PAPER: "The role of Facebook in romantic relationship development"

The role of Facebook in romantic relationship development: An exploration of Knapp's relational stage model.
"This study examines the implications of social networking web sites (SNSs) within romantic relationships. Specifically, Knapp’s (1978) stage model of relationships is examined through a new lens wherein the role of SNSs, specifically Facebook, is explored in the escalation stages of romantic relationships (i.e., initiating, experimenting, intensifying, integrating, and bonding). Furthermore, this study sought to discern the interpersonal and social implications of publicly declaring oneself as "In a Relationship" with another person on Facebook (i.e., going "Facebook official" or FBO). Ten mixed-sex focus groups were conducted. Analysis revealed that Facebook is one of the primary means of uncertainty reduction in the initial stages of relationship formation. College students consider FBO to be indicative of an increased level of commitment in relationships. Typically, relationship exclusivity precedes a discussion on becoming FBO, which occurs when the relationship is considered stable. Going FBO has implications for the public proclamation of one’s relationship status as described in Knapp’s model, and these results differ for men and women. Theoretical implications for the role of SNSs in romantic relationships are discussed."

"Participants were 24 men and 31 women from a small Midwestern university, who had romantic relationship experience at the time since they started using Facebook, and ranged from 18 to 23 years of age. They were recruited by soliciting from courses across the university. Some were offered extra credit in exchange for their participation, whereas others participated without compensation. The data for this study come from a larger set of focus groups conducted on Facebook users. Also 10 mixed-sex groups ranging in size from four to eight participants were analyzed. Participants reported spending an average of 2.39 h (SD ¼ 1.25) each day actively using Facebook (i.e., not just logged in, but using the interface)."


Please remember:
Experience had shown serious daters never use social networking sites/applications for dating purposes and Online daters belong to 3, 4, 5 or 6 online dating sites at the same time.

Social networking/applications could merge with online dating for fun, for flirting, for entertainment purposes, for instant gratification.
Social networking and online dating for serious daters are like water and oil, they will never mix.
Social dating is vaporware. Online Dating for serious daters does not need to be more social, it needs to be more effective/efficient. It needs to reduce the false positives problem.
Innovations are not adding more bells and whistles to actual online dating sites.
The Online Dating Industry needs innovations but they will come from only one source: the latest discoveries in theories of romantic relationships development with commitment.

The 3 milestone discoveries of the 2001 - 2010 decade for Theories of Romantic Relationships Development are:
I) Several studies showing contraceptive pills users make different mate choices, on average, compared to non-users. "Only short-term but not long-term partner preferences tend to vary with the menstrual cycle"
II) People often report partner preferences that are not compatible with their choices in real life. (Behavioural recommender systems or other system that learns your preferences are useless)
III) What is important in attracting people to one another may not be important in making couples happy. Compatibility is all about a high level on personality similarity between prospective mates for long term mating with commitment.

Also there is a similarity trilogy between genetic, mate choice and personality based recommender systems.
WorldWide, there are over 5,000 -five thousand- online dating sites
but no one is using the 16PF5 (or similar) to assess personality of its members!
but no one calculates similarity with a quantized pattern comparison method!
but no one can show Compatibility Distribution Curves to each and every of its members!
but no one is scientifically proven! The only way to revolutionize the Online Dating Industry is using the 16PF5 normative personality test, available in different languages to assess personality of members, or a proprietary test with exactly the same traits of the 16PF5 and expressing compatibility with eight decimals (needs a quantized pattern comparison method, part of pattern recognition by cross-correlation, to calculate similarity between prospective mates.)