Facebook Apps

dating and technology

TheDatable: Your Ultimate Wingman App

Single and wishing you could meet someone through friends — rather than, say, at a late-night pizza place?

Single and wishing you could meet someone through friends — rather than, say, at a late-night pizza place? Enter TheDatable, a service that helps you create a network of eligible singles through Facebook. The basic premise of the this online dating option is that since you're meeting through shared connections, you're more likely to have things in common with each match. Even better? There's a much lower chance of fake or embellished profiles, because you can turn to mutual friends as a reference.

After creating a profile through Facebook, you can adjust the privacy settings to limit its visibility. And don't worry — none of your dating activity will be shared on Facebook. Then, once you've signed up, you can browse through your friends list to tag eligible friends, and those friends will be invited to share their eligible friends. From there, it's just one big snowball effect.

To put things in perspective, if you tag 50 datable people and they each tag 50 too, then you'd have access to 2,500 eligible singles within two degrees of separation. Plus, you can tap your taken friends as a resource too; if you tag them as Wings, then they'll be able to tag their single friends and introduce them to one another (and you).

What do you think? Would you be interested in using TheDatable service?

Tech News

The Pros and Cons of Facebook Timeline Apps (and Which Ones You Need Now)

Facebook is an ever-evolving thing.
Facebook Timeline Apps

Facebook is an ever-evolving thing. One minute you love it, the next minute it goes and changes something and you're back to learning how to use it all over again. Such is life, I suppose. This time, Facebook has added even more ways for you to share what you're doing and when with Timeline apps. Timeline apps connect with some of your favorite websites and mobile apps to share your activities.


As we've learned to expect from Facebook, all changes come with some pros and cons. Pro: Facebook believes that in this time of openness and sharing, you can discover more awesome things by seeing what your friends are reading, eating, drinking, watching, and doing. Apps help make this a reality. The con? You already have friends that overshare about their bodily functions, babies, and daily to-do lists — do you really need to know the route they took on their 4.6-mile run today, or which vacation spots they've been to? It could be overkill. Thankfully, you have options. The new Activity Log on your timeline allows you to see all of the apps you've installed on your Facebook page, and select whether or not to show them in your timeline. If you choose not to show any apps in your Timeline, they'll still show up in the Ticker (on the top right of your news feed page), but you won't be mucking up your friends' pages with stuff they may not care about.


So now that you know what happens when you install apps into your Timeline, which apps could be beneficial to you (and your friends') lives? I'll tell you about a few in the slideshow.