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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

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 different name and brand. While HN has a good knowledge of the ultimate parent owners of apps, I meet a lot of people who protest facebook by moving to Instagram/WhatsApp. Even announcing this through the instagram brand would have made more sense to me.

creaghpatr 7y ago
They can pull the API plug on their competitors which almost always use Facebook Login?
- ummonk 7y ago
  And invite FTC scrutiny?
zelon88 7y ago
I see where you're coming from. This is exactly why Tinder is so popular. Just because I go out on a date with someone doesn't mean I want to be friends with them on Facebook.
- galfarragem 7y ago
  > Just because I go out on a date with someone doesn't mean I want to be friends with them on Facebook. That's true for casual dating. By the other hand on older demographics, I think they nailed it: I suspect among older people, casual dating is less relevant, so they are not afraid of adding eachother as friends. And they don't need to install anything else..
  - jonnycomputer 7y ago
    The ad's photograph isn't targeted at older people.
    - passivepinetree 7y ago
      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?
      - reaperducer 7y ago
        Ads don't always (and you could argue rarely) show their target demographic. I see plenty of overweight people in ads for diabetes treatments. I see plenty of fit people in ads for workout machines. Right now I see an ad on the side of a bus encouraging people to get free STD testing, and it shows people dancing at a club. There are aspirational ads, but the use of "rare" in your comment doesn't reflect reality.
      - kube-system 7y ago
        The era of 'supersize me' fast food marketing is long gone. Most fast food restaurants are not targeting that specific of a market anymore, they're aiming at a much large cross-section of the population. A better example would be an all-you-can-eat buffet.
        dublinben 7y ago
        According to the CDC, over 70% of American adults are overweight or obese, so by targeting a "large cross-section" of the population restaurants are in fact aiming at 'large' customers. This reality isn't represented in advertising for obvious reasons. https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/obesity-overweight.htm https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/obesity-overweight.htm
        kube-system 7y ago
tryitnow 7y ago
I agree, but I think the "dating self" and the "facebook self" overlap a lot for most people. It's also important for a dating app to have critical mass. Almost everyone is on FB, only a fraction of those people are on IG.
- roland35 7y ago
  I think it also would be too complicated for many people to keep track of, and I am sure it would be easy to make a mistake of typing something in the wrong profile! I certainly wouldn't want my grandma to know I like long walks on the beach!
- jonknee 7y ago
  Among all people sure, but among people in the dating demographic? I would not be surprised at all if more people in prime dating ages are on IG than FB (especially in an active manner, do young people post on FB in any real way?).
  - jacobush 7y ago
    I agree for I what I assume you mean by prime dating ages, but think there are more prime dating ages which are not so "prime" in other ways, if you will.
  - StrangeDoctor 7y ago
    I think you’ve gone astray equating young with prime dating, all you need is like seeking like, and both using FB is probably a good start.
    - jonknee 7y ago
      Facebook has pitched this showing young people so I assumed that's their market. I guess the boomer dating market is probably underserved, maybe that's what they're actually going for.
JorgeGT 7y ago
From their privacy page, interesting bit: You can also choose how you want to present yourself to potential matches, like whether you provide different information than you have on your Facebook profile
- ocdtrekkie 7y ago
  There are definitely upsides to this, like being able to put your general geographic area than your exact town which you might have on Facebook, for instance. But I'm curious also if it is usable to be downright dishonest. For one, I think people will be less willing to lie in a form where one company can see both profiles, but on the other side, it comes down to what Facebook lets you change. Hopefully they won't let your profile specify two different ages, for instance.
msoad 7y ago
I think this is an "old people's thinking" perspective. Younger generation are way more open about their dating life than us. They openly talk about their dating life at work or friends group. They don't mind getting matched with a coworker or classmate.
- KaoruAoiShiho 7y ago
  Yeah it's a load of assumptions, I'm chalking it more up to a "socially anxious person's thinking" than "old" person's thinking. For many people I think being able to smoothly integrate their existing social life into a dating app is a godsend.
  - ummonk 7y ago
    Right, I mean secret crush seems like a real improvement over the status quo in its ability to discover potential relationships without risking making existing friendships awkward.
    - twic 7y ago
      You would think. Those of us who have been wasting time on the internet for long enough remember the Secret Crush Meme from LiveJournal [1], which worked just like this. It was great up until someone realised they could just say they had a crush on everyone they knew to get a list of who had crushes on them, without any genuine reciprocity of the crush. If you could figure out a way to make it somehow costly to falsely say you have a crush on someone, this might work, but until then, this is game-theoretically wince-inducing. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anonymous_matching https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anonymous_matching
      - mwilliaams 7y ago
        Maybe just limit the number of people you can have a crush on at once.
      - skinnymuch 7y ago
technofiend 7y ago
It also seems particularly poorly timed when a breach exposing Facebook user phone numbers just made hacker news yesterday. Does anyone really want to trust a dating service that aggressively collects anything and everything about a person and may accidentally share it? Sounds like a stalker's paradise.
- saagarjha 7y ago
