Inside Facebook

The local review-sharing site Yelp has added Facebook Connect to allow users to easily share local business reviews with their friends on Facebook.

Yelp allows anyone to submit a review for any local business, from restaurants to shoe stores to mechanics. Once you’ve registered and written a review, you’ll now have the option of using Facebook Connect to post the review to your Facebook page so your friends will see it in their feeds. You can set up an automatic posting feature to pull every review you write over to Facebook, or choose to post only certain reviews.

Facebook Connect has also recently been integrated into other review sites, such as Urbanspoon and Citysearch, and has led to a pronounced jump in activity in the number of reviews, comments, and photos added to these sites.

Citysearch has seen a dramatic increase in registrations since implementing Facebook Connect. The number of daily registrations has tripled since the launch, and 94% of reviewers are sharing their reviews on Facebook. The average review gets 40 views, with 74% of those clicking back to the Citysearch site. Restaurant review site Urbanspoon has experienced similar success. Since adding Facebook Connect in March, 1/3 of the users signing in to the site with their popular iPhone app are doing so through Facebook.

As more review sites add Facebook Connect functinality, Facebook itself is becoming a valuable source for unsolicited, trusted information on local businesses and services. Seeing your friends’ Yelp posts is a great way to learn more about restaurants, stores, and night life around your area. The early success suggests that users are taking advantage of these reviews, and with several different sites, like Urbanspoon and Yelp, integrating with Facebook, you’ll get a larger number of reviews that will allow you to make a more informaed decision on where to spend your money.

The increased use of Facebook Connect also brings more accountability to the restaurants, stores, and shops; any one customer can now more easily spread the good (or bad) word about your business throughout their entire network of friends, so there’s more incentive to offer a good product and excellent customer service.

Live streaming on Facebook is now more affordable for smal businesses and individuals thanks to StreamAPI, a new product from live-streaming company Stickam. StreamAPI is built around Facebook’s Live Stream widget, which was recently opened up to anyone wanting to add a dynamic stream of Facebook status updates around live events on their website.

StreamAPI is slightly different from the currently available service from Ustream, which has been used in many of the live streaming events to date but has setup costs as high as $15,000. With StreamAPI, there is no set up or monthly fee; instead, users pay 45 cents per gigabyte. There’s support for HD video as well. Stickam has plenty of experience with live online video, providing its service to stream content for MTV, CBS Radio, and G4TV, amongst others.

New services like StreamAPI reflect the increasing interest amongst web video publishers for the social context that Facebook Connect brings around live events. New products and pricing models like this one are opening up the market to a larger variety of long tail publishers.

A couple of months ago, Facebook released the Open Stream API, a new set of Facebook Platform APIs that enable developers to access and publish to the Facebook stream from anywhere. Since then, we’ve seen a number of interesting desktop client integrations, like the recent updates from Seesmic and TweetDeck.

However, a simple new website built on Facebook Connect, Flutteerr, illustrates ways developers could build websites that integrate the stream as well. Developed by Facebook employee Naitik Shah using the standard APIs in his personal time, Flutteerr currently only contains the Facebook stream (and resembles Twitter quite a bit), but it could be enhanced with a variety of features to make publishing to or reading your Facebook stream more powerful.

On Flutteerr, users can filter the News Feed the same way they can inside Facebook, including by Friend List, Network, Page, and particular applications. Status updates, comments, and likes are automatically posted to Facebook. However, you can’t share links, photos, etc. in the media-rich way that the Facebook.com Publisher allows you to.

Since the site is a personal project, it’s unclear what will happen with it going forward (though the name is reminiscent of this parody video from Slate called Flutter: The New Twitter). Nevertheless, the site does go to show what’s possible with the API.

Although Facebook is publishing some of its own Facebook Connect widgets like the Live Stream widget and the Comments Box widget to help websites be more social, major widget platforms themselves are starting to integrate Facebook Connect in their own more specialized products.

Just a few days ago, widget platform Widgetbox soft launched Facebook Connect in a compelling integration that allows users to publish widgets to the News Feed. Widgetbox’s VP Marketing & Business Development Ryan Spoon says the company’s widgets reach 100 million uniques every month, but only 1% of those come through Facebook. With the recent release of Connect, the company is making efforts to change that.

