20 Ideas For Facebook to ‘Make Online Dating Great Again’

On May 1st, Mark Zuckerberg ‘shocked the world’ by announcing that Facebook will offer online dating features to its 2 billion plus users. Although the timing is surprising, it is actually not far-fetched as Facebook began as a dating site called FaceMash in 2003, and has finally come full circle 15 years later. But most importantly, singles all over the world should be rejoicing, as this news should be the greatest thing for singles since…ever.

First, some quick background on myself. I’m the founder of Snap Interactive, which created the first successful Facebook dating app in 2007 called AreYouInterested? (AYI), and became the first publicly traded social media company. AYI would ultimately grow to over 100 million users. Our success was a result of pioneering countless online dating innovations. Many of these features are commonplace in today’s dating apps including: 1-click sign-up and profile creation using Facebook Connect, swiping, showing mutual interests, showing mutual friends (and friends of friends), the wingman concept, the ‘Hottie’ feature, and many more.

I talk about our wild startup story while providing dozens of case studies on management, innovation, and growth, in my new book, Explosive Growth: A Few Things I Learned Growing To 100 Million Users & Losing $78 Million, available on Amazon.

As someone with years of experience in the online dating space — both as a site owner and a user, I couldn’t be more excited about Facebook’s entrance into online dating. As an expert in the industry, several online dating site owners have recently asked me for my opinion and if I think Facebook will be the online dating app killer. And I can confidently say ‘No’ — quite the contrary.

I believe that Facebook will be the ‘Gateway Dating App’ that ‘pops the dating cherry’ for tens of millions of singles who have never previously tried online dating. These newbies will then become curious to see what else is out there and start using niche-dating sites in addition to Facebook Dating. There are a number of studies that support the idea that the average single uses several different online dating sites simultaneously.

So, as someone who is single, why am I so excited about Facebook’s entrance into online dating? Simple — Facebook is the only company in the world that is capable of delivering the elusive ‘Holy Grails’ of Online Dating Apps that are necessary to create the truly extraordinary product experience that has been evading singles until now.

Here are the top 5 reasons that Facebook is uniquely positioned to ‘Make Online Dating Great Again:’

1. Facebook Will Introduce 100 Million New Singles to the Online Dating Pool — and That’s Great News for Singles

After launching dozens of dating sites over the years, I’ve learned that the only thing that matters to users (whether they realize it or not) is if there are enough people on the dating app who meet their search criteria.

This is called the ‘network effect,’ which means that a product becomes more valuable when more people use it. For example, when a female from New York City signs up on a dating site, that’s a new search result and potential connection for many other users. So for a dating site to flourish you need a massive user-base with a constant influx of new users.

Here is why an online dating site needs so many active users in order to create a compelling user experience. Let’s assume the site has 100,000 users spread out equally in the U.S. The most basic search of just an age range, gender, and location, will immediately reduce the pool to less than a hundred profiles to browse through, which will take just a few minutes. When more detailed search criteria like height, body type, and ethnicity get applied, that number is further reduced to just a few results. This is why the same legacy dating sites continue to get bigger over the years, while new innovative dating sites launch but disappear just as quickly.

Facebook has over 200 million users who identify as ‘single’, and if just one-third (33%) of them use the new dating features (67 million), Facebook likely becomes the largest dating site in the world with a never ending supply of new singles to browse through in search of romance. And that’s great news for singles.

2. Facebook Can Offer the Holy Grail — ‘A Truly Great User Experience in Online Dating’

Facebook will stay true to their values and focus on creating a great user experience, something that eludes most dating sites. Ironically, online dating sites are one of the only businesses that lose customers when they are successful.

Most dating sites operate on a subscription model, which generally means optimizing the site to get men to pay to contact younger attractive women. Although many dating sites have created successful business models using these tactics, studies consistently show that both men and women find the ‘experience’ on most dating sites to be grossly inadequate. This is especially true for attractive women who get bombarded with countless messages (which are often inappropriate) from unsuitable partners with no accountability for the bad actors.

