Anyone who has used Facebook recently will know that Facebook’s new “security” feature is extremely annoying. The Connected Profiles feature gives you the choice of connecting completely, or not at all. This article on RWW better explains the problems.

Given the fact that other privacy settings on Facebook are more granular, it intuitively doesn’t make sense that facebook would make this feature an all-or-nothing deal. Then I remembered that Facebook is gearing up to get into the online dating market, and suddenly, everything started to make a whole lot of sense. One of the biggest trends in online dating (that I’ve noticed in multiple sites) is that the system is increasingly trying to find common interests between users and adding more detailed questions regarding my personal interests.

Although I have no way to confirm this, it makes more sense that the new privacy features are to lay groundwork for more aggressive business in online dating than for individuals’ privacy concerns, which is what FB claims.