  Unfortunately, I doubt many outside of Hacker News heard about this.
  - steve_gh 7y ago
    Like the BBC? https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-49594264 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-49594264
    - scarface74 7y ago
      Facebook has had plenty of data breaches and in the aggregate no one cared enough to delete their account.
      - technofiend 7y ago
        >no one cares enough to delete their account. That's demonstrably untrue: there are articles at the top of Google results about this very subject including a guide on how to do it on The New York Times that references the breaches. https://www.narcity.com/news/canadians-are-deleting-their-facebook-accounts-after-their-latest-privacy-breach https://www.narcity.com/news/canadians-are-deleting-their-fa... Anecdotally I deleted mine over privacy concerns but it was prior to the breaches. My wife didn't like the fact that friends of friends could see photos of her. She didn't know those people and didn't like it. I was more exasperated by Facebook tweaking privacy knobs through updates and was always to share more not less. So I deleted my account since I couldn't promise that even if I choose privacy settings today that protected her privacy they'd be there tomorrow. Ironically she's still a Facebook customer and has no clue how to change privacy settings, but that's between her and Facebook.
ryanmarsh 7y ago
FTA Starting today, you can choose to opt into Facebook Dating and create a Dating profile (separate from your main profile) Facebook's loss of interest amongst Gen Z notwithstanding, your profile is apparently different. So glad I'm married and not having to date in this online zoo.
wheelerwj 7y ago
> 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 its almost like facebook doesn't understand privacy at all...
- VWWHFSfQ 7y ago
  they understand it perfectly well.
  - reaperducer 7y ago
    They just don't care.
    - vokep 7y ago
      It seems they do care, but about actively destroying any idea of privacy. Zuckerberg has said before that he feels people need to be accountable and one way of doing that is forcing us all into a singular identity. https://www.michaelzimmer.org/2010/05/14/facebooks-zuckerberg-having-two-identities-for-yourself-is-an-example-of-a-lack-of-integrity/ https://www.michaelzimmer.org/2010/05/14/facebooks-zuckerber...
buboard 7y ago
In my country facebook is by far the #1 dating site people use. In fact "Facebook dating" is reduntant
- dlivingston 7y ago
  Can you explain this further?
  - buboard 7y ago
    depends on the dating culture. Casual dating apps are not popular here, so people use facebook messaging
    - dlivingston 7y ago
      Okay, walk me through this - do you, say, see a cute girl (friend of a friend, someone in your city, etc.) that you might fancy, and just randomly send her a message?
      - cocochanel 7y ago
        Yes. You casually introduce yourself, mention a thing or two in common (same groups for instance), and ask if they'd be interested in getting to know each other —assuming you have a solid FB profile and not something fake. Pretty much like you'd walk up to a person in a real life in a social setting and say Hi. Many of my friends met their girlfriends like that. If you don't get a reply then that's your answer, no hard feelings. If they're a friend of a friend, well, you just ask your friend for an introduction. I don't know how things are in the US, but it's not considered awkward at all in my country. I've had women approach me in this same way as well.
      - buboard 7y ago
        This is mostly between friends-of-friends , not for randomly adding people for hookups. Typically it involves sending a friend request followed by chat
asdfman123 7y ago
> 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 that you need to optimize that persona for your career and ironically it feels more stiflingly conformist. Just my personal feelings on the matter, though. I'm not trying to call out anyone who likes that way of life (and perhaps has a personality that's well suited for it), just that it should not be imposed on everyone. I kind of like the old model where you pretend to be conservative at work, and are free to be as weird as you want to in your own time.
- beowulfey 7y ago
  >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.
  - adamc 7y ago
    If the service is unappealing, I will not use it, or use it less. So, there are trade-offs.
  - roblabla 7y ago
    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.
    - penagwin 7y ago
      > 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.
kostarelo 7y ago
> 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 already concluded in.
- kelnos 7y ago
  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.
thecleaner 7y ago
>I meet a lot of people who protest facebook by moving to Instagram/WhatsApp I see. So these people dont like FB the product not FB the company. That feels like a very restrained response. I protested by just moving to Signal (and never using insta) and boy does it suck if other people wont do the same.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
meerita 7y ago
I'm sure they have enough data to support this new business. In fact, lot of people date in Facebook/Instagram. When you see in Tinder or other apps "msg me on Insta/fb" you can understand many things from their preferences: (getting followers, likes, etc).
scarface74 7y ago
I meet a lot of people who protest facebook by moving to Instagram/WhatsApp. Even announcing this through the instagram brand would have made more sense to me. We have real numbers about Facebook and they no more jibe with your anecdotal experience than all of the geek rage about Uber, Amazon, or that people care about “openness” and the “right to repair”.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
mogadsheu 7y ago
I think what they’re looking for is a way to get more consistent and precise user location data, via the Facebook app. It’s a relative missing piece in their user data suite.
aylmao 7y ago
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.
suyash 7y ago
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.
johnestar 7y ago
it may be true in united states, but in other parts of the world, facebook dating could work
benguild 7y ago
It makes sense. A lot of people only grant API access to dating apps and this would increase their app installs at a time of decline.

