Should Facebook Be My Matchmaker?

Should Facebook Be My Matchmaker?

They organized lists of our hobbies, taught us how to make “friends” and got us hooked on “sharing” things we previously have kept to ourselves. They even taught us to “like.” Now Facebook promises to find us love.

It isn’t hard to see why. Our data is remarkably valuable to political campaigners, digital advertisers and the companies trying to sell us clothes, cars, homes and more. Facebook, which has harvested riches from our privacy for more than a dozen years, is now worth nearly $140 billion.

These days the ambitious company, which also owns Instagram and WhatsApp, is home to countless social media “influencers.” It is trying to chip away at the enormous Craigslist’s marketplace for people re-selling stuff, and it is even attempting to create its own digital money. Now, on the side, they’re angling to become the leading relationship app.

Of Facebook’s 1.5 billion active users, about 200 million identifying themselves as single. How much would those all those singles spend to find love? No one knows for sure, but Facebook sees dollar signs in that market. Charmaine Huang, a product manager for Facebook Dating, said that 40% of online daters haven’t found an app that “meets their needs.” But, Facebook Inc. would love to.

A shift happened in 2013, displacing the traditional dating model.Now, 40 percent of couples have found their match on online dating.

In 2018, the online dating market was valued at $6.69 billion and is projected to reach $9.20 billion by 2025.

Companies like Tinder, Grindr and Bumble have become household names familiar enough for late-night talk show hosts to make fun about them.

According to Huang, Facebook Dating, which launched in September, connects nearly 60,000 singles in the 10 miles around Los Angeles’s University Park area who are looking for a match.

Aside from my questions about what they might do with dater’s data, what I really wanted to know was whether or not it works.

Or, to put it in more personal terms: Can Facebook find me love — or something close to it? I decided to dive into Facebook’s dating pool, immersing myself in the app, to see if “the one” was waiting for me.

'Like' Love?

My parents gave me permission to date when I was 16, about seven years ago, but I have never had a guy approach me in public. Back then, guys would message me on Myspace or tell one of my “Top Friends” that I was cute. The only guys that hit on me verbally in real life were construction workers in trucks as I would walk past Western Avenue to my high school.

The days of Myspace courtship might be over, but that doesn’t mean other digital dating services haven’t come along to take its place, such as: Hinge, Tinder, Bumble, and now Facebook Dating

After many awkward online dating conversations, horrible first dates and commitment-phobic men. I was a few clicks away from Facebook Dating in October. Couldn’t hurt, right?

Facebook Dating doesn’t charge users to subscribe to the app, or to use any of its features, as other apps do. Huang emphasises that charging has never been part of the company’s business model — excellent for a broke college student like myself.

When I first joined the app, I was surprised to discover that there were already 49,000 singles in my area. So many choices!

Since I go to USC, I assumed it would mostly be students around University Park. The first 20 potential matches were students, but they also included people from our mortal enemy, UCLA, and Santa Monica College. But the majority of my matches had no education listed whatsoever so I couldn’t figure out if they were humble or just uneducated.

Patti Stanger, known to reality TV audiences as the “Millionaire Matchmaker”, warned me in a phone interview that dating apps don’t tend to draw too many college-educated people.

That’s a problem for me, as I'm searching for an intellectual or at least an academic equal. So I found myself swiping right on some students and college alums, but once they were gone, I stopped searching.

There were more troubling surprises in store once I looked more closely at some of the 20-somethings in my area.

Take the “25 -year-old” man who goes by the name of Luis who “liked” my profile. In his dating profile picture, “Luis” sports dark “Carrera aviator glasses” that, if you look carefully at the reflection, shows him taking a selfie on an Android phone. This self-described young man has a bald head, graying moustache and deep wrinkles on the sides of his mouth.

He looks nice enough, and while I appreciate that he takes care of himself — if his carefully manicured beard is a sign of that — he looks like he has suffered through a pretty rough quarter century on this planet.

Weeks later, a “26-year-old” who goes by the name of Sergio also “liked” me. In his photo, “Sergio” sports a luscious black comb-back like my 60-year-old grandpa. He has deep lines of wisdom on his forehead, prominent crows feet and the droopy eyelids of a man in his late 50s. That 26th year must have really taken a toll on Serge.

