This Facebook “Dating” thing interests me. Why? Because it’s free. It’s bundled into the world’s most … established … social network. And unlike Match and Zoosk, Facebook doesn’t need the money from monthly member fees. And because Facebook doesn’t need the money, Facebook has no need to fabricate activity – I’ve proved Zoosk generates false data using their own algorithms.

It’s dredging back into early interweb history, talking about Netscape, the proto-browser to Firefox. Netscape was a software that cost money. In these olden days a web browser wasn’t a free download. And Netscape was the browser with the highest market share, even more popular than Microsoft’s Internet Explorer.

Microsoft changed things up. Internet Explorer was bundled with the Windows operating system. For free. Much noise was generated, including antitrust action against Microsoft. Now, all browsers are free. Things changed in how web browsers were marketed.

Facebook Dating, if successful, has the potential to change how online dating is marketed. There are free dating sites popular and available, yet these free dating sites don’t have what Facebook does.

Facebook is under constant information usage scrutiny. Facebook has had a lot of time and experience to create a dating product where scams, abuse, and predators are well-managed. Member safety is paramount, even if only in best effort appearance.

The only access to the Facebook Dating app is through the Facebook app. A member’s dating profile is a separate entity. The photo here is a screen capture from inside the Facebook Dating app.

It is impossible to copy images and take screen captures in the Facebook Dating app. Any workaround I can think of gives a black image like this. Good security measure only possible because Facebook Dating is accessed exclusively through the Facebook app.

Of course, simply taking an actual photo of the screen completely circumvents this security measure.

For funsies, I’m poking at the Facebook Dating app functions. This has an interesting potential to change how online dating works.

“Secret Crush” looks intriguing.

More soon.