Lovestruck Facebook users can now ‘ask’ strangers on the social network what their relationship status is with the receiver being able to accept or deny the person’s advances.
Making its first appearance with the introduction of the News Feed in 2006, the Facebook relationship status quickly became the bane of many people’s existence as Facebook grew in popularity. For more dedicated users, their partner wasn’t officially their partner unless they were down as being ‘in a relationship’ on Facebook.
Now, users who have left their relationship status blank can receive messages from complete strangers or, more hopefully, someone they know, about whether they are single or not and connect this way.
So far this new feature is only available to US users but is expected to migrate its way to Europe soon after.
Facebook is rather dedicated to finding out everything to do with relationships on the website, having recently undertaken a user survey that calculated how many posts between two people were sent prior to them agreeing to mark their relationship status as ‘in a relationship’.
According to Facebook’s figures, the period of 100 days prior to the Facebook announcement of a relationship, both users reveal a slow but steady posting courtship which then decreases considerably after they decide to actively say they are going out.
Safe to say, the whole area of Facebook relationship statuses is a potential minefield for either partner, leading to questions such as, “why won’t he put on his page we’re in a relationship?”, “why did she say “it’s complicated’?” and “why does she still have her best friend as being in a civil partnership?”
Here’s a few memes to sum up the Facebook relationship status:
