Facebook Dating and the Network Effect
https://www.bostonglobe.com/lifestyle/2019/11/08/facebook-new-dating-service-flopping-tried-for-week-find-out-why/LT6j2wsvMepzTA9Y19CqqJ/story.html?p1=SectionFront_Feed_ContentQuery
This article, published by the Boston Globe and written by Max Jungreis, analyzes Facebook’s much-anticipated entrance to the market of online dating apps. And to put it kindly, the author and the world, was not impressed. The reason being not enough people are using it. Despite Facebook’s massive user base, Facebook Dating is an opt-in program and evidently, there are not enough people drawn to the platform. The author went as far as saying that “Facebook Dating was a barren wasteland. I regularly ran out of suggested matches in the space of a few minutes. “ and suggested that this phenomenon wasn’t just isolated to him by citing tweets that said “I deleted Facebook dating. Let’s just say it wasn’t a great harvest”
The author goes on to examine reasons why people aren’t using the service, including Facebook’s problem with credibility, the overwhelming amount of dating companies alternatives (Tinder, Bumble, Hinge, EHarmony) and lackluster features that have failed to differentiate it from its competitors. Regardless of the reason why the service isn’t catching on, we can all understand why it is particularly harmful for a dating site that is supposed to connect people not to have enough people to connect.
After all, people come on the app to be able to meet lots of people. We could say that a dating app is an example of direct benefits, where a user experiences benefits by aligning themselves with the benefits of others. If your goal is to find love, it’s in your advantage to choose the service that has the most potential matches. Because of this, we can see that the world of online dating is subject to the Network Effect, where the value people place on the product depends on the fraction of the population is using the product.
Although Facebook Dating was only released in the US a few months ago, it has failed to capture the eye of the public. Some could say that the service did not succeed because it failed to reach the threshold ‘tipping point’ of usage. However, people shouldn’t count Facebook out just yet, because while they might not have a competitive product they do have money to spare and could possibly be willing to spend it by buying the company that owns Tinder and OkCupid, according to the author. This would provide Facebook an advantage because these services already have a large user base, so they would not fall prey to network effects as easily. Either way, if Facebook is to succeed in this industry, they have to be able to draw people to their product in order to have a competitive product.