Facebook is rolling out a new dating feature. No, this is not an Onion article. This is real. Remember Facebook’s stated mission has long been “to bring the world closer together.” It’s kept far-flung friends in touch while reuniting lost ones. It’s worked to connect consumers with businesses while allowing co-workers to collaborate on projects.
For the first time since the social network was created in February of 2004, Facebook will help users find love. The Facebook CEO announced the new option during the keynote address. “This is going to be for building real, long-term relationships — not just hook-ups,” Zuckerberg said. Zuckerberg may not know this, but a Facebook dating already exists… it’s called sliding into someone’s DM’s on Instagram.
But to date, Facebook has left the business of more intimate, romantic connections to apps like Tinder. Until recently, that is. Facebook said in May it would launch a dating app, and now there is a glimpse of what that app will look like.
“It mirrors the way people actually date, which is usually at events and institutions that they’re connected to,” Chief Product Officer Chris Cox said. With Facebook having 2.2 billion monthly active users, the biggest social media platforms could spell trouble for existing dating apps such as Tinder, Match, Bumble, and OkCupid. Match.com’s stock dropped by more than 17% after news of a Facebook dating feature was released. So it will kind of be like OkCupid, but way more Russian bots and you’re dating information will be sold to advertisers.
“We have designed this with privacy and safety in mind from the beginning,” Zuckerberg said “Your friends aren’t going to see your profile, and you’re only going to be suggested to people who are not your friends.” Speaking of privacy, Facebook is still reeling from the Cambridge Analytica data leak and is now the least-trusted tech company.
Jane Manchun Wong, an app researcher, discovered features of a Facebook dating app and posted screen shots on Twitter.
“We are testing Facebook Dating internally (as we regularly do with new features), but we don’t have anything more to share right now,” Jillian Stefanki, a Facebook spokeswoman also confirmed. Facebook hasn’t announced a release date for the dating app.
A screenshot from Wong’s tweet showed Facebook stressing to employees that the app in testing was only to be used for the development of software, not romance.
“This product is for US Facebook employees who have opted-in to dogfooding Facebook’s new dating product. The purpose for this dogfooding is to test the end-to-end product experience for bugs and confusing UI. This is not meant for dating your coworkers,” the screenshot read. “Dogfooding” is a term used by tech companies to refer to internal testing of a product before it’s released to the public.
It’s not clear yet whether this test will lead to a formal dating app from Facebook. But CEO Mark Zuckerberg has been talking a lot about increasing “time well spent” on its apps. And if Facebook can succeed in connecting people into long-term relationships, well, that’s a better use of time than passively reading misinformation that persists in Facebook’s News Feed.
Facebook first announced its dating app on May 1, during its annual F8 developer conference. On that day, Match Group—which owns Tinder, the dating app that according to Facebook’s own data dominates the dating-app space—saw it shares fall 17%. Match Group was down 0.45% Friday at $37.88 a share.
