandatory for safety. * Facebook has huge potential to make dating safer by knowing when you're together detecting suspicious activity. Integrating their crisis response system would be a game changer. * Dating apps necessarily collect a lot of user information, there isn't much way around it, and for all their faults Facebook has way more experience than anyone else in protecting it. * Good on them for removing picture messages, I can't say I'm ever happy to receive unsolicited dick pics.
- jordigh 8y ago
  So, can we also have a useful discussion about the evils of this?
  - rhacker 8y ago
    I think the idea was for this thread to exclude that - but launch a new, separate thread if you want.
  - LiterallyDoge 8y ago
    You don't need to expressly define all cases in an `else` block.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
- 8y ago
gaius 8y ago
I am happily married now (and haven’t used FB in a year) but this strikes me as a terrible idea. Why would you want dating and current and previous partners integrated with the entire rest of your social life? This just has drama written all over it. Then again it’s good for engagement I guess.
- nano81 8y ago
  Your dating profile is not linked to your regular FB profile/network when shown to other daters
  - r00fus 8y ago
    So I read up on this. If FB Dating is almost a separate network (you have to opt-in) then what's the point? Given the profile example, it seems hard to be somewhat pseudonymous... I could probably look that person up as a 2nd - 3rd order connection on FB or e.g. Linkedin. I don't see a draw to this app.
    - wild_preference 8y ago
      Tinder used to require a connection with your Facebook account so that you could only use pictures that you've used in your profile-picture history on Facebook. I thought it was brilliant because now all pictures have to at least pass the social proof of being one of your public profile pics. It's more trustworthy. Though they've since relaxed the requirement, probably because they didn't want to be so tied to Facebook. It's true that you can often google/facebook search matches on dating sites. I have done that before just to get a better idea of who someone is. But that already exists. But I think there is value in enforcing a Facebook profile linkage to a dating profile. It's hard to bullshit, and it's harder for someone to then waste your time.
- aylmao 8y ago
  > Why would you want dating and current and previous partners integrated with the entire rest of your social life? I mean, isn't your dating already integrated with a lot of your social life? That's part of why breakups are tough, no? Making a comment on the product, it makes sense to me since it mimics how things work in real life. A lot of people meet their significant other through friends and given your social sphere.
kache_ 8y ago
This is a great opportunity for selective breeding of humans. Promote the mating of people who are more susceptible to ads.
- TomMarius 8y ago
  I don't think that's a thing. These traits are not inheritable as these are predominantly shaped by parents/school/other kids/culture. However I most certainly hope they will try to introduce a "genetic mate" feature - that finds someone who is a good mate based on both genetic AND social factors. Even better if they analyze what I like - including appearance.
  - SpanishConf 8y ago
    Can't wait until my mate, my job, my life, and my position in society is decided before I am even born :) Yay!
    - jackpirate 8y ago
      Your parents' salaries do a very good job of predicting all of that already.
      - bootaccount 8y ago
        I disagree. My parents emigrated to different lands (with me) to provide me additional opportunity to excel. I'm early into my career and have a higher salary [6fig] than my parents', primarily due to the sacrifices they made over the years. My job, life and other attributes couldn't have been predicted by salary nor any other vanity metric.
        Joe-Z 8y ago
        But just the fact that your parents emigrated makes you part of a fringe group. GP's point, as far as I understand, wasn't that it's impossible to move up the social ladder, just that it doesn't happen for most people.
cschmidt 8y ago
This is kind orthogonal to comments about the FB dating features, but my company chose to launch a major feature this week in Canada as well. I guess it is the natural choice as: 1) it is English speaking, so it is easier for our English speaking employees to diagnose, 2) it is small enough that the traffic won't be too much, 3) roughly the same time zones as our devs so we can be online at the same time.
