However, one of Loopt's biggest use-cases is location-based dating. I think trying to get into the dating business would be a terrible mistake for Facebook.
How so? They're not doing anything in that direction as far as I know. Is this just your suggestion that it would be a good use case for them to pursue?
> I think trying to get into the dating business would be a terrible mistake for Facebook.
Why? Facebook could do it a lot better than any of the existing dating-only sites with the info they have on everyone's social graph and their high penetration. They probably wouldn't want to come out and blatantly add a "dating" feature, but instead just add features that "happen" to facilitate dating use-cases. A lot more people would be willing to do internet dating if it wasn't explicitly "internet dating", but instead just happened as an organic process on a site they were already a part of for other reasons.
You can browse your social graph, find out who is single, check out their pics, their profiles, and the minutia of what they ate for breakfast last Tuesday. If you like what you see, you can send them all manner of messages through platform features (would you like to "poke" Jennifer? "Poke"? Really?). And if you wind up in a relationship with this person, you both can mark that on your profiles (and later, so can you mark your Bukowskian divorce).
Facebook Connect, Farmville, and the fact that your Grandmother signed up for an account has not changed the fact that Facebook's roots are in helping college kids hook up for date.
I suppose I will have to look this one up.
Perhaps my impression is skewed coming from gayworld, but I thought this is all anybody used them for.