Yoke: Use Facebook to Meet New People
by Awl Sponsors
Faces are materializing across the room, familiar, if not quite friendly. People you know, but don’t. If this were real life, you might say hello. But this is Facebook, and these are tagged photographs of News Feed denizens, just out of reach. You want to say hello. You might try the vestigial poke, or a cold message. But Facebook is for connecting you with the people you already know, not introducing you to new ones.
Yoke is new application built on top of Facebook that facilitates introductions to people you might like. This isn’t your father’s dating site. No laborious questionnaires or cringeworthy user-names. Signing up takes 30 seconds, and you’re immediately connected to friends of friends who share your interests.
What makes for a good match? Maybe you share close friends, or are from the same hometown. Maybe you went to nearby schools. Or maybe, like people who meet in bookstores, concerts, or festivals, you have similar tastes. Using third-party APIs from the likes of Netflix, the EchoNest and Amazon, Yoke overlays the things the rich activity and interest data that you’ve already opted to share from these services on top of your listed Facebook interests. So if you subscribe to The Awl, for instance, your matches on Yoke might include fans of bears. If you like Arcade Fire, you might meet people who listen to the xx. And if you read Jay McInerney, you might find readers of Bret Easton Ellis.
Yoke also works for people in relationships, allowing you to play matchmaker for your single friends. All communication is through private Facebook messages, nothing ever posts to your Timeline, and your matches are based only on what you’ve already liked on Facebook.
Happy yoking!