I couldn’t help but conclude that none of these men are in their twenties, but their children might be.

I was just about to give up on Facebook Dating when I matched with Max, a 26-year-old USC alum. To my surprise, Max looked his age. He and I also had a lot in common. We love working out, the beach and romantic comedies. He also claimed to want a serious relationship.

Could This Facebook Match Be The One?

Max asked for my number to plan the first of what I hoped might be many dates. After our great text conversation on films, art and music, I did not hesitate. Eager to move a level beyond the app, I gave it to him.

He began texting me for a couple of days but our chats were subpar. One day, deep into the night, he wrote that he had a “busy day at work.”

As finals approached, I could relate because I did the same with my real-world friends, replying to them before I fell asleep.

It didn’t cross my mind that his quick shift toward late night texts might have been a sign that he was looking for something else.

That all changed, one night when he asked me to “send him a nude” photo. We hadn’t even met! I declined, and for a time, he changed dramatically. He suddenly told I was a waste of his time.

Concluding that he probably wasn’t “the one,” I stopped responding to his messages. He kept texting, though. Everyday.

Then he texted me photos: His outfit of the day, what he ate and even the movie he was watching that night.

Until it popped up in my message preview. In what he surely thought of as being in all its glory, the guy Facebook Dating connected me to sent me a close up picture of his anatomy.

I was mortified. I was speechless. Textless, actually.

I didn’t respond. He sent more from his living room couch, bathroom, even his kitchen. Until I blocked him.

That wasn’t the end of “Max” who soon found my Instagram, Snapchat and even Facebook profiles, and apologized.

"But I’m guessing things aren’t going to work out."

Is It Me or Is It Zuckerberg?

While this was my first encounter with Facebook Dating, it isn’t Mark Zuckerberg’s. He first created FaceMash, a website that was set up as a “hot-or-not” game for Harvard students in 2003. He built “The Facebook” a year after “to help connect people at colleges and a few schools.”

But now he’s a married father in his 30s. At the Facebook Dating product launch in May, Zuckerberg said he wants Facebook to be somewhere where people “can start meaningful relationships.”

Despite the company’s well-documented failings in protecting user’s privacy, he asserted that the company is doing a better job now. “We’ve designed this with privacy and safety in mind from the beginning,” Zuckerberg said.

Can Facebook Help Everyone Else Find Love?

Although Facebook has technically known me since 2012, it doesn’t really know me.

“Millionaire Matchmaker”, estimates there 144,000 million singles in the U.S. Many singles become jaded after not being able to find something that works or feels suitable for them. Stanger says the algorithms used to match people online dating sites aren’t good enough.

“[Unlike traditional matchmakers] the apps don't care whether or not you find love.” Stanger said. “They are computers that make educated guesses, so it’s all trial and error.”

Principal Data Scientist at NASA, Chris Mattmann said that part of the problem might be algorithm creators that make biased inputs and affect user experience.

“You can't just [code an algorithm] and then not assume that you're encoding bias, either into your input data or the way that the algorithm makes selections,” Mattmann said. “As long as [the coder] is aware of that. Validates and checks it to account for the bias, it should replicate human interactions.”

USC Viterbi Professor Kristina Lerman, who examines social media data analytics, says that online dating sites like OkCupid — the pioneer of algorithmic matchmaking — have been transparent about their algorithms containing racial bias.

“[Data shows] how much better black women have to be [in algorithms] in order to be noticed by men, rather than white women; so it's a measurement of bias,” Lerman said.

Lerman’s observations make me wonder how Latinas, like myself, are overlooked on dating sites because of my race.

Although, Facebook Dating brings new possibilities for users like match suggestions from past events to prevent the stigma of meeting on a dating app.

My generation doesn’t care about such stigmas. But we care that our apps deliver. So I’m breaking up with Facebook Dating. Yes, I will sit through yet another family holiday without a partner out there.

But at least I won’t have to wonder what Facebook is doing with even more of my data. On the plus side, I won’t have to worry about explaining away the dick pic that pops up on my iMessage preview to grandma.