How do you leverage Facebook for dating?

Interview with Brian Phillips, CEO of Thread, an online dating site on top of Facebook

Almost three years ago, I wrote a piece called "Online dating vs. social networks." The premise was that social networks were a better place to find dates. In December 2008, Brian Phillips and his friends from PayPal and YouTube came together and basically thought the same thing. He and his co-founders started Thread, an online dating site that leverages the voluminous data on Facebook. 

Want to see all the single females who like music and live in the Bay Area? Go on Thread, and you're likely to find all the ones you want to meet, according to Brian. And, you can find them on Facebook.

"Not everyone is on dating sites," said Brian, in this recent interview with me. "But the best people are all on Facebook." Brian was responding to a question about how Thread is going to be a better service than Match.com, Yahoo Personals, eHarmony and Plenty of Fish.

“My future wife is almost certainly on Facebook," he added. "I just have a search problem."

That's where Thread comes in. Thread is a fbFund company and has raised $1.2 million from Sequoia Capital, Founders Fund, First Round Capital, and high-profile angels, such as Ron Conway and Reid Hoffman. 

Thread has created filters to help its members find their match on Facebook. You can search by geography and gender and status and receive a list of all the folks that fit that criteria. You can even filter down to whether a person likes music. But you can't find a person based on body type (which is what Yahoo Personals offers). You also can't search all of Facebook, you can only have access to all of your friends' friends (a problem for those who don't have many friends). Interestingly enough, you can see all these people even if they care to be seen or not. It is a social network after all. For instance, a person can put a filter on all the "married" men or women in the area and start, well, hunting them down.  

Most of matchmaking works the way connecting works on social networks. If you find someone you like, you just see who their friends are and contact a friend for an introduction. There's limited messaging on Thread. And, most of the messaging is done on Facebook.

Since launching in early September, Brian said (as of this interview), Thread has seen 4,000 registrations.

Watch the interview to hear more about the origin of Thread and how exactly the matchmaking works and why Thread doesn't have any plans to launch personality tests. 

Editor's note: Be sure to stay tuned for our second-part of this interview, in which Brian talks about how Thread plans to make money.