I'm bi and my Facebook lists both men and women in my "interested in" section. I'm also a member of bisexual and GLBT rights groups. It should come as no surprise that queer site ads show up on the site. But it's always lesbian, never bisexual. I get "Need a Gay Girlfriend?" and "Lesbian Dating" along with gay pride products. I never get bisexual dating ads or bi pride products. The SpeedDate app only allows you to see matches for one sex, not both.
But to be fair this may not be entirely Facebook's fault. Maybe no bisexual dating sites pay for ad space. I'm not sure if the SpeedDate app was developed by Facebook. If it wasn't then the blame lays on the developer.
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I think your second paragraph nails it. I know of very few companies marketing to bi people.
Do you prefer to date other bisexual people, not men who are only straight or women who are only gay?
I'm not trying to draw any conclusions about the advertising or fairness of Facebook by this question, I'm just trying to understand if there is a bisexual community in the way there is a gay community in some places. I do not know any bisexual people so...yeah.
A lot of gay and straight people won't date a bisexual. Dating sites tend to just have "woman seeking man" or "woman seeking woman" never "woman seeking either sex." There's almost never an option to list yourself as bisexual to keep people unwilling to date bisexuals off your potential matches. I'm willing to date any sexuality but I have to elimate anyone who won't date bis.
True! OkCupid is one of the few exceptions.
The ads on Facebook aren't the most sophisticated of things (I'm 'in a relationship', therefore, I get a bunch of engagement ring ads and baby adverts)-- if it's labeled that you're interested in both men and women, do straight dating services also appear? Or is it just queer? If both straight and queer appear, that might be Facebook's way of processing 'interested in men and women'.
Just queer dating sites appear. I list women before men as I'm a little more attracted to women. So that's probably why the queer sites override the straight ones.
I wrote a blog about this a while back, too. I'm not really that upset about the fact that all the ads are lesbian instead of bisexual, but rather that I'm flooded with them in the first place.
I seriously think that a lot of straight folks are pretty unaware of targeted advertising, but the minute you change your orientation on a social networking site, you instantly become inundated with them, and realize just how, I don't know, how intrusive it is, where before you didn't know the ads were accessing your personal information.