Today is the one year anniversary of the death of our larger than life friend, David P. Nichol.

No one will ever forget the over 500 people who paid their respects, who cried over the loss of you and who rejoiced in your ‘can do’ attitude that touched everyone you met and everything you did.  There have been a lot of changes here at Datepad over the past year, and we have you to thank for the inspiration behind what is becoming a growing force in the internet dating world.  Thank you Dave, we miss you!

Most of us at Datepad have been using Twitter on and off for some time now and while the verdict is still out as to whether this is more of a time waster or something that is value added remains to be seen. Datepad has embraced social media especially with Facebook and our application and Facebook Pages.

We have to admit it took us a little longer to start using Twitter.

Our Twitter page is DatepadDating. We will keep this profile busy with our daily dating articles, news happening on the site and any other interesting tid bits about running a free internet dating site.

I thought I would take some time and share some of the more frustrating aspects of running a free dating application on Facebook.

First off let me tell you first that the Facebook developer network is an amazing tool and truly is a win, win. The developer has the ability to access the 200 million or so active members currently using Facebook, this is much easier said than done but there are very few opportunities where a company can immediately have access to such a massive network. I have to applaud what Facebook has been able to accomplish is such a short time. Nothing is ever perfect and there certainly have been a lot of users complaining about the recent changes to the feed and home page. In the end Facebook IS winning the social network war because the product is, well, really good!

And on Facebook’s side they win because the developer network and it’s 60 thousand or so applications have had a major impact on their growth. When applications become popular it keeps users on the site longer and in the end this equates to more revenue for Facebook.

So here are some of the issues - more so areas I think Facebook could improve on.

1.    The new user review system – Every application has an “About Page” within this page users have the ability to rate an application on a score of 1 to 5 stars. What has changed recently is users that don’t have your application installed have the ability  to vote. On top of this they don’t have to leave a comment when voting. I have no issue with a user leaving a candid comment about our application, but the minimum requirement should be that they have actually used the application. This would alleviate some of the random negative reviews that all developers have recently seen a surge in.

2.    Commenting on reviews - Another area I would love to see added is the ability for an administrator to comment on a review, much like commenting on a wall post. We have had some users complain that our application is lacking certain things or that we are doing things that go against our privacy policy, in all of these cases this simply wasn’t true. Because of this I would love to be able to reply to a users comments and let them know how to access a certain page or feature. This would help other users and give us and other developers the ability to retain a client and/or mitigate loosing potential users from not joining because they see a negative review.

There are of course some technical issues with the Facebook developer platform, we’ll leave those comments and review for another post.

Overall things are pretty good in the Facebook developer world, like any piece of software nothing is ever perfect. The good news is software is always an evolving entity and we fully expect Facebook to continue making improvements. Maybe if we’re lucky one of the decision makers will read this post. Fingers crossed!

For some of us the internet can be an intimidating place; what sites do you trust, what things should you look for before joining a site and, more importantly, before giving a credit card? All of us at Datepad understand this concern and because of this we have taken some extra steps to ensure you feel comfortable using Datepad.com and our Facebook application.

It was important for us from the beginning to always be above board when it comes to your private information. And while we don’t ask for very much information compared to a paid dating site your personal information should always remain just that, PERSONAL! Because of this Datepad adheres to the highest privacy policy standards in the industry and for this we have attained a Truste certificate.

I wanted to also take some time in this post to discuss what goes on with our Facebook application and give our users some information on how the Facebook application network operates.
When you install an application, any application, on Facebook you give the developer, be it Facebook themselves or Datepad Inc., the authority to post on your wall. To be very clear Datepad will only post on your wall for the following actions.

-    When you first install our application
-    When you send a nudge or a message to another user on Datepad

Please be advised that you can remove these posts from your wall at any time,  you always have the right to remove any application from your profile. Please also be advised this is a standard practice within the Facebook developer community and we here at Datepad only do this so we can grow our application and give you, the user, a larger member base to find that special someone.

As always we welcome any feedback about our site and our Facebook application.

Thank you from all of us at Datepad.