- soperj 8y ago
  Not sure if you're actually unaware, but a large portion of the population here speaks French (1/5th) as their first language.
  - cschmidt 8y ago
    Sure, of course you're right. Our website is in 26 languages, so they would have been accommodated. I was just meaning Canada would allow English speaking developers to use the site and debug issues.
- 706f6f70 8y ago
  Other important factors: * Diverse enough to extrapolate findings specific to other communities (e.g. the huge Chinese and South Indian population in urban Canada are still culturally very similar to China and India, despite being in Canada). * Toothless privacy legislation and enforcement. * A historic lack of global attention means they will bend over backwards to attract "prestige" projects (see: Sidewalk Labs)
xfitm3 8y ago
Interesting feature. However, I choose to date people who don't use facebook.
thelastidiot 8y ago
Canada is the beta testing country of the USA.
- giarc 8y ago
  Except when you are beta testing a populist leader.
- brownell 8y ago
  "Of the USA"? Is the USA a continent now?
ohkaiby 8y ago
It's gonna be interesting to see how existing dating services who use Facebook/other social graphs (like Coffee Meets Bagel) will react to this new service.
ravenstine 8y ago
> "Arguably folks should be more comfortable with Facebook now given all the scrutiny they have gone through in terms of their recent missteps because everyone is watching everything they have done," That's quite the logic we have here. I feel sorry for anyone who buys it.
LinuxBender 8y ago
Isn't this what Mark Z. originally created FB for in the first place?
dgzl 8y ago
I'm speaking as a long term and paid user of both Tinder and OKC. Online dating is complete garbage and I feel regret every time I open the services. The fact that Facebook is joining the game makes my stomach churn.
- iamdave 8y ago
  I'm pretty jaded on the modernity of dating in general. OKC, Tinder, others haven't really helped that, and maybe it's generational or maybe it isn't--doesn't feel like many in my age group (27) are really that much interested in relationships of substance and trend more towards relationships because 'relationship'. But again, jaded on dating in general, pretty darn content with everything else otherwise if I'm being honest (except the cat really does need to get a job and start pulling his weight around here).
  - davemp 8y ago
    I can see where you’re coming from. My armchair hypothesis is that people aren’t being taught how to have healthy long term monogamous relationships and why being in one (a healthy ltmr) can be so amazing. I won’t speculate on the cause, beyond suggesting that there is a negatively correlated social trend (based on no actual data) that seems like a logical inference. This hypothetical situation implies that it is much less likely for people to find another party interested in teaming up. Luckily if both sides: know how to identify a healthy ltmr, know how to & will participate in a healthy ltmr, will keep testing partners until a healthy ltmr is formed, and are balanced population size (and more), everyone interested and capable will end up in a healthy ltmr. The regressions in this scenario are longer expected time to relationship and the emotional cost of testing potential partners. (Probably significant enough to address). Based on the above scenario actionable advice is to do one’s best to satisfy the assumptions, weather the regression costs, and try to optimize your strategy to minimize the costs (becareful not to become a bad actor/violate the assumptions). This scenario & strategy is likely full of holes, but maybe it can provide hope that there is a strategy that offers a high success rate.
    - iamdave 8y ago
buboard 8y ago
This is going to be huge.
devit 8y ago
Seems potentially great. The problem with apps like Tinder is that they focus essentially only on your skill at taking photos, posing for them and retouching them and secondarily on your appearance, and obviously photo-taking skills are completely irrelevant and appearance is at best secondary even for one-night stands. Hopefully Facebook can actually deliver matches based more on personality, what someone is looking for and how pleasant a person is in general.
