Dating : Can Facebook Data Help You Find The One?

You don’t have to be a digital marketer to get value from Facebook audience data and answer a question like the one above. Setting up an ad account is the only barrier to entry, but it’s completely free, and following this guide can help you get started and you can use this guide to start creating audiences yourself.

If you feel prepared with some qualities and attributes you’re looking for in a potential partner, and are set on moving to a place with a larger population or a gender ratio that favors you and what you’re looking for, you have everything you need to get started.

To illustrate the process of building an audience and using this data to make decisions, I’ll look at the differences between three top-ranked cities for dating — Atlanta, Denver, and San Francisco — from the perspective of a single woman looking to make a move.

Atlanta

The “Potential Reach” data point in the top right of the above image describes the estimated number of people who fit in your listed criteria at the time of audience creation.

In Atlanta, there are 200,000 people between the ages of 25–35 who’s relationship status is listed as “Single” on Facebook and live within 15 miles of the city. There are 100,000 men and 95,000 women. There is a discrepancy of data as this adds up to 195,000, not 200,000 but this gives you an idea for the size of the single community and gender split in the city.

You can also narrow that audience further based on your interests. Perhaps you decide you want to see the population of single males who work in the same field as you do to try to find people with similar core values:

In this case, if we adjust our audience to include men who work in the medical field, there are 2,100 in the Atlanta area. Now let’s add one more variable — say you are a baseball fan and it’s been a deal-breaker for you in the past if someone doesn’t like baseball.

You can add that variable to your filter:

This leaves you with an audience of 1,400 men living within 15 miles of Atlanta, who identify as single on Facebook, work in healthcare, and have an interest in Baseball.

Denver

Even though Denver is a top city for millennials, it’s metro population is much smaller than Atlanta’s. When considering a city for relocation, the difference between 200,000 single people and 140,00 single people is pretty material.

However, there are 78,000 single males between ages 25–35 who live within 15 miles of Denver versus just 57,000 single females in the same age category and distance from the city.

In Atlanta, the split was closer to 50/50, but in Denver, it’s about 55/45. This means, based on this data, that there are more single men than women in Denver. The overall population is smaller, but as you think about deciding between Atlanta and Denver, this is a factor you want to consider.

If we take it a step further and look at 25–35-year-old males living within 15 miles of Denver who work in healthcare and have an interest in baseball, the population is smaller than Atlanta’s by about 1,000 people:

So yes, there are plenty of opportunities to connect with a single male who lives in either of these cities, works in healthcare and is interested in baseball, but there are some advantages to moving to Denver (the gender imbalance) and others for moving to Atlanta (the larger overall population).

San Francisco

This 3rd-ranked city for singles on Wallet Hub sits right between Denver and Atlanta in terms of total single population size in the 25–35-year-old age bracket at 160,000:

81,000 of those are men, while just 64,000 are women. Again, there are some discrepancies between the individual genders not adding up to the total population, but the data is close enough and we still get a good feel for the gender split in a particular city.

For San Francisco, the split of 25–35-year-old singles is about 55/45, much like Denver. However, there are about 50% more single men in this age group who work in healthcare and like baseball than in Denver:

If you had to choose between three cities, which one would you pick?

If I were advising a friend, I’d say San Francisco is the best bet with the second largest population, a favorable gender split for women, and the second-highest number of single men who work in healthcare and like baseball.

If I hadn’t looked at this data, my “friend” likely would have chosen Atlanta or Denver, never knowing that San Francisco had the second-highest population of singles out of all three cities who meet the criteria specific to her.

There are real stories of people who have moved and found love by doing so, but you don’t have to fly totally blind when relocating.