This lack of accountability leads to inauthentic profiles and low quality users, leaving most singles frustrated as they endure low quality matches and countless bad dates.

Facebook, however, has a huge advantage. Facebook has always prioritized delivering a great user experience, even ahead of generating short-term profits. This long-term mindset has paid off handsomely. By not cluttering the site with ads or a pay model, an inconceivable 1.45 billion users flock back to Facebook several times daily. This laser-sharp focus on providing a great user experience is something that Facebook’s management does not get enough credit for, but as a user I surely appreciate.

This same thought process will likely apply to Facebook’s dating features. If Facebook focuses first and foremost on creating an incredible experience for singles, everyone will win in the end.

3. Facebook Can Create an ‘Awesome Search’

In order to provide advanced searching functionality that singles want on dating apps (religion, ethnicity, height, etc), you need two things: 1) a lot of profiles and 2) a lot of meaningful profile data.

This is a great source of tension for dating site operators because most dating sites just don’t have enough data points on its users to offer these advanced search filters. And, even if they did, the quantity of search results would be too few to keep users swiping. This is why most swiping apps only offer the most basic of search functionality.

Enter Facebook. With over 200 million singles and a plethora of data for each of them (more than100 data points per user), Facebook is uniquely positioned to successfully offer this ‘Holy Grail’ advanced search functionality users have been craving.

4. Facebook Is in Position to Create the Holy Grail Of ‘High Quality Matches’

Creating quality matching algorithms has always been the achilles heel of dating sites. Think about how often you get a suggested match of someone who is too far away, a different religion, much older (or younger), or is someone you have nothing in common with.

Dating sites fall short on creating relevant matches due a combination of: 1) lack of users, 2) lack of data on those users, 3) and a lack of talented product managers and data scientists to create a great algorithm.

Fortunately for singles, Facebook has all the ingredients to create ‘The Holy Grail Matching Algorithm.’ Lack of users? Not a problem as Facebook has over 200 million singles. Lack of data? Again not a problem as Facebook has over 100 data points per user. Lack of engineering talent? Definitely not a problem there, as many will tell you that Facebook has the world’s greatest product and engineering talent.

Let’s talk more about that awesome engineering talent. While Facebook’s early competition back in 2005 (remember MySpace?) foolishly focused on short-term profits at the expense of a quality user experience, Facebook was making a crucial discovery. Facebook realized that if a user got seven or more friends in their first ten days, the user became “addicted” to Facebook and returned to Facebook over and over. This is called the “aha” moment, and occurs when a user understands a product’s value to them. Note to entrepreneurs: Identifying and optimizing your “Aha” is one of the only 3 metrics that matter for startups in order to achieve explosive growth.

To ensure that new users reached that magic number of seven friends, Facebook dedicated some of their best engineers to figuring out how to surface that long-lost cousin or friend from first grade, and imported them into their users’ suggested friends list. It grew their network effect substantially, and it proved to be a brilliant strategy that paid obvious, long-term dividends.

The same special-sauce super-secret awesome algorithms that are used to ‘suggest new friends’ could easily be repurposed to create the ‘Holy Grail Matching Algorithm’ for singles.

5. Facebook Can Offer the Holy Grail of Location Based Dating — Connecting Singles at the Same Venue

Imagine the next time you’re at a bar, a Billy Joel concert, or the Knicks game, and in seconds you could view, message, and meet up with like-minded singles at the same venue — how awesome would that be!

Since GPS functionality was introduced into the online dating experience with the advent of mobile phones, a whole new wave of swiping (aka ‘hook up’) apps have taken over the dating scene. The main benefit of these lightweight matches is to connect singles nearby, enabling them to meet up with each other in literally minutes. And this has worked pretty well evidenced by the explosive growth of swiping apps including Bumble & Tinder, which I detail in an article called The 5 Genius Things Tinder Did To Achieve Explosive Growth.