creaghpatr 7y ago

They can pull the API plug on their competitors which almost always use Facebook Login?

ummonk 7y ago
And invite FTC scrutiny?

zelon88 7y ago

I see where you're coming from. This is exactly why Tinder is so popular. Just because I go out on a date with someone doesn't mean I want to be friends with them on Facebook.

galfarragem 7y ago
> Just because I go out on a date with someone doesn't mean I want to be friends with them on Facebook. That's true for casual dating. By the other hand on older demographics, I think they nailed it: I suspect among older people, casual dating is less relevant, so they are not afraid of adding eachother as friends. And they don't need to install anything else..
- jonnycomputer 7y ago
  The ad's photograph isn't targeted at older people.
  - passivepinetree 7y ago
    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?
    - reaperducer 7y ago
      Ads don't always (and you could argue rarely) show their target demographic. I see plenty of overweight people in ads for diabetes treatments. I see plenty of fit people in ads for workout machines. Right now I see an ad on the side of a bus encouraging people to get free STD testing, and it shows people dancing at a club. There are aspirational ads, but the use of "rare" in your comment doesn't reflect reality.
    - kube-system 7y ago
      The era of 'supersize me' fast food marketing is long gone. Most fast food restaurants are not targeting that specific of a market anymore, they're aiming at a much large cross-section of the population. A better example would be an all-you-can-eat buffet.
      - dublinben 7y ago
        According to the CDC, over 70% of American adults are overweight or obese, so by targeting a "large cross-section" of the population restaurants are in fact aiming at 'large' customers. This reality isn't represented in advertising for obvious reasons. https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/obesity-overweight.htm https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/obesity-overweight.htm
        kube-system 7y ago

tryitnow 7y ago

I agree, but I think the "dating self" and the "facebook self" overlap a lot for most people. It's also important for a dating app to have critical mass. Almost everyone is on FB, only a fraction of those people are on IG.

