... The big thing the article seems to skip over is the fact that people on an online dating site are actually LOOKING to date someone. While people on your friends of friends social network may or may not be. And approaching someone online without that context established is considered creepy, and especially so considering you're putting your 1st degree friend in the middle of it.
Someone may argue that the search should be restricted to facebook ppl with "looking for guys/girls" checked in their profile, but in my experience almost noone checks those for fear of looking desperate to their other friends.
Very good point - dating has so much to do with social perceptions. For a stand-alone dating site, there is a serious problem here: people might not want to contact suggested 'matches' out of fear of appearing creepy (this may be subject to local customs though, at least to a certain extent?).
Tthis is why social networks are especially suitable for adding dating - you can add a simple "are you open to dating approaches?"-setting, which is hidden from view; a private setting used only for the dating functionality of the social network. Do you think that would help?
Could be wrong here, but I doubt most people would enable that setting even if they might actually be open to such a thing. In the same way people don't check the "Can we contact you for feedback on our site" checkboxes etc.
Dating is a really really touchy subject when there are friends in the mix as well. That's the great thing about dating sites, they are completely removed from the rest of your social life.
I work for <insert really large internet company here>, and our dating site's user namespace is completely removed from the rest of the social sphere we've developed over our other properties, because in almost all cases, users don't want anything they do regarding online dating to be mixed with what they do elsewhere (This also applies to our online job site).
True, people won't check that, but there's another indicator: the relationship status. Nearly everyone keeps those up to date, especially if they actually use the site.
Someone may argue that the search should be restricted to facebook ppl with "looking for guys/girls" checked in their profile, but in my experience almost noone checks those for fear of looking desperate to their other friends.