Facebook official: the rise and fall of the relationship status
In the 1950s, couples on US campuses took out ads in college newspapers to announce that their relationship was getting serious. In the Noughties, we had Facebook official. One of the social media site's first features, rolled out while the network was still primarily used by students at US universities, was the "relationship status". And at first, it was a successful one: a way for users to broadcast their personal lives to friends and ex-lovers, and another way to show off online. It was so successful, in fact, that it began to invade very culture and lexicon of dating. "It's Complicated" was first entered onto Urban Dictionary in 2007, and fast became an iconic phrase to describe the rocky dating lives of teens and twentysomethings. (Whether anyone actually used it on their profile without a hint of irony is another question.) The press treated Facebook and its investment in your relationships much as it's treating dating apps now: with suspicion. News and comment pieces were littered with first-person ho
14 Feb 2016 ... The press treated Facebook and its investment in your relationships much as it's treating dating apps now: with suspicion. News and comment ...