roland35 7y ago
I think it also would be too complicated for many people to keep track of, and I am sure it would be easy to make a mistake of typing something in the wrong profile! I certainly wouldn't want my grandma to know I like long walks on the beach!
jonknee 7y ago
Among all people sure, but among people in the dating demographic? I would not be surprised at all if more people in prime dating ages are on IG than FB (especially in an active manner, do young people post on FB in any real way?).
- jacobush 7y ago
  I agree for I what I assume you mean by prime dating ages, but think there are more prime dating ages which are not so "prime" in other ways, if you will.
- StrangeDoctor 7y ago
  I think you’ve gone astray equating young with prime dating, all you need is like seeking like, and both using FB is probably a good start.
  - jonknee 7y ago
    Facebook has pitched this showing young people so I assumed that's their market. I guess the boomer dating market is probably underserved, maybe that's what they're actually going for.

JorgeGT 7y ago

From their privacy page, interesting bit: You can also choose how you want to present yourself to potential matches, like whether you provide different information than you have on your Facebook profile

ocdtrekkie 7y ago
There are definitely upsides to this, like being able to put your general geographic area than your exact town which you might have on Facebook, for instance. But I'm curious also if it is usable to be downright dishonest. For one, I think people will be less willing to lie in a form where one company can see both profiles, but on the other side, it comes down to what Facebook lets you change. Hopefully they won't let your profile specify two different ages, for instance.

msoad 7y ago

I think this is an "old people's thinking" perspective. Younger generation are way more open about their dating life than us. They openly talk about their dating life at work or friends group. They don't mind getting matched with a coworker or classmate.

KaoruAoiShiho 7y ago
Yeah it's a load of assumptions, I'm chalking it more up to a "socially anxious person's thinking" than "old" person's thinking. For many people I think being able to smoothly integrate their existing social life into a dating app is a godsend.
- ummonk 7y ago
  Right, I mean secret crush seems like a real improvement over the status quo in its ability to discover potential relationships without risking making existing friendships awkward.
  - twic 7y ago
    You would think. Those of us who have been wasting time on the internet for long enough remember the Secret Crush Meme from LiveJournal [1], which worked just like this. It was great up until someone realised they could just say they had a crush on everyone they knew to get a list of who had crushes on them, without any genuine reciprocity of the crush. If you could figure out a way to make it somehow costly to falsely say you have a crush on someone, this might work, but until then, this is game-theoretically wince-inducing. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anonymous_matching https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anonymous_matching
    - mwilliaams 7y ago
      Maybe just limit the number of people you can have a crush on at once.
    - skinnymuch 7y ago

technofiend 7y ago

It also seems particularly poorly timed when a breach exposing Facebook user phone numbers just made hacker news yesterday. Does anyone really want to trust a dating service that aggressively collects anything and everything about a person and may accidentally share it? Sounds like a stalker's paradise.

saagarjha 7y ago
Unfortunately, I doubt many outside of Hacker News heard about this.
- steve_gh 7y ago
  Like the BBC? https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-49594264 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-49594264
  - scarface74 7y ago
    Facebook has had plenty of data breaches and in the aggregate no one cared enough to delete their account.
    - technofiend 7y ago
      >no one cares enough to delete their account. That's demonstrably untrue: there are articles at the top of Google results about this very subject including a guide on how to do it on The New York Times that references the breaches. https://www.narcity.com/news/canadians-are-deleting-their-facebook-accounts-after-their-latest-privacy-breach https://www.narcity.com/news/canadians-are-deleting-their-fa... Anecdotally I deleted mine over privacy concerns but it was prior to the breaches. My wife didn't like the fact that friends of friends could see photos of her. She didn't know those people and didn't like it. I was more exasperated by Facebook tweaking privacy knobs through updates and was always to share more not less. So I deleted my account since I couldn't promise that even if I choose privacy settings today that protected her privacy they'd be there tomorrow. Ironically she's still a Facebook customer and has no clue how to change privacy settings, but that's between her and Facebook.

ryanmarsh 7y ago

FTA Starting today, you can choose to opt into Facebook Dating and create a Dating profile (separate from your main profile) Facebook's loss of interest amongst Gen Z notwithstanding, your profile is apparently different. So glad I'm married and not having to date in this online zoo.

wheelerwj 7y ago

> 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 its almost like facebook doesn't understand privacy at all...

