Data portability is a hot topic amongst the digerati these days. while reading about FacebookConnect. I’m all for being able to display and access your own information across multiple sites.
TechCrunch says Facebook to Open Source Facebook Platform. This is big news for sites looking to use Facebook user data and applications on their sites. How many dating sites are going to integrate Facebook? What are the implications? Will it help dating sites grow and members stick around longer?
Remember Match had the first social network and they blew it, but it was a shot in the dark at the time. What if they partnered with Facebook instead of playing around with applications that about 17 people use? Deeper and tighter intergration between platforms is going to grow dating sites exponentially, but they don’t quite get it yet. It’s too bad the people that do tend to get it don’t have the resources to make it happen and the marketing dollars to promote their efforts.
Facebook Responds To MySpace With Facebook Connect. All of this datasharing openness is incredibly exciting but there are so many initiatives that it takes a wall chart to keep track of everything.
Facebook’s, People You May Know is similar to many dating applications.
People You May Know looks at, among other things, your current friend list and their friends, your education info and your work info. If you are already friends on Facebook with some people from your last job, for example, you may find some more of your former coworkers (assuming they are visible to you in search) among the “People You May Know’ suggestions.
Q: What’s to stop Facebook from creating a Dating group and/or application?
A: Not much.
Facebook could easily build out a dating section of the site. I’m sure they are paying attention to the advertising dollars that popular dating applications are pulling in. I guesstimate it to be $1 million or more per quarter. Small change at this point, but as Facebook’s popularity continues to grow at 3% per month, how long until some internal team takes on dating?
Silicon Alley Insider says Confirmed: Facebook Apps Are Useless and O’Reilly Radar shows us Facebook App Categories Ranked By Usage.
FlowingData did the graphs. Even more interesting is the second chart in the O’Reilly post.
Notice that the number of active dating application active users on Facebook is down. That’s surprising.
As an example there are much fewer Dating apps than Sports apps, but Dating apps generate far more active users. Moreover, Messaging generates more active users than other “less useful” categories, and has grown the fastest over the last month.
Andrew Chen on why Facebook applications are focused on fun instead of utility.
20bits says slowing developer access to Facebook platform groups indicates growth is slowing .
Facebooking101 has a list of useful dating applications on Facebook.
Facebook Dater , a forum for Facebook dating.
VentureBeat on Watercooler: Yet another social network app company that’s making money. Water cooler has 700 applications and gets about 2,000 new posts, more than 5,000 trivia quiz questions answered and more than 1,500 new notes from fans every day.
Two interesting Facebook screenshots below. One is Are You Interested, which I hit like a crack pipe and actually met some good people. I am scratching my head trying to figure out why the link that says “This is a Match member” does not link to their Match profile. They’re half-way to a decent partnership, let’s see some links.
I have to say I prefer AYI over Zoosk these days, better interface and loads faster and twice as many people on it. Zoosk needs to step it up if they are going to stay competitive.
Second shot is from SinglesNet. Three naked women who look practically underage. SinglesNet is a kissing cousin to True.com’s skinvertising, although I do get emails more frequently from people saying they met someone on Singlesnet which is heartening to hear. but come on guys, how about raising the bar a bit? I know it’s scary but Singlesnet could truly innovate the industry in a way that Match or PlentyofFish can’t if they rebranded the company and added a few features to the site. Right now it’s a step above Craigslist in terms of functionality.
Glad to get this onto the blog. Let’s hear what you have to say in the comments.
