We have already written about the seamy underbelly of Facebook’s recently rolled-out Graph Search. Now here’s a more upbeat and interesting flip side to Facebook Graph Search: it turns Facebook into one of the best, largest, and free dating sites out there.

As we explained in our overview article about Facebook Graph Search, you can refine your search with all sorts of qualifiers, including place of birth, where they live, religious views, political views, employers, and more.

It turns out that one of those qualifiers is “single”. So, for example, you can do this search:

Single men living in New York City

 

And you get a neat set of results which include really interesting information, including your mutual friends, if any (and what better way to meet people than through friends?).

This is the ‘list’ view:

 

 

You can also switch to ‘grid view’:

 

 

Now, of course, the one downside of using Facebook as your next dating site is that people are not on Facebook to have people ask them out on dates, while on Match.com or OKCupid they are. So they may not appreciate a message out of the blue from a complete stranger. So, we are not advocating this, merely pointing it out.