VWWHFSfQ 7y ago
they understand it perfectly well.
- reaperducer 7y ago
  They just don't care.
  - vokep 7y ago
    It seems they do care, but about actively destroying any idea of privacy. Zuckerberg has said before that he feels people need to be accountable and one way of doing that is forcing us all into a singular identity. https://www.michaelzimmer.org/2010/05/14/facebooks-zuckerberg-having-two-identities-for-yourself-is-an-example-of-a-lack-of-integrity/ https://www.michaelzimmer.org/2010/05/14/facebooks-zuckerber...

buboard 7y ago

In my country facebook is by far the #1 dating site people use. In fact "Facebook dating" is reduntant

dlivingston 7y ago
Can you explain this further?
- buboard 7y ago
  depends on the dating culture. Casual dating apps are not popular here, so people use facebook messaging
  - dlivingston 7y ago
    Okay, walk me through this - do you, say, see a cute girl (friend of a friend, someone in your city, etc.) that you might fancy, and just randomly send her a message?
    - cocochanel 7y ago
      Yes. You casually introduce yourself, mention a thing or two in common (same groups for instance), and ask if they'd be interested in getting to know each other —assuming you have a solid FB profile and not something fake. Pretty much like you'd walk up to a person in a real life in a social setting and say Hi. Many of my friends met their girlfriends like that. If you don't get a reply then that's your answer, no hard feelings. If they're a friend of a friend, well, you just ask your friend for an introduction. I don't know how things are in the US, but it's not considered awkward at all in my country. I've had women approach me in this same way as well.
    - buboard 7y ago
      This is mostly between friends-of-friends , not for randomly adding people for hookups. Typically it involves sending a friend request followed by chat

asdfman123 7y ago

> 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 that you need to optimize that persona for your career and ironically it feels more stiflingly conformist. Just my personal feelings on the matter, though. I'm not trying to call out anyone who likes that way of life (and perhaps has a personality that's well suited for it), just that it should not be imposed on everyone. I kind of like the old model where you pretend to be conservative at work, and are free to be as weird as you want to in your own time.

beowulfey 7y ago
>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.
- adamc 7y ago
  If the service is unappealing, I will not use it, or use it less. So, there are trade-offs.
- roblabla 7y ago
  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.
  - penagwin 7y ago
    > 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.

kostarelo 7y ago

> 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 already concluded in.

kelnos 7y ago
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.

thecleaner 7y ago

>I meet a lot of people who protest facebook by moving to Instagram/WhatsApp I see. So these people dont like FB the product not FB the company. That feels like a very restrained response. I protested by just moving to Signal (and never using insta) and boy does it suck if other people wont do the same.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

meerita 7y ago

I'm sure they have enough data to support this new business. In fact, lot of people date in Facebook/Instagram. When you see in Tinder or other apps "msg me on Insta/fb" you can understand many things from their preferences: (getting followers, likes, etc).

scarface74 7y ago

I meet a lot of people who protest facebook by moving to Instagram/WhatsApp. Even announcing this through the instagram brand would have made more sense to me. We have real numbers about Facebook and they no more jibe with your anecdotal experience than all of the geek rage about Uber, Amazon, or that people care about “openness” and the “right to repair”.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

mogadsheu 7y ago

I think what they’re looking for is a way to get more consistent and precise user location data, via the Facebook app. It’s a relative missing piece in their user data suite.

aylmao 7y ago

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.

suyash 7y ago

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.

johnestar 7y ago

it may be true in united states, but in other parts of the world, facebook dating could work

benguild 7y ago

It makes sense. A lot of people only grant API access to dating apps and this would increase their app installs at a time of decline.