Facebook Lands ‘Community-Based Dating Service’ Patent

Facebook has landed a new patent for its incoming Dating product titled ‘Systems and Methods for Providing a Community-Based Dating Service For a Social Networking System’. 

The patent appears to contain clues relating to how group and event-based dating could work on the Facebook platform.

Users would be able to opt-in to see which members or attendees on a given page are single and looking, creating a subcommunity of Dating profiles associated with each group or event. 

The text reads: “To illustrate, if a user is a member of an ‘I Love Corgis’ group and wishes to see if there are members within that group who may be interested in making dating connections with other members of the group, then one or more embodiments of this disclosure may enable the user to opt-in to a dating feature associated with the group. This may enable the user to view dating profiles of other members of the group that have also opted in to participate in the dating feature associated with the group. 

“Similarly, if a user recently attended a friend’s birthday party and met someone that they were interested in making a dating connection with, one or more embodiments of the instant disclosure may enable the user to opt-in to a dating feature associated with an interest-based community associated with the event. This may enable the user to see if the person of interest has also opted in to the dating feature of the interest-based community, which may indicate that the person of interest is also interested in making dating connections with other users who attended the friend’s birthday party.” 

Coverage in Market Realist suggests the patent could “be a game-changer”, as it prevents other similar companies from building dating services around pre-existing user communities.

Last month, app researcher Jane Manchun Wong found new onboarding screen designs in the code for Facebook Dating.

They assure singles that their Dating profiles will be separate from their main Facebook profiles.

Read more here.