linkerzx 8y ago
its singles day everywhere! this week!
scottlocklin 8y ago
Internet dating is one of those businesses that superficially seems like it makes sense; aka "hey, let's use data and statistics to fix people up" -but ultimately couldn't possibly work to the benefit of the people it purports to fix up. Two main reasons. 1) Histocompatibility -some people smell right. Some people don't. Chemistry isn't something you're gonna capture over the internet, even if you enjoy the online bantz and have tons of stuff in common. Barring breakthroughs in genetics and even more privacy invasions, the FBs of the world can't help here. 2) Principal agent problem: for all payment techniques thus explored for online dating, the interests of the dating service are not in alignment with daters who want a monogamous LTR. Dating apps who collect monthly fees want to continue to collect monthly fees. Dating apps that rely on advertising want continued obsessive engagement. Alignment of interests would look something like an old school matchmaker who only gets paid if they succeed in making a match -you're not going to pull this off with an app. Facebook, of course wants to keep you on their platform. The statistics, of course, back all this up, for example: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-mating-game/201609/the-ugly-truth-about-online-dating https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-mating-game/2016...
- SilasX 8y ago
  Someone is working on matching by smell (saw previously on HN): http://smell.dating/ http://smell.dating/
- bromuro 8y ago
  I’m 40 yo and I’ve found most of my boyfriends and best friends via dating apps or website :)
- 121789 8y ago
  Re: the principal agent problem - doesn’t this actually give FB an advantage? An effective dating app would just be another feature that may actually help with user retention. They don’t need to optimize for ongoing engagement for individual users.
- baby 8y ago
  Plenty of people find their SO via dating apps. Probably more than ever. In society like Japan thrse are killer apps.
Waterluvian 8y ago
I don't want my friend circles anywhere near my dating. I'd be terrified to even try, lest Facebook try to optimize some synergy and starts suggesting to girls that I want to go on dates with them.
booleandilemma 8y ago
Will LinkedIn follow, I wonder?
- mrfusion 8y ago
  Coming to your contacts inbox soon: “Congratulate booleandilemma on their upcoming date”
throwapay232 8y ago
I've used tinder/bumble since their inception, even had 3 long(ish) relationships form. I think the value the apps bring is connecting people who would never meet irl (i.e many degrees of social separation). I don't like the idea of only connecting friends of friends, it promotes insular social circles, harder for bigger cities to become open when everyone stays in their cliche. I feel this becoming more of a thing with social media, people are losing the ability to branch out. Like others have already commented, the apps also put females on a pedestal to a ridiculous degree. I'm (barely) in the range of "top" males and even getting a lot of matches (~10-20 a day), the number of girls who are open and willing to create a genuine connection (on the app) is approaching 1 in 100.
dbg31415 8y ago
The problem is that nobody under 50 still uses Facebook, and all the 50+ dating is handled by eHarmony. Said in jest... but not really.
greendestiny_re 8y ago
Facebook Dating is going to encounter the exact same problem all dating apps do – too many men aggressively soliciting their matches and too few women responding to such solicitations. By the way, did anyone notice the linked CBC article has nearly all paragraphs consisting of a single sentence, two at most?
jhanschoo 8y ago
I think FB is well-positioned to provide a better online dating experience than specialized online dating platforms. Specialized online dating platforms have a disincentive to cater to people looking for stable relationships, since these people typically stop using the platform once they have found a match. For example, I find that OkCupid's redesign last year/earlier this year (I forget the exact time interval when) smells of a reorientation towards catering to heavy users of the platform. FB users, on the other hand, probably do not see (or see as much) a decrease in activity if/when they enter a stable relationship, and so FB can be more well-aligned with the relationship goals of its users.