Here’s an example of what the integration looks like:

1. You can sign in to Widgetbox.com using your Facebook account.

2. When you add a widget or rate and comment on a widget, you can publish these stories to your Wall and the News Feed.

3. If the widget you share is Flash-based, it should be functional within the Facebook News Feed. Most widgets come with a play button expands and plays the widget in-line in the stream. If the widget is written in Javascript, it appears in the Feed as a regular story. Widgetbox is trying to consolidate these types of stories - a challenge with the evolving Connect API’s.

The next step for Widgetbox is to enhance its Connect integration by bringing Facebook’s social graph to the site and make widget recommendations to its users based on what their friends have added. While the company is focusing its Connect efforts on the News Feed, the technology is also there to add Widgetbox widgets inside applications, especially in the context of games, Spoon explained.

Conclusion

Typically, widgets are added to sites like blogs that are more static, and so users can count on the widget being there the next time they need it. With Widgetbox’s Facebook integration, there seems to be a higher risk of users publishing content that flows off the first page of the stream in a matter of hours.

Nevertheless, widget makers are still trying to get distribution wherever they can inside Facebook since Facebook more or less booted widget-like profile boxes off user profile pages with the redesign last year (however, users can still add small application boxes and tabs to their profile). We’re looking forward to watching Widgetbox iterate on its Facebook Connect integration in the months ahead.

This year, winners of Facebook’s fbFund competition are spending the summer in Palo Alto as part of the REV summer incubator program. Organized by Facebook and Founders Fund investor Dave McClure, participants have gotten the chance to hear from experienced startup and Facebook Platform entrepreneurs, like Jia Shen from RockYou, Keith Rabois from Slide, and Eric Ries, formerly of IMVU.

We recently visited the fbFund REV incubator in Facebook’s old offices in downtown Palo Alto and sat down with a couple more of this year’s winners to hear about their ideas and what they’re working on this summer. The 20 or so teams (including some of the previous year’s winners) are scattered across a few floors, with collaborative space for brainstorming, guest talks, and meetings. Eric Ries shared his thoughts on “The Lean Startup” before we spoke with fbFund entrepreneurs Suzanne Xie and Rich Tong of Weardrobe and Waleed Abdulla of Networked Blogs.

Weardrobe

Weardrobe is a fashion community for people to share what they wear. Users post photos of themselves modeling how they’ve chosen to mix and match different articles of clothing and most importantly tag them. The sum of all these tagged photos is a searchable online closet that users can tap into for fashion inspiration.

“It’s not about what people wear, but how they wear it,” Xie says.

The Weardrobe project started about a year ago, and the site has been up for about six months. In college, lack of closet space prompted Suzanne to create an Excel spreadsheet of her clothing items. Organized by style, brand, color, etc., the tool was intended to be able to sort items and, thus, help her not waste clothing. She showed the tool to Rich, and the two realized that there was a better way to efficiently map one’s closet.

This summer the Weardrobe team will be working on a Facebook Connect integration, which will allow users to login to the site using their Facebook accounts, see which Facebook friends are also Weardrobe users, and be able to publish content back to the News Feed.

Another next step for the team will be involving fashion brands, many of which are discovering that TV or magazine advertising isn’t as effective anymore. Weardrobe has already partnered with Urban Outfitters in a Netflix-style initiative: Urban Outfitters donated clothing to Weardrobe, and Weardrobe sent them to its users who styled them up, posted photos on the site, and mailed them back.

Networked Blogs

We also spoke with Waleed Abdulla at Networked Blogs. Within the Networked Blogs Facebook application, users can search for blogs they read and follow them via Networked Blogs. Features include a News Feed of recent posts from the blogs you follow, a Most Voted tab where users can vote for blogs they like, as well as tabs that showcase what your Facebook friends are reading and posting. The idea was born out of a hackathon event in February 2008 called Weekend Apps and has since then taken off.

Networked Blogs’s Facebook Connect implementation is compelling and different than most we’ve seen so far. Bloggers can add a Networked Blogs widget on their blogs, which links back to its Facebook app. On the Networked Blogs website, which is less interactive than the app and more like a directory of blogs (currently 190,000 blogs) Waleed notes, Connect is also used for authentication and sharing.

Another feature that is useful for blogs that own their own Facebook Page is that you can manually or automatically import posts to the page’s Wall via Networked Blogs. Comments made through the app and the Wall are synced.

As the fbFund continues throughout the summer, we’ll be bringing you more looks at fbFund companies that are using Facebook and Facebook Connect to make the web more social.

