When we’re not reviewing the latest go-to dating sites or extolling the virtues of mixing Astroglide and breath strips (don’t knock it till you’ve tried it), Online Dating Insider tries to educate singles about the business of online dating. The more you know about how online dating works, the better your experience, at least thats the idea.
Today’s behind the scenes topic is that Facebook has launched a new signup widget, and we think this is going have a huge impact on the online dating industry.
There have been lots of efforts to create “single-sign-on” applications for websites. Microsoft has had one forever, so does Google and lesser-known services like OpenID. The idea is that once you are verified, you can sign in with any of these services with one click. Happiness is never having to struggle to remember your catfancy.com password again.
Facebook has a similar implementation called Facebook Connect. About 67 jillion sites have implemented FB Connect. You probably use it too.
So you have your single-sign-on, never-forget-a-password-again thing, which is great. Some dating sites have implemented this, which is good.
Now its time to think about funnels. No, not beer funnels, sales funnels.
They generally work like this: see ad, click ad, end up on dating site home page, browse, register, subscribe. The problem is that massive amounts of people bail out of the process before they have fully registered or their money has hit the dating site bank account. Its called abandonment due to friction.
Dating sites are all about driving people to the site through photos of hot girls on Facebook. Once they click the chick, they are asked to register for the dating site and go through the sales funnel. At the end of the process the dating site promises you infinite incredibly hot people beyond your wildest dreams ready to meet you, in your zip code…seriously (sigh).
Like Astroglide, dating site sales funnels should be as slippery as possible. The reality is that the registration process for dating sites can be particularly sticky. Think about answering 436 questions on the old version of eHarmony. For every 100 people who start the process, how many do you think actually complete it? If I recall correctly, eHarmony took your money first, so even if you bailed 1/2-way through the questions, they still got your credit card number and you were out $150. Smart on their part, not so good for singles.
Poorly-designed registration pages and questionnaires are responsible for an enormous amount of abandoned signup forms. How many times have you gone shopping online in the last few weeks, only to fill up your shopping cart with mistletoe belt buckles, Sham-Wows and Slankets, only to get distracted by a cute kitteh on YouTube? That’s why Amazon patented 1-click shopping. You *love* that ugly Christmas sweater and the only way you’re going to buy it is with one click of the mouse. Less friction, more purchasing.
Now that we’re all caught up, the story of the week is that Facebook has redesigned Facebook Connect.
Facebook Connect embodies the simplicity of single-sign-on with the immediate availability of your Facebook information. Signup forms can be pre-populated, saving time and energy, and perhaps even more trust, since you see what is being retrieved from Facebook.
Don’t you shudder a bit at the window the pops up when you try to sign into a site with Facebook Connect? The wording sounds like “We want all your info…blah blah blah… We’re going to spam the hell out of your wall and your friends..blah blah.” Not confidence inspiring, yet millions of people use Facebook Connect every day. Why? Because we’re mostly ok with trading some privacy for convenience.
Why is this all a big deal? Dating sites can now easily pull your favorite movies, bands and so on from your Facebook account. This makes creating a new profile a snap.
I’ve been talking about this for lets see, three years now? Nice to see Facebook sharing data like this, even though as a company on its way to $2 billion in revenue in 2010 all of this is in its best interests, not necessarily yours. Sub-text here is that Facebook really is becoming more of a platform than a destination. With the new RockMelt web browser based on Google Chrome, I rarely go to facebook.com anymore, instead interacting with the site via the customized browser. Very cool.
Inside Facebook has done a fantastic job of explaing Facebook’s New User Registration Tool for Websites:
Facebook has officially launched its new “registration tool” for third-party websites. This powerful plugin allows websites to insert a single line of code to create a registration form which pre-populates fields with a user’s Facebook data. We expect widespread adoption of the tool because it will reduce drop off during registration and provide sites with data including a verified email address which has been historically difficult to get users to provide.
Dating sites should be able to offer a simple way for people to have a pre-populated signup form that is authenticated against a real Facebook account. Faster signup, less fraud, more real people and less friction during the signup process and more comprehensive profiles are just some of the benefits. Win-win-win and and extra win because its Christmas.
Its not a dating site, but FriendFeed, one of the beta partners for the tool where it can be seen in action, has already seen a 300% increase in Facebook sign ups.
Several forward-thinking startups like Thread, DateBuzz, Gelato and several others attempted to get an early lead leveraging member’s Facebook and other social data. Getting at the data was difficult and didn’t always work. Now that Facebook had approved of and made it much easier to implement user authentication and data sharing, the window of opportunity for these early-adopter sites just slammed shut, watch your fingers.
There is still hope for these companies if they are able to carve out a name for themselves by leveraging the social graph (your friends list) and creative new features that drive more fun and effective matching. I don’t think a faster signup process alone is enough as a sole differentiator to the thousands of dating site out there to make a big different, but it certainly should add people to a site faster and cheaper than before.
I love the fact that several of the Netflix Prize participants are now working on matching systems for online dating sites! Nothing but good can come from this.
There is a lot more to the new Facebook Login system, which just launched yesterday. First thing I’m going to do is implement it right here on Online Dating Insider and see what its capable of.
If your dating site uses the new system, let us know how it goes. And singles, do you think you will be more apt to join a dating site with a shorter signup process? What concerns do you have about Facebook sharing your personal information?