120 points by Futurebot 8y ago

I'm a little confused, the article mentioned that > The offering will support text-only conversations between matches in an effort to minimize "casual encounters" by building long-term relationships instead But then showed a screenshot similar to Tinder, with pictures and stuff. What exactly is it, text-only or tinder-copy?

dao- 8y ago
I think it means people can't send pictures (of their penises etc.). Profile pictures are public anyway.

dvtrn 8y ago

The offering will support text-only conversations between matches in an effort to minimize "casual encounters" by building long-term relationships instead What's to prevent two people from having similar interests and deciding they actually only want a casual encounter? Would that be against terms of using the feature? I'm sure fb is probably just trying to absolve themselves of the chances someone will hook up with a child on the platform but there's probably better ways, already built into the site, no? I guess I'm just wondering why Facebook cares if someone just wants a non committed hookup partner or not. Why do they want even want the burden of adjudicating completely normal dating and sexual choices?

otoburb 8y ago
>>I guess I'm just wondering why Facebook cares if someone just wants a non committed hookup partner or not. Why do they want that burden? Probably PR and brand optics given their recent public mis-steps.
- dvtrn 8y ago
  This is where I stopped short because it felt too cynical right off the hip. But maybe Facebook deserves the cynicism.
curuinor 8y ago
it's pr speak for "there will be no dick pics"
dfxm12 8y ago
I can think of two things: 1. They don't want underage nudes on their servers, even if they are exchanged between consenting 17 year olds. 2. They got feedback from some focus group who said the worst part about other online dating apps is being given unsolicited pics or being asked for more pics. This "casual encounter" bit is their chosen marketing-approved euphemism to explain this, or maybe it tested the best. I honestly don't think they care how this gets used, but I'm sure they tested all kinds of language and this did the best.
- woolvalley 8y ago
  They already have those underage pictures via fb, whatsapp and instagram messenger... Made me realize this is a good reason to have end to end encryption on for everything as a chat provider, since it reduces your liability.
DoreenMichele 8y ago
"Dating" tends to be an asymmetrical market where you cannot be successful (as a service) unless you can get the heterosexual women to opt in (in sufficiently large numbers to make the thing make sense). Guys tend to be openly looking for hookups. Women who are amenable to hookups tend to have zero problem arranging that. So the people you need to appeal to are the women looking for a relationship, not a hookup, and who want assurances this will be wholesome and not another means for total strangers to sexually harass them with dick pics and the like. Though I have read a few things that indicate that dating sites have helped increase the number of interracial marriages and made it much easier for gays to find a mate. If you are gay and not out to your family or whatever, you can go on a dating site and admit that you are gay there and it vastly simplifies navigating a complex situation like that. Some gays still pretend they are straight and their lover is just a roommate to help make life in the big city affordable or whatever.
- toomuchtodo 8y ago
  This is why I love Bumble. Women have to reach out first, so its much less hassle (as a male) of messaging over and over and over again into a black hole with no response. > So the people you need to appeal to are the women looking for a relationship, not a hookup, and who want assurances this will be wholesome and not another means for total strangers to Not in the casual case. You simply say, "Only looking for hook ups, something casual, etc". No one's time is wasted. When my Bumble push notification comes in, I know it's someone who finds me attractive based on my honest photos and okay with something casual. It's the perfect filter for all involved. Disclaimer: Still have a Facebook account, but rarely log in.
  - DoreenMichele 8y ago
    Dating is an imprecise word that covers both more casual relationships and the process more rightly called courtship. I am not familiar with any sites that list themselves as courtship sites. (Sites offering that service are typically listed as dating sites, though some dating sites explicitly cater to either/both.) Courtship is the process of sorting out who is a good match for a long term relationship and forming that bond and so forth. Courtship typically requires one to also sort out how you fit into the larger social fabric of each other's lives. In contrast, hookups or casual flings typically are looking to cut you out of the fabric of their social lives. People generally don't want to introduce casual sexual relationships to important people in their lives, thus expressions like "The kind you don't take home to mother." Facebook is a social network. Their value position naturally readily aligns with the idea of courtship and they are apparently going with that. I don't use either dating sites or hookup sites. I'm not the target market. I'm just making observations based on reading up on how asymmetrical markets work and this is a standard thing that you run across. I have read that it is why you see "Ladies night" at bars. The guys are going to be there anyway. You need to find some means to entice the women to show up. (Disclaimer: I also don't drink, so this is just stuff I have read about working with asymmetrical markets and developing a service when you have a chicken-and-egg problem.)
samontar 8y ago
Well, they’re making a product choice to bias to aiming at one direction. That’s just a product choice that’s a useful differentiator when the most recent successful dating apps have been hookup apps.
setr 8y ago
Its an implication of the target market, and it goes hand in hand with facebook itself: if you’re looking for casual hookups, you probably dont want to be openly exposed to friends/family. But if you’re doing something far more wholesome, like looking for a full relationship, then its perfectly fine for friends/family to be aware. And facebook hosting a dating app would be totally unnotable if there was no chance to for friends/family to find out: the whole point is that fb can filter onto your friends, and friends of friends, and so on, to naturally limit your possible matches to something far better than “kind of close to you”. The friend-links allow you to verify the target human yourself (ask your chain how they are), it limits misbehavior (you’re sending dick picks to your friend’s best friend, not a random stranger), you’re naturally liklier to share a social circle or taste or whatever (you’re friends with the intermediate person for some reason). So it has to be marketed and tuned towards something that is palatable to your broader social circle, because they are, more likely than not, going to find out. And while you might accept casual dating, and people often don’t care, its still a broadly negative thing to be going around with. The general expectation (at least in the us) is that eventually you’ll stop, and have a serious relationship, and you don’t really go around showing off your casual relationships (at best, you pretend externally that its possibly serious until the day you break it up), and you certainly dont go around telling people you’re currently looking for a fuckbuddy (and your friend might be the one!), at least not directly, and certainly not broadly. You don’t want to find your teacher on tinder/grindr, and you really don’t want to find your friends on it. (As always, in general, and especially post-teenage, and a US opinion)
nasalgoat 8y ago
Facebook cares deeply about "family values." We had to remove the ability for people to mark their profiles "married" or "in relationship" before they'd let us advertise on Facebook.