Members of the online marketplace oDesk now have another means of connecting to potential job contracts with the addition of Facebook Connect to the oDesk web site. One of the largest online marketplaces for freelancers and small businesses, oDesk matches writers, developers, graphic artists, marketing professionals and more from all over the world with buyers looking for their services.

Rolling Facebook connectivity into the already comprehensive matching methods makes it easier for potential buyers to find professionals in their Facebook network. For those providing service, it’s a way to post skills and work examples, as well as build their network of employers and other freelancers whose work can complement their own.

“The ability to leverage social media to uncover new opportunities is key to success in this difficult economy,” said Gary Swart, oDesk CEO. “oDesk has always been committed to enabling successful online work relationships, and now — through the use of Facebook Connect — oDesk users can rely on their existing Facebook friends and colleagues to connect them with timely, relevant opportunities and potential job candidates.”

Companies are looking more and more towards this type of service to fill their needs, as it is a cheaper alternative to employing full-time creative teams. Many of these companies are looking to social media sites, like Facebook and LinkedIn, to find talent. The Facebook Connect integration will be a way for freelancers to tap into an established network of potential employers, and vice versa.

Utilizing Facebook also allows for a more familiar interaction — buyers and providers can finding each other through a network that is more social than commercial can lead to stronger working relationships, as there is already an certain level of communication and familiarity between the two. If each party is comfortable in the work relationship and has more communication, jobs can be handled with more efficiency, and will usually have a higher caliber end product.

TV.com has just launched Facebook Connect integration, making it easier for Facebook users to share content with their friends. It’s a relatively simple integration - now, any comments you make on the site’s full episodes, clips, news stories, and forums can be published back to your Wall and the News Feed.

Facebook is increasingly working on partnerships with the TV industry this year. In the fall of 2008, CBS’s celebrity gossip site TheInsider.com was one of the first launch partners to go live with Facebook Connect. Just recently, Facebook announced a new Live Stream widget that allows networks (or any publisher) to stream video alongside friends’ Facebook status updates in real time.

For publishers, Facebook is showing early signs of becoming an increasingly important traffic driver for online video sites. Back in March, Facebook drove more traffic to PerezHilton.com than Google. Recently, YouTube has even begun experimenting with Connect with the Green Eyed World campaign by Coke Europe and a more substantial integration when uploading videos earlier this month. Joost and Vimeo have also been live with Connect since late last year.

Here’s how the integration looks:

1. Look for the Facebook Connect button at the top right of the site and login using your Facebook account. If you already have an account with Tv.com, then you can link it with your Facebook account, too.

2. Once signed in, any comments you make on the site’s news stories, videos, and forums can be published back to your Wall and the News Feed. Notice the “Publish to Facebook” option at the bottom right.

3. And log out when you’re done.

Sponsoring established Facebook applications with large audiences continues to be a powerful way for brands to market inside Facebook. In fact, we reviewed several such campaigns from BMW, U2, and St. Martin’s Press in our recently released Best and Worst of Facebook Marketing 2009 report.

The latest interesting example comes from Kimberly-Clark, who has teamed up with Circle of  Moms, a large community of moms built on Facebook and Facebook Connect, to promote Huggies brand baby diapers. The integration brings Huggies’ Enjoy The Ride program to members of Circle of Moms, with special rewards codes, expert advice, polls, and mom-to-mom tips. 36,000 Moms took Huggies-branded polls, and there have been more than 61,000 forum posts to date.

According to AppData, Circle of Moms has a monthly active membership of nearly 1.5 million users, connecting Facebook moms through specialized groups, with moms sharing stories, advice, and doctor recommendations. The application was launched in October 2008, and doesn’t allow any males (or at least anyone who says they’re male on their Facebook profile) into the community.

The Enjoy the Ride rewards program targets new moms, with age-specific diaper advice, forums, a reward points program, and the chance to win free diapers for a year. You can access the program, which is also being promoted on the Huggies Facebook Page, through the Huggies Zone inside Circle of Moms.

Appssavvy and Mindshare brought Huggies and Circle of Moms together.

“We are very proud of the incredible community the millions of moms have created through Circle of Moms,” said Ephraim Luft, CEO of Circle of Moms. “Huggies is the exact type of brand our partnership with appssavvy is designed to engage with Circle of Moms. Its rewards program, added-value content and expertise simply improve the community and enable a leading brand and its tgarget audience to connect in positive ways.”

