I am solo player too, tho it's really nice to quest with someone and do dialogues together. Flashpoints on master are hard, you kind of need tank, healer and 2 dps. And it's really fun to do some longer story run with few people. Group finder is nice because you just sign up and wait, you can do quest and not bother with anything. It finds people and you click travel now and start flashpoint.
No need to spam chat and it finds people from entire server, as far as I know, global chat works only on planets you are on so people from other worlds wont see it. Limits drastically number of people that could join. I tried looking for people in chat on fleet but it simply does not work. Doubt many people even reads it.
And it's not fun to be forced to rush it because people play for items only. Completely kills FP and raids experience for me. I never really understand what's the point of it in any mmo, crazy hunt for items, killing last boss just to get some stupid crafting material and redoing FP just to farm it. Pretty poor design by devs too.
Offtopic but I really love lord of the rings online instances, enemies attack you and you just can't get pass them without fight. So no one is rushing because it's simply impossible and you can actually enjoy playing the game.