Social Savvy: Thread

People are social creatures. It's inevitable that the technology we create serves to improve upon and augment our current behavior. One of the most interesting (and inevitable) uses of social technology is taking the search for a mate online.

It's big business.

Online dating has evolved from a cottage (and rather sketchy) industry to a $1.5+ billion industry. In fact, it's a BIGGER industry than PORN. The MOBILE phone DATING market is worth $550 million. This number is expected to increase to $1.3 billion by 2013.¹

Staggering numbers aren't they? Although, they aren't that surprising given the amount of people on social networks today is rising everyday. The largest is Facebook with a user base of about 450 million.

"It's complicated."

One constant of Facebook has been the attention and bone of contention on one's relationship status on the site. Most relationships of the under 30-set aren't official until they have hit the Facebook newsfeed for all to see. It's with this mindset that Thread.com was designed.

What's Thread.com?

The premise of Thread is based on the (correct) assumption that most of us meet our significant others via our friends. Operating via Facebook Connect, Thread looks into your profile checks out your friend's friends and determines their relationship status. Relevant matches are then shown to you. If you find someone interesting, all you have to do is ask the friend who that person is connected to for an introduction.

Simple.

What makes an online dating site useful? Ease of use, relevance and success rate. Not much else to it. So, how does Thread.com rate?

1. Ease of use.

Thread is simple, straightforward and has one of the best UX entry points I've ever seen.

2. Bumper pool.

Safety is a primary concern of most daters. Thread.com eliminates that worry by pre-screening candidates that have been vetted by your friends. It also takes direct contact out of the initial equation and leaves that in the capable hands of the shared friend.

3. Serendipity

Thread serves as a simple introduction/icebreaker. It may be possible that you may know and/or be interested in some of the candidates already. This could also serve as a way to identify connections that you didn't know existed.

Bottom Line

How does Thread.com rate in terms of other dating sites? It doesn't. The functionality and programming around the site are to lightweight to compare it to a Match.com or Chemistry. However, it would be a fantastic augmentation for either.

This is just the beginning of applications being built off the framework of pre-existing social networks. As time goes on these applications will become more and more complex and the things that they are designed to do will become far more specialized. It will be interesting to see if Match.com or eHarmony acquires Thread in the short to near future or if they will launch their own applications to work within the same context.

Photo Credit: eyeliam

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