Do you think that Facebook pay somebody to get few links to their website? - No.
Facebook has delivered a great stuff, great content and a great application that is useful
Citing one of the largest brands as an example of how to do it likely isn't doing any small business owner a huge favour.
If half of what Zuckerberg reportedly did is true, then he's definitely not the right guy to model yourself after anyway. Sure FB is worth more than you could ever spend, but Zuck wouldn't have done it with great content or a great application alone.
There's thousands of great writers (both prose and application engineers) who are dead broke, not because of the quality of their work but because of market readiness, marketing support, funding, and a hundred other reasons.
Understanding how deep the water is, which way the current is dragging you and the fact that you won't last 20 seconds in 1ºC water is important to know before jumping in with both feet. In much the same way, understanding your market capacity, readiness, competition and cost to reach critical mass as a competitor are all critical to surviving in a hyper-stuffed niche like dating.
If you're going to model after someone, figure out what your poorest top 10 ranking competitor has done to get there, then do it better, cheaper, faster.
Remember, you don't have to invent or innovate to do well.
If you recall The Big Bang Theory where Sheldon and Leonard are discussing facing their fears (quotes courtesy of IMDB, who are quoting the series script):
Leonard: Yeah, I feel pretty good about myself. You think we can outrun him?
Sheldon: I don't need to outrun him. I just need to outrun you!
You don't need to be MZ at FB. You don't need to develop usable cold fusion, a teleporter or figure out how to make an extendable, foldable computer display for 99pence.
You do need to find a market segment that you can penetrate with the coins in your pocket and time available to manage and market it. You do need to do better than the competition - faster, cheaper, better (one or more of these).
Exploit an inherent weakness in the models of others (too broad so they carry irrelevant results, too slow to be usable, poor quality photos that don't look like the people, not vetting the people via background checks so that they match you up with serial killers, etc, etc). Find the hole and plug it!
