With everything Facebook knows about its users, it makes perfect sense for it to play Cupid.
The company knows where you live, what you look like, what your interests are, everyone you socialize with and much more. So in many ways, it makes sense that the social media giant would eventually move in the direction of offering a matchmaking service.
Facebook announced its new dating product back in May at its F8 conference, causing shares in Tinder’s parent company — Match Group — to drop by 20 percent.
At the time, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said the dating feature wouldn’t suggest matches between friends but would show which other single people were attending events near the user.
We’ve got our first glimpse of what Facebook Dating will look like after mobile code researcher Jane Manchun Wong shared images of the signup pages on social media over the weekend.
Instead of being a stand-alone app to directly compete with Tinder like many predicted, Facebook’s foray into offering a dating service will be an added feature to appear alongside other Facebook categories like Marketplace.
The design looks more like a traditional dating website rather than a place to swipe through hundreds of potential romances. The company looks to be going for a more mature vibe, designed to cater to those looking for a more serious relationship rather than a quick hookup.
When signing up, users are given a number of gender options including trans-woman, trans-man and non-binary.
If you opt in to Facebook Dating you’ll be able to browse potential matches based on all the info Facebook knows about you.
Once you activate it, only other people who have also turned it on will be able to see you in the pool of potential partners and anything that goes on inside Dating won’t be shared on your news feed so you can go about firing off your best pickup lines without fear.
You will be able to choose if friends of friends can see you or not, if you want an added level of privacy.
According to Wong, Facebook is also working on something called “Conversation Starter” to help users break the ice.
Just like other popular dating apps and services, if two people express interest in each other they can then text over Messenger or WhatsApp, which is also owned by Facebook. However, they reportedly won’t be able to send photos — at least not initially.
According to TechCrunch, Facebook is considering a limit on how many people you can express interest in so you can’t just spam everyone with salacious overtures.
It’s expected you will be able to block someone on Dating which won’t block them on regular Facebook.
Facebook has no plan for paid subscriptions to premium Dating features, but if that continues, you can almost certainly expect ads to start showing up.
The service is currently being used by Facebook employees who are testing a beta version of the app — something known in Silicon Valley parlance as “dogfooding,” wherein employees road-test new products before they enter the wild.
But when signing up, Facebook employees were met with a message warning against too much fraternization.
“This is not meant for dating your co-workers,” the message said.
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