Facebook Dating Is 10 Years Too Late
Friendster started with the same idea. So why is the reaction to Facebook’s version so much different?
When Friendster launched in 2002, it had a simple premise. Meeting people on the internet was a fraught endeavor, one laced with the anxiety that potential paramours and friends weren’t quite who they claimed to be — that the perfect partner you’d been chatting with might actually be your living nightmare. By inviting people to link their profiles to those of their real-life friends, the site injected a bit of trust into our internet meetings: You might not have known the person you were chatting with, but they knew your friend’s friend, and that validation helped to make the whole endeavor feel significantly safer. Friendster wasn’t just the first major social network. It was a turning point in the history of online dating, a site that helped transform the practice’s reputation from sketchy to seemingly safe.
Seventeen years after Friendster’s launch, another social media site is trying its hand at using our networks of friends and family to help us find a date. Facebook — the social media giant that essentially killed off Friendster — recently launched Facebook Dating as a tab within its app.
