3 ms·

Somewhat related, I had high hopes for Facebook Dating to be a great product and a dating site/app disruptor. FB has all that data, why not use it to play match

Somewhat related, I had high hopes for Facebook Dating to be a great product and a dating site/app disruptor. FB has all that data, why not use it to play matchmaker? Unfortunately, like many other Facebook ventures, it's nothing as expected, and is just a "Here's people in your area. Kind of. Sometimes."

lmm 4y ago
Facebook once started showing me a whole lot of updates from one particular friend-of-friend for a few weeks, to the point that I wondered if it was trying to hook us up.
zo1 4y ago
They probably aren't allowed to use that data. Something something privacy. And imagine the uproar from privacy fear mongerers if Facebook tried to make such a product. That is why we can't explore things that we "might" consider nice. A product that might have been.
- fy20 4y ago
  There is nothing wrong with using whatever data for matching as long as it is specified in the terms the user agrees to by signing up for Facebook Dating. Privacy laws prevent you from using data for other purposes or selling it to third parties. Most likely they tried this and realised the results are biased. Imagine what data Facebook has about you, they know you live in X1 city, have visited X2 & X3 places recently, have attended X4 & X5 events, have interacted with X6 & X7 pages. Then if they try and match you with other people who have similar profiles, we get headlines such as "Facebook Dating only matches <insert minority> people with other <insert minority> people" as it's biases on hyper-local location. Using other data such as "Person A likes band Y, we will only match them with other people who like that band too!" doesn't really make sense, as that isn't a requirement to have a good relationship... Unless by liking a band page, you really mean "I religiously go to every concert and could not date a person who does not also do that". So they might as well just do the same as Tinder / Bumble / etc and show anyone within X miles of your location. The only advantage they really have is your friends circle, so they could use that to suggest friends of friends (of friends?), but I imagine that would quickly be exhausted if they only displayed matches from that.

lmm 4y ago

Facebook once started showing me a whole lot of updates from one particular friend-of-friend for a few weeks, to the point that I wondered if it was trying to hook us up.

zo1 4y ago

They probably aren't allowed to use that data. Something something privacy. And imagine the uproar from privacy fear mongerers if Facebook tried to make such a product. That is why we can't explore things that we "might" consider nice. A product that might have been.

fy20 4y ago
There is nothing wrong with using whatever data for matching as long as it is specified in the terms the user agrees to by signing up for Facebook Dating. Privacy laws prevent you from using data for other purposes or selling it to third parties. Most likely they tried this and realised the results are biased. Imagine what data Facebook has about you, they know you live in X1 city, have visited X2 & X3 places recently, have attended X4 & X5 events, have interacted with X6 & X7 pages. Then if they try and match you with other people who have similar profiles, we get headlines such as "Facebook Dating only matches <insert minority> people with other <insert minority> people" as it's biases on hyper-local location. Using other data such as "Person A likes band Y, we will only match them with other people who like that band too!" doesn't really make sense, as that isn't a requirement to have a good relationship... Unless by liking a band page, you really mean "I religiously go to every concert and could not date a person who does not also do that". So they might as well just do the same as Tinder / Bumble / etc and show anyone within X miles of your location. The only advantage they really have is your friends circle, so they could use that to suggest friends of friends (of friends?), but I imagine that would quickly be exhausted if they only displayed matches from that.