Huggies will increase its exposure on Facebook dramatically with the new partnership, injecting its brand directly into the sightline of its target demographic.

Purchase this report The Facebook Marketing Bible - Current Edition Buy PDF: $49 USD OR Buy PDF + 1 Year of Free Monthly Updates: $149 USD

The newly revised, expanded, and hot-off-the-press Facebook Marketing Bible: 40+ Ways to Market Your Brand, Company, Product, or Service Inside Facebook - July 2009 Edition is now available!

The Facebook Marketing Bible has been purchased by thousands of agencies, marketers, social application developers, entrepreneurs, and educators, and is the leading resource on Facebook marketing today. It is also available in French, Spanish, and Italian. (A special edition for agencies and big brands is also available.)

The densely-packed Facebook Marketing Bible contains four detailed sections: Tools for Guerilla Marketers, Tools for Advertisers, Tools for Application Developers, and Tools for Webmasters. Each part outlines the best available channels and strategies for reaching your audience inside Facebook. Please see the full table of contents below.

In addition, Inside Facebook is happy to announce that through July 31st all customers who purchase the Facebook Marketing Bible will also receive a free $25 Facebook Ads advertising credit, courtesy of Facebook (see terms).

The July 2009 edition includes updates on the following topics:

• The latest updates on Facebook Pages (public profiles), including the vanity URL landrush and rule changes for generic Facebook Pages. We’ve broken down all the new elements piece by piece and offered detailed and specific advice for marketers hoping to reach more users inside Facebook than ever before - including details on why marketers should choose Facebook Pages over Facebook Groups, new updates to Facebook’s new Insights dashboard, and new rules for administrators of generic Facebook Pages. See the table of contents below for more details.
• The latest details on Facebook’s new “Pay with Facebook” virtual currency payment program for application developers. Find out the latest on what Facebook’s new payment program means for the future of virtual currency payments on Facebook (and Facebook revenues) - including Facebook’s latest international currency efforts.
• The latest details on Facebook’s new “Open Stream” API and what it means for marketers, publishers, and developers. With the new Open Stream API, Facebook has released the power of the Facebook stream to live anywhere developers can put it - including publisher websites, desktop applications, and mobile phones. Find out exactly what you can do with the new Open Stream, and what it means for the future of the Facebook Platform.
• The latest tools for webmasters to drive more traffic to their site and build more social context through Facebook Connect and Facebook Share. With Facebook Connect and Facebook Share, publishers have new opportunities for both enriching their sites with deeply social features and leveraging Facebook’s powerful feed system for driving traffic to their site. Get new details on metrics early Facebook Connect partners are seeing, and learn how to optimize your Facebook Share integration.
• New tools for advertisers to target their Facebook Ads better than ever before. With enhanced Facebook  targeting tools, advertisers now have the ability to reach their target audiences in much more powerful ways. Learn how to use these new tools to get the most out of your performance marketing dollars. Plus, check out ways Facebook is experimenting with virtual currency gifting and branded virtual gifts.
• Plus, more updates on Facebook’s “Live Stream” widget for live events on your website or Facebook Page, recent rule changes for Facebook Platform ad networks, and more.

Purchase this report The Facebook Marketing Bible - Current Edition Buy PDF: $49 USD OR Buy PDF + 1 Year of Free Monthly Updates: $149 USD

For those interested in learning more, click the purchase link above. The price is $49, or $149 with 12 months of free updates emailed directly to your inbox. As always, please make suggestions if you’d like to see more attention paid to any topic!

Table of Contents

Introduction

I. Tools for Guerilla Marketers

1. Profile Page

2. Pages / Public Profiles

• “Facebook Pages 2.0″
  • The New Wall Tab - Making Pages More Dynamic and Viral
  • Status Updates - Now for Pages, Too
  • Application Boxes - Changing Places
  • Tab Management - Choosing a Landing Page
  • Conclusion - Facebook Learning from Twitter, Pages Getting Better
• The Future of Sharing on Facebook: A Hybrid Public/Private Model
• Branded Virtual Gifts on Facebook Pages Opening New Doors for Viral Advertising
  
• Adding Custom Modules to Your Page
• Strategy: 4 Reasons Why Marketers Should Choose Facebook Pages Over Facebook Groups
• Strategy: I’ve just created a Page. How do I promote it?
• Group to Page Migration
• Guidelines for Promoting Pages Outside Facebook
• Official vs Unofficial Pages
• Pages and SEO
• Vanity URLs for Facebook Pages
• Which Celebrities are the Most Engaging on Facebook?
  
