During the annual Facebook business developer conference on Tuesday, CEO of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg announced a brand new dating app for Facebook, called Dating. The opt in feature will match users specifically with people they aren’t already friends. In order to use Dating, Facebook users can build a dating profile, which will not be accessible to friends and followers.
The app will be added to the Facebook mobile app as a fine layer of addition. The features are a long time coming for the 14 year old social network, which has allowed users to broadcast whether they’re single or in a relationship since it first went live in February 2004.
The move will likely transform Facebook, with its more than 2.2 billion monthly active users, into a major competitor of Match Group, which owns and operates the mobile dating app, Tinder and the popular dating platform, OkCupid. Since the news was announced, Match Group’s stock plummeted by more than 17 %.
The new profiles look similar to other mobile focused dating apps like Tinder and Bumble, with full page profile photos. However, unlike Tinder, Bumble and OkCupid, Facebook’s take on dating is more community focused, with integrations for the events and different groups you’re a part of on the platform.
To help keep the two forms of dating apps separate, the Dating version of the Facebook app will only use your first name. Dating will also have a dedicated inbox that, unlike Messenger, does not allow you to send photos or links. You can only send text based messages when chatting for the first time, which Facebook describes as a safety measure.
Furthermore, to address the issue of privacy, Dating gives you the option of unblocking the users and blocking them again once users lose interest. At the Facebook developers conference, Product Chief Chris Cox said more information regarding release date of the product and more details will be released over a period of time.
