Dating Within Your “Circle”
Contributed by: kellyseal on Wednesday, September 05 2012 @ 09:37 am
Last modified on
Online dating can seem a bit intimidating - meeting a complete stranger and seeing if you click. But what if the potential dates you meet are friends of friends, or people connected to you through a social network? Would that make a difference?
Circl.es is betting on it. This dating app uses Facebook to help you find other single friends of your friends - ones you might not necessarily run into in real life. (Especially if you prefer to spend time interacting with people online rather than in person.)
Even though they just launched in April, Circl.es is already steadily gaining active users. There is no "online dating profile" per se, or a long list of questions to answer before you see your matches, just your basic stats. When you join, you share the basics of what you're looking for - body type, age, etc. and you can scroll through its list of friends of friends in your vicinity. It pulls your basic Facebook information - like birthday, where you live, and general info and likes to match you. It's pretty simple, and it won't match you with your own friends so you don't have to explain that embarrassing situation.
A great feature: there is a disclaimer when you join, stating that Circl.es won't show up in your timeline, and that your information won't be shared with anyone who doesn't fit your criteria. Your information is kept pretty private, as long as you're willing to share some of your Facebook life with potential dates. But keep in mind there isn't the same privacy and anonymity you have with online dating sites.
With Circl.es, your Facebook information isn't visible unless you meet a few criteria, namely that you have a friend in common and that you match each other's basic criteria in a partner (including being single). So, it's not like you're disclosing your Facebook page to just anyone - but keep in mind, you're still putting your information out there for non-friends to see, so be sure to keep the full disclosures and drunken photos to a minimum. (See my previous articles on how to use Facebook as a dating tool for more information.)
Circl.es isn't the first dating app to utilize the vast network of Facebook, and probably won't be the last. I have to admit, social media lends itself to dating, if only because we are addicted to checking in with our friends and followers all day long - social media captures our attention and engages us, so why not find a date while we're updating our status?