But the Holy Grail of using location to connect singles is knowing who else is single and at the same venue. It’s one thing to know somebody is within 2 miles as dating apps currently tell you, but the extraordinary user experience would be actually knowing that a potential match is at the same venue.

For various reasons, no dating site has been capable of delivering this extraordinary experience until now. Facebook’s product chief, Chris Cox, indicated that, “Facebook dating will be community-focused, including integrations with the events and groups you’re a part of on the platform.” And that’s great news for singles.

Just imagine if the next time you’re at a bar, restaurant, sporting event, concert, or even while sipping a drink at the airport terminal bar killing time, and Facebook showed you potential matches at the same venue. Pretty freaking awesome!

As you can see, Facebook is uniquely positioned to offer an extraordinary online dating experience for singles, and achieve something that no online dating site has been able to do so far. As someone with more than a decade of experience in the dating industry as both a founder and a user, I want to highlight some specific ideas that would help Facebook ‘Make Online Dating Great Again.’ Here they are:

My Top 20 Ideas For Facebook to ‘Make Online Dating Great Again’

1. Incognito Mode
   There are still many singles who consider online dating ‘taboo,’ but are, let’s just say, ‘online dating curious.’ An incognito mode will make the transition easier for these tens of millions of singles who are still not quite ready to ‘expose’ themselves to dating apps.
2. Set Me Up Feature
   Many dating sites have courageously tried (and failed) to let users and friends set them up with other singles. Facebook, however, has the requisite ‘social graph’ that can provide the seamless user experience to make the elusive ‘set me up’ feature work. It’s a natural dating feature as we all have had our single friends ask us to go through our list of friends and set us up. It’s also a great way to get non-singles more engaged on Facebook as they love setting up their single friends.
3. Recently Single
   Offer a ‘recently single section’ that displays users who recently went from in a relationship to single. Warning — for better or worse, this feature has the potential to dramatically increase the rate of break-ups.
4. Make the ‘Status Update’ Magical
   When singles ‘Check In’ at a venue, show them a list of singles or matches nearby. This feature could even ‘Make Flying Great Again,’ as checking in to an airport could turn the typical dreadful airport experience into a romantic connection.
5. Create ‘Singles Friendly’ Event Labels
   When users post an event on Facebook, give them the ability to indicate that other singles are welcome to attend — you can label these events ‘Singles Friendly.’ These ‘Singles Friendly’ events would be searchable and appear for singles under their ‘recommended events.’ To alleviate the valid concerns that unwelcomed and age-inappropriate strangers will show up to your ‘Singles Friendly Event’, here are two suggestions: 1. Give the event creators control as to who can see these events based on age-range, gender, etc. 2. Let the event creator have the ability to hide the event details, such as its location, and singles must request access to unlock the details.
6. Show Me Other Singles at the Same Venue
   Since singles are always wondering who else is single (which led to one of the worst ideas I’ve had as a founder where we created ‘singles bracelets’ for users to wear when they went out), the ability to know who is single at the same venue would facilitate conversations and matches. This aligns perfectly with Facebook’s mission of ‘Bringing The World Closer Together.’
7. Where Are the Singles At?
   Indicate how many singles are attending events posted on Facebook. This will finally provide an answer to the question asked by singles all over the world every weekend — “Where Are The Cute Single Girls/Guys Going Tonight?”
8. Gender Ratio for Events
   Show me the ratio of single Males to Females at ‘Singles Friendly’ Events posted on Facebook.
   (Note: the previous two ideas were core features of an awesome, but too early for its time, 2011 social discovery startup called ‘Hotlist’, founded by Chris Mirabile and Gianni Martire).
9. Gender Ratio Search
   Let users search for ‘Singles Friendly’ events based on the gender ratio.
10. Ask Users to Update or Verify Their Relationship Status
