About

Facebook Dating is an online-dating opt-in extension of Facebook that suggests potential matches outside your Facebook friends and allows for a private connection via messaging.

History

On May 1st, 2018, Mark Zuckerberg, ^[1] announced the new dating service extension at an annual developer conference. Fortune Magazine uploaded a video of the announcement that same day (shown below). Facebook Dating was made available that year to Facebook users in Colombia, Thailand, Canada, Argentina and Mexico.

On April 30th, 2019, Facebook announced the "Secret Crush" feature and the apps availability to additional countries at another developer conference. Tech journalist Sriram Sharma^[4] tweeted a picture of a slide at the conference revealing the 19 countries the Dating extension will be available to in 2019 (shown below).

Features

Facebook Dating features a secretive service where Facebook friends are unaware for each others dating profiles. Match suggestions are outside users list of friends and user may "unlock events" to see matches that are also interested in attending a scheduled event. After its Canadian launch, YouTuber user Ottawa Citizen uploaded a video outline the applications features (shown below). The video has gained over 11,000 views in six months.

Secret Crush

On April 30th, 2019, Facebook announced the new Facebook Dating feature "Secret Crush" in which "you can select up to nine of your Facebook friends who you want to express interest in. If your crush has opted into Facebook Dating, they will get a notification saying that someone has a crush on them. If your crush adds you to their Secret Crush list, it’s a match!"^[2] (shown below).

Highlights

On May 1st, 2018, following the announcement of Facebook Dating, dating app CEOs released bitter statements that took jabs at Facebook's privacy issues and Russian involvement on the site.^[3] Tech journalist Deepa Seetharaman^[5] tweeted highlights from Match Group and IAC s CEO statements (shown below, left). On April 30th, 2019, many Twitter users reacted negatively to the "Secret Crush" feature announcement. Twitter user David Pierce^[6] shared an article on the matter adding the caption, "Facebook: The future is private. Also Facebook: Please list all your friends you want to sleep with" (shown below, right). The tweet gained over 786 likes and 337 retweets in a day.

Search Interest

External References