A common argument against dating sites is that they provide the same kind of service as Facebook, just with lower quality, and you even need to pay for a meaningful membership. It’s an undeniable truth that Facebook is still the king of social networking, but these sorts of charges aren’t exactly valid either. The popular social network is used by billions of people on a daily basis to connect, chat, post and to partake in group activities. However, Facebook is a universal platform that caters to a general group of people, not just daters. And this is where dating sites have the advantage.
Dating Groups
“Facebook groups are free. Dating sites are not. Case closed.” This opinion is common among Facebook users, and partially they are right. You can create and dedicate a group for the sole purpose of allowing the members to meet each other and develop a bond. With Facebook Groups there is even a possibility to add a theme, limit the age, specific a sexual preference, ethnicity, or base the membership on a state or city. Some create a Facebook Group around a certain hobby, catering to a special small group of people, like computer geeks or anime lovers.
The only problem with this is that the matchmaking depends entirely on you. Members need to constantly visit the group to look for new members, and then butter things up. A dating site combines all these group functions together and the matchmaking engine provides different filters for the search. It even automatically offers you promising singles whose profile matches your search criteria, taking the hassle out of finding the right matches.
Dating Apps
Despite the clashing interests, dating sites realized the potential of Facebook’s network. That’s why many of them implemented a function that allows you to import personal details from your Facebook account during the registration. It should go without a mention that you can save a lot of time doing so, and an almost complete dating profile welcomes you. Plus, you don’t need to struggle with coming up with nicknames, new passwords etc. Naturally, every little detail can be altered later down the line.
In the past you could date within Facebook using dating apps, though nowadays fewer and fewer of these dating apps exist on Facebook. Zoosk once started out as a Facebook application and has grown out to become more of a standalone online dating service with its own apps and website.
Dating Scams on Facebook
Dating scandals and scummy practices are common occurrences over the internet, and they are particularly popular on Facebook. Just a few examples: fake dating sites trying to get your account data, salesmen offering free coupons for sharing their deals, “Facebook Security” asking you to click an unauthorized link and so on. Sadly, shadowy individuals aren’t the only ones endangering your privacy. Facebook itself is infamous for leaking profile info through security holes, and recently their collaboration with WhatsApp resulted in unwanted data sharing between the two different apps. As they say, if something is free you’re the product, and that certainly goes for Facebook, too.
Best Dating Sites of 2024
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Ruth says
The description of the OurTime and SeniorPeopleMeet as “refreshingly different” could hardly be less accurate. Each site is a hotbed of awesomely mentally unbalanced folks, (not just *men*) who have so few social skills they can barely communicate online, never mind in real life. If you come across an individual who is over 50 and has never been married, trust me, there’s something seriously wrong there. Unfortunately, my generation is the one which honed doing absolutely nothing to a fine art. We were against so many things, and so averse to commitment (gasp! ack! marriage: just say no! “a woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle” etc.), that we never really learned how to “date.” We certainly learned how to get laid–a LOT–but somehow missed out on that whole value-of-monogamy thing.
Put that together with both sites’ terrible and misleading billing practices, (they are controlled by the same entity, and OKStupid, erm, I mean OKCupid are all under the same umbrella), and the only thing “refreshing” about these websites is the feeling you get when you close your profile for good and always. Using either will inspire even the toughest amongst us to start looking for a “safe space” in which to recover from the hideous experience of dealing with these stellar examples of a seriously polluted gene pool.