• Ways Page Owners Can Restrict Content for Underage Users
• How to Import Your Blog into Your Public Profile
• Page Invitations
• SMS Subscription Service for Pages
• Updating Facebook Page Status Via Text
• Getting Page Status Updates Via Text
  
• More Features Coming Soon
• Interesting Conversion Rate Metrics from Adobe Students Facebook Campaign
• Marketers Actively Bidding for Generic Facebook Pages
• Facebook Upgrades “Insights” Metrics Dashboard for Page Managers
• Facebook Disabling Stream Publishing for Generic Pages

3. Groups

• Strategy: What about spamming existing groups?
• SEO
  

4. Events

• Events API
• Events SEO
  

5. Notes and Photos

• Events API
• Events SEO
  

6. Messages

7. Status Updates

• Public Timeline Search

8. Share / Posted Items

9. Mini Feed and News Feed

10. Feed Importing

> Data: Latest US Facebook Age and Gender Demographics

> Recommended Strategies for Guerilla Marketers

II. Tools for Advertisers

11. Social Ads

• How Specialty Brands are Driving Sales on Facebook
  

12. Engagement Ads

• Summary of ad units available to Facebook advertisers
  1. Sponsorship Units on the New Facebook Home Page
     • Social Video Ads
     • Sponsored Virtual Gifts
     • Events Ads
     • Pages Ads
     • Polling Ads

  2. Advertising in the New Facebook News Feed
  3. Advertising on the Profile Page (and other pages)
     

13. Virtual Gifts

• The Future of Virtual Gifts on Facebook
• Scheduled & Holiday Virtual Gifts
• Facebook Testing Virtual Currency Gifting Program with Branded Virtual Gifts
  

14. Performance Ads

• Radius and Language Targeting
• Multiple Currency Support

15. Localization Opportunities

16. Integrated Opportunities

17. Facebook Platform Ad Networks

• List of Leading Facebook Platform Ad Networks
• What eCPMs do apps charge? Data from Facebook application developers
• Facebook Bans Platform Ad Networks for Deceptive Ads

18. Facebook Platform Application Sponsorships

• List of Leading Facebook Platform Sponsorship Resellers/Rep Firms
• Strategy: Why sponsor applications when I can sponsor Facebook itself?

19. Specialized Facebook Platform Advertising Service Providers

> Recommended Strategies for Advertisers

III. Tools for Application Developers

• Strategy: What is the Right Way to Market Through Facebook Applications?
• Strategy: Where do most new application users come from?

20. Profile Box

• 5 Things Developers May Not Know About the Facebook Redesign
• Profile Integration: Tour of New Facebook App Settings

21. Application Tabs

22. Application Info Sections

23. Designing Feed Stories

• Strategy: Designing High Performance Feed Items
• News Feed Optimization: Strategies and Techniques

24. Feeds 2.0

• Feed Forms
• Feed Clustering
• Action Links
• Policy Update: All Feed Story Calls to Action Must Now be Action Links
  

25. Feed Publisher

• Publishing in the Feed with Feed Comments

26. Requests / Invitations

• Policy Updates: Requiring Invites to Access Hidden Features, Offering Incentives for Invites, Ads on Profile Page Prohibited
• Strategy: Facebook’s Evolving Approach to Platform Governance
• Sending Application Invitations to Non-Facebook-Members

27. Chat Invitations

28. Facebook Notifications

• Chat Integration: Facebook Wants More Synchronous Notifications
• Policy Update: Bulk Pre-Selection Prohibited
• Facebook Turns On Instant Notifcation Popup Alerts
  
• Spammy Affiliate Marketers Sure to be Shut Down
  

29. Email Notifications

• Updates: Email’s Status as Core Application Marketing Channel in Doubt

30. Application Bookmarks

31. Application Directory & About Pages

• The Publisher Comes to Application About Pages
  

32. Status Updates & Donations

33. Demographic Restrictions

34. Verification and Certification

• Great Apps Program
• Application Verification

35. Translations

• Data: Stats on Facebook Apps Built for International Markets
• Tutorial: Translating Your Applications Using Facebook’s Crowd-sourced Translation Service

Purchase this report The Facebook Marketing Bible - Current Edition Buy PDF: $49 USD OR Buy PDF + 1 Year of Free Monthly Updates: $149 USD

36. Analytics Tools

• List of Leading Third-Party Facebook Platform Analytics Providers
• New Metrics for Developers with Facebook Profile Redesign

37. Search Engine Optimization

38. Mobile

• Facebook for iPhone and Connect for iPhone

39. Customer Service

40. Custom Tags

41. Open Stream

• What Does Facebook’s “Open Stream” Mean for Marketers?
  

