Is Facebook promoting a monopoly in the dating space? | Hacker News Reader

Is Facebook promoting a monopoly in the dating space?

5 pointssglebs6 comments

On September 29th 2014 Facebook disabled our ads for a dating mobile app specific to Brazil. Upon further investigation we discovered that Facebook closed their doors to all dating apps EXECPT those they have made a commercial agreement with. They claim that these ads have to be more "serious" (ours are!) showing less flesh and be more geared towards real couples (ours is!) and that they are not open to new partnerships. Interestingly they allow ads from a larger dating service (starts with Z) to run, even though their focus is on "meet female singleS now"- note the emphasis on the plural; it's about scoring. Yet facebook is happy to show their ads.

It is sad to see facebook closing the doors on the little guys like us and promote the big players, hindering competition and innovation from the new, little guys.

Here's their answer:

"To make sure everyone has a positive experience on Facebook, ads for dating sites and apps are only allowed from approved advertisers through a direct sales partnership. This means that you must have prior authorization from Facebook to buy dating ads on Facebook. Unfortunately, we aren't accepting new partners at this time."

I support their motivation, but closing the doors on services that are compliant just because you already closed a deal with a big player just does not seem correct to me.

Take everything they've said in their answer, but ignore the "we aren't accepting new partners at this time." The whole thing is an auto-generated response. Get out there and meet some contacts at facebook, let them know you're serious and different.

This might work, it might not, but if you're a business, what have you got to loose. At the least, you'll meet some interesting people and maybe learn a thing or two. Be sure to ask not only what you can do to get on Facebook, but maybe ask them what else you should be doing that would have made them more likely to accept you in the first place.

I can see that getting onto Facebook could be important for your business, but if it's the most important thing, you don't have a business, so work the facebook angle but maybe you'll also come up with something innovative that would be more valuable than getting your ads on facebook.

I honestly can't tell if that was satire about the dating game.

I already contacted them, the answer (from a human) was the same. I emailed my point of view - the same I have expressed here.

Firstly, the majority of the dating sites are owned by IAC. I don't think Facebook is colluding with IAC. More likely you are being affected by increased scrutiny around ads promoting anything remotely resembling sex/prostitution/shady personal ads. The difference between this and dating is probably difficulty for an algorithm to figure out automatically. The small players promoting shady stuff are getting stopped automatically, but the bigger players doing similar things are not because they have the means to escalate issues to real people or are white listed. Until you are a bigger player, you are probably being caught up in some sort of automatic screening, I wouldn't take it personally.

What i can suggest is that go the other way around. Instead of creating ads from your facebook page, Use your personal accounts to boost posts. I know its not the right way, but if you can create micro contents a basic QnA contest and other stuff that somewhere relates to your business through your facebook page & then share it from your personal accounts and then boost it it will surely give you a reach & Engagement you deserve.

Focus on micro content now. (Facebook has its own rules and we cant do anything) Also, explore Reddit for ads, there amazing sub reddits and you can target each of them that matches your app and create an add there. It only costs your $5 for 5000 impressions there. Try it.

They stopped allowing non whitelisted dating ads a long time ago. I was huge in the facebook dating space and many affiliates were using very shady things. A large portion of dating traffic was cloaked and being sent to adult dating sites. Which are both scams and not content that facebook wants on their site.

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