How Facebook Dating Might Surpass Tinder
The article “Can Facebook Fix the Dating World Tinder Created?” from The Atlantic by Ashley Fetters brings up some interesting points about how the culture of dating nowadays has evolved. It has become a modern trend to find dates or partners through Tinder, Bumble, and other dating apps. Tinder now has a worldwide user base of around 50 million, and other dating apps have soared in popularity as well due to advancements in technology and acceptance of this way of dating. However, dating app users often complain about matching or going out on dates with people whom they know nothing about. If you think about it, users are judging a potential date’s character based on some profile pictures and a short bio. This creates a small possibility of having a previous connection or so-on-so “common ground.” That’s why Facebook wants to change that with their new matchmaking service called Facebook Dating, which would algorithmically connect singles by matching them based on their geography and shared interests, events, and groups. Facebook users can also opt in or opt out of matching with their Facebook friends’ Facebook friends since they don’t have to match with their own Facebook friends. Facebook conducted a survey that polled 3,000 Americans above the age of 18 of whom 40% felt that the available dating apps and sites weren’t meeting their needs. As well, the survey results showed that similar interests were the top-ranked trait most people were looking for in a partner, over looks and financial prospects. Although it may seem unreliable that people with shared interests are more likely to lead to dating, Facebook is aiming to create the experience of meeting someone in person virtually with Facebook Dating.
Whether or not Facebook Dating is just another way for Facebook to bounce back after having private Facebook data harvested by Cambridge Analytica, it is an interesting take on online dating. Would it be better than Tinder, or in other words, would it satisfy the needs of more people than Tinder has? Let’s look at it this way. For every common interest a Facebook user has with their own Facebook friend, they have a strong tie. Or if the user is close with that Facebook friend in general they have a strong tie. Many users are friends with people on Facebook with whom they have no common interests. For this user’s Facebook social network to satisfy the Strong Triadic Closure Principle, the strong ties the user has with their Facebook friends should theoretically also be connected with each other in some way. This means that the user will have a higher chance of sharing a common interest with one of their mutual Facebook friends. If the user has strong ties with two Facebook friends, there must be another tie that somehow connects the first friend to the third friend, whether the tie is weak or strong. On the other hand, Tinder users would have less strong ties with other Tinder users because they don’t have some sort of common ground to begin with. Through this logic, Facebook Dating would be able to increase the chances of Facebook users finding a date who are more suitable for them than Tinder has, that is, disregarding all other factors that could affect each user individually. Perhaps Facebook Dating will be the next most popular dating service, or it won’t but maybe people will realize that the conventional way of dating worked for a reason.