Lately I’ve become more and more concerned with what websites and apps are doing with my personal information on Facebook. As previously noted, I have disconnected just about every single dating app, Facebook and website/web service from Facebook, because I had absolutely no idea what any of these companies were doing with my information and I wasn’t seeing a whole lot of value from these deep connections with my “social exhaust”.
Leveraging Facebook Connect to streamline the customer signup process can be quite useful to dating sites and singles alike, but leaving that connection in place doesn’t make much sense if the dating site isn’t doing anything useful with your information. And guess what, most sites don’t. They can vacuum up your information all day long, and to what purpose? Where is the transparency past the generic “Facebook wants to access your wall, Likes, Friends, Etc, click here or be gone.”
I’ve long been a proponent of Facebook-based dating apps and Facebook Connect, and still, nobody is doing anything very interesting with your Facebook data. Lots of companies claim to be revolutionizing online dating with Facebook. Exactly three companies are doing this, Zoosk, Are You Interested and Badoo. Where is the innovation here?
Innovative matching based on FB interests? Nobody is doing that. Posting interesting stuff on my wall? Nobody is doing that. Knowing the names of everyone in my family on Facebook? No thanks. The granularity of sharing your personal information on Facebook is way to loose-goosey for my tastes.
To make matters more complicated, dating sites need to earn my trust before I allow them access to my feed and its associated data (photos, likes, etc). From now on, I’m signing up for all new services , not just dating sites, with an old-school username and password. I’m happy to connect via Facebook if the site in question can prove that doing so will be more beneficial than not. But you have to earn my trust, its not going to be implicit and “one click and here we go” any longer.
I shouldn’t be so hard on dating sites. This is big complicated stuff that has nothing to do with lowering customer acquisition costs, anti-fraud and credit card billing. But then I wouldn’t be doing my job.
So, when are we going to see a dating site do something cool with Facebook? Throwing your dating site in an iFrame is not exactly leveraging Facebook for all its worth. I do receive periodic emails from people claiming to be at the brink of revolutionizing online dating. Thats great, I’m ready to have a look when you are. Don’t forget the boatload of cash you’ll need to get traction and the cautionary tales of the scores of companies that crashed and burned trying similar things on Facebook before you.
While thinking about this post, I went to sign up for Grouper, and it turns out that the only way one can join is via Facebook. Grouper is a Facebook-based social application, so the Facebook signup makes sense, but they should absolutely let people sign up with a traditional username/password combo. I wonder how many people bounce off the home page at the sight of the Facebook Join button? Here’s an Interview with Grouper founder Jerry Guo.
Group dating, social dating, entrepreneurs are doing anything they can to get away from “traditional” dating sites. They know they can’t beat Match in a fair fight, and niche (pretty much done and done at this point) and social are really the only options unless you want to go big and create a more effective matching algorithm which isn’t for the faint of heart, or pocketbook. Oh and mobile too. Same story there. A handful of apps that are 1/2-decent, with 50 copycats and a bunch of other apps that never got anywhere and disappeared before anyone could find out about them. Talk about a tough market to win in. Thank God for Huffington Post, otherwise most of these apps would remain in obscurity.
What new and cool dating apps are you using in conjunction with Facebook? I’m sure I’m missing some hot number that has just launched.
