Facebook has been a hot topic in recent times. The company has been involved in the Cambridge Analytica controversy for some time. Now, the company is introducing a new dating product in America. Facebook Dating is looking to give better matches than its rivals, like Bumble, Match, Tinder and many others. Facebook Dating will allow users to add their Instagram followers and posts in their profile. By the end of this year, Facebook Dating will allow users to select the stories they want to add to their profile.
Although America is the 20th market for Facebook, it is the most important one. The company first announced the American venture last year at the F8 developer conference. This new service is a big step to make Facebook, a social tool for people who aren’t just family or friends.
Facebook Dating is going to be the area in which the company will invest heavily. The Facebook groups product connects users with similar geographical location and interests with neighboring groups. The company also launched Facebook at Work that allows businesses to build their networks using Facebook infrastructure.
Facebook is well aware of the privacy pitfalls in dating. Therefore, the company has taken many steps to lock down the dating experience to make sure that you don’t get exposed to your friends, colleagues, family members or other professional colleagues.
The people that you will see on dating won’t be your friends. You can also choose the option to show you only the people with which you don’t have any friends in common. You also have the privilege to block people. This is to make sure that an ex’s profile doesn’t come up and they don’t see your profile.
Your profile won’t ever be visible to your friends and it won’t appear in the News Feed too. With the new Instagram integration, only your photos will be visible. However, you can add a friend as a “Secret Crush” that will be revealed only if there is mutual interest. You can’t select more than nine crushes. This also includes Instagram followers.
The product also allows you to connect with people of the same group or those attending the same event. It is turned off, but you can turn it on. Other than that, the app will give you profiles based on other factors, like mutual groups, mutual schools, and mutual friends.
Facebook is quite accurate when it gives friend recommendations. It is so accurate that some people think that the company is spying on them. However, in the dating app, no one knows how much of your data the company will be using. Nathan Sharp, the Product Lead for the dating app, said that he couldn’t discuss the system details.
“I can assure you that none of the people you see or encounter would give out any information,” he said, “Consider a scenario where you and your friend go to the same college, but you never mention it on your dating profile. Consequently, your friend would never see each other’s detail.
On Tinder, you can easily write on your profile, “love playing basketball.” However, Facebook would instantly know whether you are lying or telling the truth. It will see whether you posted any basketball court pictures or you liked the pages related to basketball.
The larger goal of this dating app is to make matchmaking a personal thing again. It wants to remind people that there is a real person on the other end.
Other than the U.S., Facebook Dating is available in Argentina, Chile, Columbia, Guyana, Ecuador, Canada, Brazil, Bolivia, Mexico, Malaysia, Peru, Paraguay, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam, Uruguay, and the Philippines. It will also be available in Europe by 2020.