simlevesque 8y ago

How can I enable it ?

Spivak 8y ago

Let's put aside the "Facebook is evil and therefore everything they do is evil" tangents for a minute since if you're in that boat then its hard to have a useful discussion about this specific feature. And I want to talk about the details of Dating. Facebook is exactly the right company to pull this off in a way that actually changes the 'industry'. I really want this to be successful and as good as I hope it can be. * Dating apps live and die by their userbase so we're already doing pretty good there. * Using the social graph for matches is brilliant since its actually how people IRL do it and you have a built in endorsement system with mutual friends. Having what amounts to an audit trail of "I know this guy, he's cool" gives me a lot more confidence that I'm not getting into trouble. * More than any other dating platform they have the tools to combat bots and fakes at scale. * Strongly connecting dating with IRL identity is basically mandatory for safety. * Facebook has huge potential to make dating safer by knowing when you're together detecting suspicious activity. Integrating their crisis response system would be a game changer. * Dating apps necessarily collect a lot of user information, there isn't much way around it, and for all their faults Facebook has way more experience than anyone else in protecting it. * Good on them for removing picture messages, I can't say I'm ever happy to receive unsolicited dick pics.

jordigh 8y ago
So, can we also have a useful discussion about the evils of this?
- rhacker 8y ago
  I think the idea was for this thread to exclude that - but launch a new, separate thread if you want.
- LiterallyDoge 8y ago
  You don't need to expressly define all cases in an `else` block.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
8y ago

gaius 8y ago

I am happily married now (and haven’t used FB in a year) but this strikes me as a terrible idea. Why would you want dating and current and previous partners integrated with the entire rest of your social life? This just has drama written all over it. Then again it’s good for engagement I guess.

nano81 8y ago
Your dating profile is not linked to your regular FB profile/network when shown to other daters
- r00fus 8y ago
  So I read up on this. If FB Dating is almost a separate network (you have to opt-in) then what's the point? Given the profile example, it seems hard to be somewhat pseudonymous... I could probably look that person up as a 2nd - 3rd order connection on FB or e.g. Linkedin. I don't see a draw to this app.
  - wild_preference 8y ago
    Tinder used to require a connection with your Facebook account so that you could only use pictures that you've used in your profile-picture history on Facebook. I thought it was brilliant because now all pictures have to at least pass the social proof of being one of your public profile pics. It's more trustworthy. Though they've since relaxed the requirement, probably because they didn't want to be so tied to Facebook. It's true that you can often google/facebook search matches on dating sites. I have done that before just to get a better idea of who someone is. But that already exists. But I think there is value in enforcing a Facebook profile linkage to a dating profile. It's hard to bullshit, and it's harder for someone to then waste your time.
aylmao 8y ago
> Why would you want dating and current and previous partners integrated with the entire rest of your social life? I mean, isn't your dating already integrated with a lot of your social life? That's part of why breakups are tough, no? Making a comment on the product, it makes sense to me since it mimics how things work in real life. A lot of people meet their significant other through friends and given your social sphere.

kache_ 8y ago

This is a great opportunity for selective breeding of humans. Promote the mating of people who are more susceptible to ads.