    It was unclear if Facebook will limit access to the dating features only to users who label themselves as ‘Single.’ If true, this would exclude a lot of eligible singles as many singles keep their relationship status blank. The simple solution is to let users with an empty relationship status access the new dating features.
11. Include Users with the Relationship Status — ‘It’s Complicated’
    Let’s not kid ourselves. Anybody who has an ‘it’s complicated’ status is (about to be) single. Please make sure that these confused people can access the new dating features as well.
12. Show How We Are Connected
    Show how we are connected to potential matches beyond the first degree (ie: You Know Cliff who knows David who knows Jessica).
13. Awesome Dating Profiles: Let Singles Import Their Instagram and Facebook Photos, Groups, Events, and Interests
    Compelling profiles that show off a user’s unique personality and interests are severely lacking from most dating sites. This leads to many very bad dates that singles are all too familiar with. But more importantly, robust profile data would help singles avoid their first-date nightmare — being a Hillary fan and going out with a Trump Supporter (or vice-versa).
14. Photos Stats
    Tell me which of my photos get the most ‘attention’ so I can optimize my primary dating photo.
15. Make Search Awesome
    (This Is Very Much a Personal Request) — Please let me be able to search for a female, late 20s to 30s, preferably Jewish, who enjoys watching basketball, while eating steak (or who at least is not vegetarian), while listening to Billy Joel (or some other classic 80s music), who enjoys traveling to exotic places, where we will brainstorm how to innovate and grow our startups. Also, leveraging the data around check-ins and status updates can provide all sorts of innovative ways to search for potential matches based on similar interests in restaurants and travel destinations.
16. Recommend Matches
    As described above, repurpose your super awesome algorithms to recommend high quality matches daily to singles.
17. Show Matches Nearby
    Include ‘Matches Nearby’ in the ‘Friends Nearby’ feature on Messenger.
18. Indicate How Strong a Match People Are
    Based on all of your data and algorithms, it would be great to know if I’m a 20%, 63% match or 95% match with somebody.
19. Reconsider Including a User’s Current ‘Facebook Friends’ in the Matching Algorithms & Search Results
    Mark Zuckerberg stated that, “your friends aren’t going to see your profile, and you’re only going to be suggested to people who are not your friends.” This is shortsighted. Here’s why: Singles frequently add prospective romantic interests as ‘Facebook Friends’ to learn more about them and better connect. Excluding these dating prospects from Facebook’s dating algorithms and search results would unnecessarily eliminate potential matches for many of its users. From all of my years of experiments and analyzing user feedback with AYI, I have first-hand knowledge that Facebook users are craving some, let’s say, algorithmic lubrication, to uncover romantic interests amongst their single ‘Facebook Friends.’ In fact, including ‘Facebook Friends’ in a user’s matches was the catalyst in our growth to 100,000 new users in one day and ultimately growing to 100 million users.
20. Don’t Charge
    There are countless add-on features that you will be able to charge for down the road, but please don’t charge users for the basic search and messaging functionality, as this will greatly limit its usage. I learned this the hard way as the activity for my dating startup dropped 90% when I started charging for core features.
21. And One Final Bonus Idea…Bring Back the ‘Poke!’
    Facebook’s first successful foray into online dating — just kidding, or am I?

In conclusion, a transformational opportunity exists for Facebook to elevate the online dating experience for singles. I hope Facebook incorporates some of these ideas to ‘Make Online Dating Great Again.’

If you enjoyed this article, please hit that clap button below 👏.

Disclaimer: These are my personal opinions and do not represent the views and opinions of any company that I am affiliated with.

Cliff Lerner is the Author of the Best-Seller Business Book, Explosive Growth: A Few Things I Learned Growing To 100 Million Users & Losing $78 Million, which can be purchased on Amazon. Check out the Explosive Growth book website to get more growth content including my viral marketing playbook and the best books for entrepreneurs. Cliff recently launched a cryptocurrency app that provides live crypto ratings.