Facebook

There have been a few articles lately regarding who owns all the user profile information and communications that people do on social networks and online dating sites. It really came to the forefront in the news when Facebook updated their Terms of Use a few weeks ago that readdressed the ownership issue. Basically Facebook wanted almost complete control of all user generated content.

irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, fully paid, worldwide license (with the right to sub-license) to (a) use, copy, publish, stream, store, retain, publicly perform or display, transmit, scan, reformat, modify, edit, frame, translate, excerpt, adapt, create derivative works and distribute (through multiple tiers), ...

Many Facebook users complained about these new terms and with all the media attention it was getting, Facebook has rewritten their Terms Of Use and has posted a draft copy. They are even allowing users to comment and vote on the new proposed Principles and Statement of Rights and Responsibilities For Users. This is a surprising move that should make many Facebook users happy.

In the online dating world, dating sites have Terms of Service that can vary wildly. Some are similar to Facebook's old terms and some to the new terms of use. The one thing with dating sites you may wonder about is how long do they keep all this information for and what they do with it. With most of the popular dating sites they have strict privacy policies about who may see what information. As far as with how long the information is kept, it is all over the map. Dating sites like eHarmony doesn't delete your information from their database. With eHarmony's 200 plus questionnaire, this is a good thing as if you ever need to return to the site, your information will still be available to you when you reactivate your account. The flip side of this for example, is Plenty Of Fish. If your account is inactive for 6 months to a year then your account will be deleted. Not a big deal if you are a returning user as it only takes less than 5 minutes to fill out any required information for the profile.

For more information on the Facebook new terms of use, read PC World. To better understand the life of your online dating profile on many of the popular dating sites, read ComputerWorld.

In the beginning of the year we took a look at a new Facebook application called the Little Black Book from Match.com. We were not overly impressed but, felt it did hold some promise. Being maybe a few weeks old at the time, the Little Black Book had 67 daily active users with about 600 total installed users. Our main complaints involved around the clunky user interface and browser compatibility problems.

A month later, David from the Online Dating Insider took a look at the application as well. At this time there was 240 daily active users. While not impressive numbers for a Facebook application, it was an improvement from when I had looked at it. In his review, David had a wish list of improvements and found the browser issues were still present.

Flash forward 11 months and the Little Black Book has disappeared from Facebooks application list. The last appearance I can find of it is a Google Cache page which was capture September 29, 2008. At this time there was only 100 monthly active users with a 1.6 out of 5 star rating. The reviews of the application were not pretty.

Did Match.com take down the application to redevelop and fix its problems or is it gone for good? I think it is in Match.com's best interest to forget about Facebook applications. A search for the term "Dating" on Facebook revealed that the most popular application has over 12 thousand active monthly users. Not a lot when you consider the 1.3 million paid users Match.com website had this past quarter. Match.com employees time would be better spent on other projects.

According to Netcraft the social networking giant Facebook had a brief period of outages on Wednesday, June 25th, 2008. The BBC were informed it only affected certain countries. Netcraft found the site unavailable from all of its collectors which are located in Pennsylvania, San Jose, Phoenix, New York, Virginia, Italy and the United Kingdom (London).

No new outages have been reported since Wednesday and the site had now been updated to fix the problem according to Facebook.

Perfect Match has released a new Facebook application called "What's Your Personality Type?". This application is based on Perfect Matches Duet Total Compatibility matching system and allows users to find out their own personality types to help find out who they may be compatible with on Facebook. These personality types include Romantic Impulsivity, Personal Energy, Outlook and Predictability. There are 7 true and false questions for each type to answer before you get your results.

As far as Facebook dating applications are concerned, it is fairly simple and doesn't allow you to access your account on PerfectMatch.com or its members. If the application becomes popular I could see Perfect Match putting more effort into it. Right now it is just more of a marketing tool for their main dating site.

For more information about Perfect Match, please read our review.

CBS 5 is reporting that one of the largest dating sites, Match.com is about too debut an application with everyone's favorite social networking site, Facebook. The application is called "Little Black Book" and it allows Facebook users to see other Facebook users and Match.com members who wish to date. With this application you can also share your matches with any of your Facebook friends. The other key feature is, users of Facebook with the Little Black Book don't necessary have to be members of Match.com. The reason for this is the application is a new paying service for Match.com. Once you have your matches, It will allow Facebook users to contact other users on a "pay per contact" basis instead of the regular monthly subscription which Match.com itself offers. At this point I would assume, if you are a member of the Match.com dating site you would not have to pay this fee. The Little Black Book also allows you to purchase keys to unlock a potential match for a friend. This feature ties in nicely with Match.com other new feature this week, matchmyFriends. Match My Friends allows people to create a dating profile for their friends (with the friends permission of course). We will have more information on matchmyFriends in another story. (UPDATE - Story now available here)

As everyone knows, social networking on the internet is huge. Sites like Facebook and MySpace have made it very popular. Facebook itself has an estimated 58 million users, while Match.com themselves have over 15 million. With the rise of social networking sites internet gurus expected dating sites to decline. In fact the opposite is true. Internet Dating has never been more popular. Singles like the dedicated service and features which dating sites offers. Plus, you know people on a dating site are actively looking for a relationship, on Social Networking sites a large percentage are not.

Allowing Facebook users to access Match.com's features is a very smart move on the part of Match.com and opens the door to more potential customers. IMO it should work out well just as long as Match.com doesn't charge too much to Facebook users to contact a match through the Little Black Book application.

The Facebook Little Black Book application is expected to launch next week, for more information on Match.com read our review.