MASHABLE - Jan 22 - Last week Facebook reps demonstrated several uses for Graph Search,
ranging from recruiting to searching for restaurant recommendations.
Then a Facebook employee stood on stage and searched for friends of my
friends who are single and living in San Fran. "Facebook is moving in on
the essence of online dating," said Dan Slater, author of Love in the Time of Algorithms,
a history of online dating and its impact on our culture, which comes
out on Thursday. With Graph Search, Facebook members can search for
other singles based on their interests, education, age, hometown,
current city and more. Kingfish Labs raised $500K in early 2012 to use
Facebook for dating, but its first Facebook app, Yoke, struggled to take
off. "Facebook Like data was often not fresh or comprehensive enough to
serve as a match-making tool", the company says. The stock for IAC,
the parent company of Match and OkCupid,
dropped by ~ 2% after Facebook announced Graph Search. "For online
dating businesses it could either be the best thing ever, or it could be
the beginning of the end," Slater says. Facebook could potentially help
the industry by removing whatever "cultural barrier" remains for online
dating.
by Seth Fiegerman
See full article at Mashable
This post also appears on OnlinePersonalsWatch.