Finding Your Single Friends on Facebook
Over dinner, Julie and I were musing about setting up a mutual friend. We scanned our brains for other friends and acquaintances who are single.
Recognizing the shortcomings of my brain, I figured Facebook might do a good job of standing in. I poked around a bit, but didn’t immediately find what I was looking for.
I turned to Google, and discovered the Facebook app Most Eligible Singles. It looks pretty silly, but once you add it, there’s an option on the app page to show your single friends. I have shockingly few, particularly of the female variety. Of the 465 Facebook ‘friends’ (take that term with a Dead Sea’s worth of salt) there are only 17 females who are declared as ’single’. And only six of those are in Vancouver.
After a little more looking, I eventually found the Facebook profile search, where you can filter on any profile variable. However, the results don’t seem to easily discriminate between your immediate friends, and friends of friends. So, it’s sub-optimal.
May 27th, 2008 at 9:25 am
Is it really that so few of your female friends are single or does that app only scan their page for their relationship status. Many people I know have removed that piece of information (that listed them as single, in a relationship etc.) because it’s too personal and didn’t feel the need to advertise their romantic life on Facebook.
(Incidentally, when you are single and then delete that line, your feed shows you “no longer listed as single,” which makes everyone email you to see what has happened.)
May 27th, 2008 at 11:06 am
That’s true. If you list your relationship status as “single,” creepy randoms come out of the wordwork to try to friend you/message you/poke you/etc. So you probably do have a lot of undeclared single friends!
May 27th, 2008 at 11:16 am
Interesting. So my brain may be better than Facebook after all?
May 27th, 2008 at 1:17 pm
They should have a “date suggest” tool, like the friend suggest tool.
May 27th, 2008 at 6:53 pm
Huh. Well, as one of the six single women in Vancouver…
hi? :)
May 28th, 2008 at 1:37 am
The core of my friends on FB are undergrads/college students. Almost all list themselves as single. But that doesn’t mean they aren’t dating or hooking up regularly. It just means they aren’t married. That is the interpretation that I have of single.
You can’t use FB profile to tell someone’s availability for dating or whether they are in a relationship. Sometimes my friends list themselves as married even though they aren’t. It isn’t that they are lying, it is just that they know that their friends know their status and what they put there isn’t really relevant. They use Facebook to remain in contact with their real world friends not to meet people online.
It may be better to look through your friends list to see who matches his interests. Then if they didn’t say they were married as status, you could ask them if they were dating and whether they would be interested in going out with your friend.
What would be a fun thing to do would be to create FB group for your friend “Date Dave - You know you want to”. That would then go to your News Feed and your friend would see that someone is interested in dating. As you add photos, write on the wall, add videos, that information would also get sent to the News Feed.
May 28th, 2008 at 5:46 am
The other thing that FB does if you do have yourself listed as single is put annoying ads on the side of your fb. I’m constantly seeing ads for “Single- date Wealthy men in Calgary” or “Why are you still Single?” etc.
It’s enough to make me want to remove my single status from my facebook profile because it’s condescending and annoying.
(
May 28th, 2008 at 10:39 am
Do you really want to set up your friend, or do you just want them to go on a date? I’d suggest directing to them to Lavalife or Plenty of Fish and let them do the picking themselves instead of seeing what Facebook plugin filters leave you in your friend list.