42. Pay with Facebook

> Poll: Which viral channels do Facebook users hate most about apps?

> Recommended Strategies for Application Developers

IV. Tools for Webmasters

43. Facebook Connect

• Overview: Integrating Facebook Connect with Your Website
• Related: Google Friend Connect
• Examples: 40 Sites Live with Facebook Connect Today
• Variety of Facebook Connect Plugins Now Available for Blogs and Wikis
• Citysearch: Each Item Shared Through Facebook Connect Generates 30 Clicks
  

44. Comments Box Widget

45. Live Feed Widget

46. Facebook Share

Conclusion

Recommended Partners

Back in 2002, a Wired opinion predicted that,

“Twenty years from now, the idea that someone looking for love without looking for it online will be silly, akin to skipping the card catalog to instead wander the stacks because ‘the right books are found only by accident.’ Serendipity is the hallmark of inefficient markets, and the marketplace of love, like it or not, is becoming more efficient.”

Today, seven years later, it’s no surprise that the online dating landscape has evolved far beyond traditional sites like Match.com and eHarmony that pioneered the online dating industry. People are increasingly moving to applications that leverage the identity they’ve already created inside social networks like Facebook and MySpace - not to mention mobile.

So far, we’ve already seen a number of Facebook applications focused on dating, like Zoosk, SpeedDate, and Flirtable. However, since Facebook Connect’s launch in early 2008, a handful of dating sites have brought Facebook’s social context out onto their web sites, including AreYouInterested.com, Frintro.com, SpeedDate.com, and Chemistry.com.

Let’s take a look at two of the better integrations: Are You Interested? and Frintro.

Are You Interested?

Are You Interested?, by SNAP Interactive, has integrated Facebook Connect to share lots of information with friends. Users can update their Facebook status’ directly from the site (the status update even includes a link to the site). You can also feature four random Are You Interested? users at a time by publishing them to your Wall and the News Feed.

However, within minutes of signing up on the site (before I had time to upload a photo or edit my profile information), Are You Interested sent me lots of suggested matches, leading me to wonder about their quality. That said, Are You Interested? is leading the space in terms of integrating its services across its destination site, its Facebook app, and its iPhone app.

Frintro

Frintro, one of this year’s 2009 fbFund winners, is the first dating site built entirely on Facebook Connect. Despite a heavy integration with Connect, the Frintro approach is a lot less visible to your friends. On the homepage, Frintro assures users that: “NOTHING you do on Frintro will be published back to Facebook.”

Using Connect, the site gives users visibility to friends of friends - the second degree of the social graph. If you’re single, you can request that your friends give you introductions to their friends; or if you want to play matchmaker, you can forward your friends’ profiles to other friends or make direct introductions between friends. The individuals involved will get Facebook Requests without any public attention directed toward them - no status updates or Wall posts involved. You can learn more about Frintro features here.

Conclusion

The value of Facebook Connect on dating sites is pretty much the same as it is on any other site: an easy login, real identity, bringing your friends along with you, and publishing content back to Facebook. Facebook’s social graph could make it a lot easier for people to sign up to dating sites, learn more authentic information about potential dates, and be introduced to more interesting people. It also offers dating sites the chance to acquire customers through viral content that users can share with their friends.

The tricky part, though, is that when it comes to dating, people are often shy and opt for more personal privacy. Dating sites that use Facebook Connect to populate user profiles or involve trusted friends in the matchmaking process must make a commitment to respect the privacy of their users to succeed in the long run.

“So get in there while you can, because early next year [2003], our instant-messaging client will have video capability. Technology marches on, thank goodness,” the Wired Magazine article concludes. In 2009, technology has marched on to bring the social graph to dating sites. We’re looking forward to seeing how big of an impact these new services make.