Online Dating Insider

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I’ve been getting a lot of emails from Facebook dating applications this week after signing up for about 20 of them last weekend. Thing is, I deleted 20 applications a few weeks ago because I thought they were breaking things on Facebook. It appears that when you delete a Facebook dating application, all of the people you invited to the application are lost, and you have a big do-over on your hands. Can anyone confirm this?

Reminds me of the iPhone. When they came out I was totally lusting after it, but decided to wait for a while to see how it worked in the real world. I bought mine off a friend at a deep discount a while back, and the first few weeks were intoxicating. The scroll, the pinch and stretch, the poor man’s GPS. I was like a new father showing off my baby. Two months later, I am looking forward to getting a Nokia. The lack of a keyboard is a total turn-off for me, end of story.

Why am I talking about the iPhone? Because developers are up in arms that Apple has the audacity to act as gatekeeper for third-party applications. Either you pass muster with Apple or you’re out of the game. Granted, I think Apple has maybe gone a bit too far with the Draconian “our way or the highway” mentality, but I wish Facebook had exhibited some of Apple’s chutzpah when it comes to allowing and approving applications on its platform.

I would gladly take 25 approved dating applications over the 1000+ plus out there today. That’s not to say there aren’t a few gems in the rough, I just am not finding them.

Engage is trying to replicate what most Facebook applications are attempting, instead starting with a few hundred thousand members instead of 70 million. Engage will appeal to social daters because the people on the site are more serious about dating than most people on Facebook, i.e. purpose-driven as opposed to “oh let’s look at hotties on this Facebook application.”

I had an interesting talk with someone in the media this week to talked to a popular Facebook application developer who tried to do all sorts of leading-edge features in their dating applications. None of them worked. People just want to be voyeurs and click around on their lunchbreak. How long until Facebook turns into the world’s largest casual gaming site?

I am totally addicted to checking out application stats on Appsaholic and am always learning new things about the viral nature of social networks, but from an end users perspective, the choices for actually doing interesting things on Facebook are currently slim. This may change over time, but only if Facebook improves the platform, makes it easier for developers to create compelling applications and does a better job of managing the quality of the applications they allow on the platform.

• Facebook to License its Social Networking Platform
• Facebook has 40 Dating Applications
• Userplane to Release APIs Supporting Google’s OpenSocial Standard
• The Week in Social Networking April 4, 2008
• Facebook, The Platform