TomMarius 8y ago
I don't think that's a thing. These traits are not inheritable as these are predominantly shaped by parents/school/other kids/culture. However I most certainly hope they will try to introduce a "genetic mate" feature - that finds someone who is a good mate based on both genetic AND social factors. Even better if they analyze what I like - including appearance.
- SpanishConf 8y ago
  Can't wait until my mate, my job, my life, and my position in society is decided before I am even born :) Yay!
  - jackpirate 8y ago
    Your parents' salaries do a very good job of predicting all of that already.
    - bootaccount 8y ago
      I disagree. My parents emigrated to different lands (with me) to provide me additional opportunity to excel. I'm early into my career and have a higher salary [6fig] than my parents', primarily due to the sacrifices they made over the years. My job, life and other attributes couldn't have been predicted by salary nor any other vanity metric.
      - Joe-Z 8y ago
        But just the fact that your parents emigrated makes you part of a fringe group. GP's point, as far as I understand, wasn't that it's impossible to move up the social ladder, just that it doesn't happen for most people.

cschmidt 8y ago

This is kind orthogonal to comments about the FB dating features, but my company chose to launch a major feature this week in Canada as well. I guess it is the natural choice as: 1) it is English speaking, so it is easier for our English speaking employees to diagnose, 2) it is small enough that the traffic won't be too much, 3) roughly the same time zones as our devs so we can be online at the same time.

soperj 8y ago
Not sure if you're actually unaware, but a large portion of the population here speaks French (1/5th) as their first language.
- cschmidt 8y ago
  Sure, of course you're right. Our website is in 26 languages, so they would have been accommodated. I was just meaning Canada would allow English speaking developers to use the site and debug issues.
706f6f70 8y ago
Other important factors: * Diverse enough to extrapolate findings specific to other communities (e.g. the huge Chinese and South Indian population in urban Canada are still culturally very similar to China and India, despite being in Canada). * Toothless privacy legislation and enforcement. * A historic lack of global attention means they will bend over backwards to attract "prestige" projects (see: Sidewalk Labs)

xfitm3 8y ago

Interesting feature. However, I choose to date people who don't use facebook.

thelastidiot 8y ago

Canada is the beta testing country of the USA.

giarc 8y ago
Except when you are beta testing a populist leader.
brownell 8y ago
"Of the USA"? Is the USA a continent now?

ohkaiby 8y ago

It's gonna be interesting to see how existing dating services who use Facebook/other social graphs (like Coffee Meets Bagel) will react to this new service.

ravenstine 8y ago

> "Arguably folks should be more comfortable with Facebook now given all the scrutiny they have gone through in terms of their recent missteps because everyone is watching everything they have done," That's quite the logic we have here. I feel sorry for anyone who buys it.

LinuxBender 8y ago

Isn't this what Mark Z. originally created FB for in the first place?

dgzl 8y ago

I'm speaking as a long term and paid user of both Tinder and OKC. Online dating is complete garbage and I feel regret every time I open the services. The fact that Facebook is joining the game makes my stomach churn.

iamdave 8y ago
I'm pretty jaded on the modernity of dating in general. OKC, Tinder, others haven't really helped that, and maybe it's generational or maybe it isn't--doesn't feel like many in my age group (27) are really that much interested in relationships of substance and trend more towards relationships because 'relationship'. But again, jaded on dating in general, pretty darn content with everything else otherwise if I'm being honest (except the cat really does need to get a job and start pulling his weight around here).
- davemp 8y ago
  I can see where you’re coming from. My armchair hypothesis is that people aren’t being taught how to have healthy long term monogamous relationships and why being in one (a healthy ltmr) can be so amazing. I won’t speculate on the cause, beyond suggesting that there is a negatively correlated social trend (based on no actual data) that seems like a logical inference. This hypothetical situation implies that it is much less likely for people to find another party interested in teaming up. Luckily if both sides: know how to identify a healthy ltmr, know how to & will participate in a healthy ltmr, will keep testing partners until a healthy ltmr is formed, and are balanced population size (and more), everyone interested and capable will end up in a healthy ltmr. The regressions in this scenario are longer expected time to relationship and the emotional cost of testing potential partners. (Probably significant enough to address). Based on the above scenario actionable advice is to do one’s best to satisfy the assumptions, weather the regression costs, and try to optimize your strategy to minimize the costs (becareful not to become a bad actor/violate the assumptions). This scenario & strategy is likely full of holes, but maybe it can provide hope that there is a strategy that offers a high success rate.
  - iamdave 8y ago

buboard 8y ago

This is going to be huge.

