[btilly]

No.

You would have been correct to deduce that young 20-something people who are trying to scratch an itch keep thinking that a better dating site (as measured by one that can get them dates) is a real need, and the FB tie-in is an obvious way to do it.

They keep failing for the reasons that are pointed out on HN. And since they fail, not long after someone else looking around for an itch to scratch says, "Why doesn't someone make a better dating site using FB? Doesn't seem like anyone has done it yet. And HN is the perfect place to get feedback on it!"

[jmtame]

We never started with the thought "why don't we use FB to build a dating site." Facebook is simply a means to solve a lot of different problems that come up in dating, and it ends up providing a better experience. That's all we care about.

[disc]

Just to give you one user's perspective (which honestly, by virtue of being a HN reader probably represents a very small fraction of general users); anytime I see a service that requests I login via FB or Google, I assume you're trying to mine my personal data. Unless you are Facebook, or Google, or maybe LinkedIn (with whom I'm already willing to share my personal data) I'm not going to use these options. Make this your only option and I'm going to close the tab.

No personal offense to you, or your business. Just telling you as a geek, this is a non-starter for me.

[tomp]

But they are trying to mine your personal data, to confirm that you're real, and to get to know you better so that they can match you. It's really all up there on their website.

[btilly]

Your comment is perfectly in line with my second paragraph.

I got sloppy with wording in my third paragraph, but meant the same thing again. (We want a better dating site. We think that FB is a good tool to use for that. Etc.)

[kevincrane]

For their use case, using Facebook makes perfect sense. It's way easier to get a feel for someone and get an idea of what kind of match would work when you can see their photos or posts, especially when there is a human at the other end doing the matchmaking. It might not be for everyone, but it definitely makes sense, at least to me, of why Facebook integration is worthwhile here.