devit 8y ago

Seems potentially great. The problem with apps like Tinder is that they focus essentially only on your skill at taking photos, posing for them and retouching them and secondarily on your appearance, and obviously photo-taking skills are completely irrelevant and appearance is at best secondary even for one-night stands. Hopefully Facebook can actually deliver matches based more on personality, what someone is looking for and how pleasant a person is in general.

linkerzx 8y ago

its singles day everywhere! this week!

scottlocklin 8y ago

Internet dating is one of those businesses that superficially seems like it makes sense; aka "hey, let's use data and statistics to fix people up" -but ultimately couldn't possibly work to the benefit of the people it purports to fix up. Two main reasons. 1) Histocompatibility -some people smell right. Some people don't. Chemistry isn't something you're gonna capture over the internet, even if you enjoy the online bantz and have tons of stuff in common. Barring breakthroughs in genetics and even more privacy invasions, the FBs of the world can't help here. 2) Principal agent problem: for all payment techniques thus explored for online dating, the interests of the dating service are not in alignment with daters who want a monogamous LTR. Dating apps who collect monthly fees want to continue to collect monthly fees. Dating apps that rely on advertising want continued obsessive engagement. Alignment of interests would look something like an old school matchmaker who only gets paid if they succeed in making a match -you're not going to pull this off with an app. Facebook, of course wants to keep you on their platform. The statistics, of course, back all this up, for example: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-mating-game/201609/the-ugly-truth-about-online-dating https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-mating-game/2016...

SilasX 8y ago
Someone is working on matching by smell (saw previously on HN): http://smell.dating/ http://smell.dating/
bromuro 8y ago
I’m 40 yo and I’ve found most of my boyfriends and best friends via dating apps or website :)
121789 8y ago
Re: the principal agent problem - doesn’t this actually give FB an advantage? An effective dating app would just be another feature that may actually help with user retention. They don’t need to optimize for ongoing engagement for individual users.
baby 8y ago
Plenty of people find their SO via dating apps. Probably more than ever. In society like Japan thrse are killer apps.

Waterluvian 8y ago

I don't want my friend circles anywhere near my dating. I'd be terrified to even try, lest Facebook try to optimize some synergy and starts suggesting to girls that I want to go on dates with them.

booleandilemma 8y ago

Will LinkedIn follow, I wonder?

mrfusion 8y ago
Coming to your contacts inbox soon: “Congratulate booleandilemma on their upcoming date”

throwapay232 8y ago

I've used tinder/bumble since their inception, even had 3 long(ish) relationships form. I think the value the apps bring is connecting people who would never meet irl (i.e many degrees of social separation). I don't like the idea of only connecting friends of friends, it promotes insular social circles, harder for bigger cities to become open when everyone stays in their cliche. I feel this becoming more of a thing with social media, people are losing the ability to branch out. Like others have already commented, the apps also put females on a pedestal to a ridiculous degree. I'm (barely) in the range of "top" males and even getting a lot of matches (~10-20 a day), the number of girls who are open and willing to create a genuine connection (on the app) is approaching 1 in 100.

dbg31415 8y ago

The problem is that nobody under 50 still uses Facebook, and all the 50+ dating is handled by eHarmony. Said in jest... but not really.

greendestiny_re 8y ago

Facebook Dating is going to encounter the exact same problem all dating apps do – too many men aggressively soliciting their matches and too few women responding to such solicitations. By the way, did anyone notice the linked CBC article has nearly all paragraphs consisting of a single sentence, two at most?

jhanschoo 8y ago

I think FB is well-positioned to provide a better online dating experience than specialized online dating platforms. Specialized online dating platforms have a disincentive to cater to people looking for stable relationships, since these people typically stop using the platform once they have found a match. For example, I find that OkCupid's redesign last year/earlier this year (I forget the exact time interval when) smells of a reorientation towards catering to heavy users of the platform. FB users, on the other hand, probably do not see (or see as much) a decrease in activity if/when they enter a stable relationship, and so FB can be more well-aligned with the relationship goals of its users.