Facebook dating has announced Dating; dating service for users from Usa ,Canada,Uk and Canada. The dating featured become part of the Facebook app. While other dating apps start with nothing, Facebook has already collected a large group of singles ready to MATCH.
Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Facebook, said that 200 million users of the network present themselves as single. Since 2004, Facebook has been asking its users for relationship status, which is now very useful with the introduction of the dating service. Moreover, Facebook does not only know that these users are single.
The data-hungry network knows almost everything about these singles, making the total fast. Facebook Dating is a way for the social network to attract new users but also to let current users spend more time in the app. Also, Dating will try to win back the hearts of current users after the recent privacy scandals. You can read here what Facebook Dating is for, whom it is intended for and what you can expect from it.
What you should know about Facebook Dating
How does it work?
You can create a facebook dating – hook-ups profile with your Facebook account, after which you can use Dating. There is no interaction between the two profiles; your Facebook friends do not see what you are doing in the dating section. To make this separation even clearer, only your first name is shown in Dating and you are not introduced to your current friends.
Also, there is a separate inbox with messages that you receive in the dating section. Unlike Messenger, you cannot send photos or links. You can only send text-based messages while chatting, which Facebook describes as a security measure. In this way, Facebook separates the dating partly from the normal part.
Facebook uses a self-developed algorithm to match you with potential partners. This algorithm is based on your preferences, things that you have in common and mutual friends. You can also get in touch with people who have the same interests as you and who, for example, are in the same groups or go to the same events. For example, if you go to a festival, you can unlock your dating profile so that potential matches can see this.
The facebook dating philosophy
There are many questions about why and how Facebook Dating is developed. The philosophy behind the new dating service is based on these 11 characteristics, which briefly describe how Facebook Dating works:
- For relationships, no one-night stands
- Opt-in, no automatic registration
- No new app within Facebook
- Friends of friends and strangers, not friends
- A new profile, not your “standard” Facebook profile
- Only your first name and age, not all your information
- Send a message and receive an answer, no match required
- Separate dating chat, not Facebook Messenger
- Verify location, not to fill in yourself
- Match via Events and Groups, not randomly
- Free, no subscriptions or payments
it is Free facebook dating ?
Facebook Dating is free ,is not a stand-alone app, which means that it cannot be downloaded as a separate app in the app store. Registration is possible in the normal Facebook app via the hamburger menu ☰. The dating functions are not available in the desktop version of Facebook. To prevent abuse of the dating functions, Facebook asks for your location. Facebook then verifies this location via the GPS of your phone.
When you create your dating profile you will be asked to write a short introduction that describes who you are and what you are looking for. Part of your profile are questions that you have answered but your profile is also the place where your photos can be seen. You can include a maximum of nine photos and answers in your profile. You can upload the photos for your profile from your film roll, Facebook uploads or Instagram photos that you have shared on Facebook.
Opt-in
The dating feature is opt-in which means that you have to enable this yourself, even if you have indicated that you are single and interested in men or women. The dating profile exists alongside your normal Facebook profile; these are separated from each other. What you do within the dating section of the app is not shared on the timeline of your normal profile. The potential matches are presented to you in the dating section, after which you can indicate whether you are interested or not.
Suggested matches
Facebook dating doesn’t just introduce everyone to you. As soon as you start searching for a potential partner, Facebook ensures that your current friend’s list is not shown to you and vice versa. Instead, you only see friends of friends or people with whom you have no connection at all. Users that you have blocked on Facebook are also not shown to you. People you have been friends with but not now can be introduced.
When searching for matches, the app takes into account various aspects such as your location, shared page likes, agreements in Facebook profiles and mutual friends.
Find matches
You can search for matches in a radius of 100 kilometers. Unlike some other dating apps, you cannot change your location to search for matches in other places. If you want to do this, you must physically go to this place to re-verify your location there.
Send messages
If you are interested in a profile that comes by then you can let us know by tapping a photo or answering a question. You can then leave a message for the person. The recipient can then return or ignore a message. If the recipient responds to your message, a chat will be opened in the conversation section of Facebook Dating. The chat conversations are therefore not opened in Facebook Messenger.
The messages you send can only consist of text and emojis. Sharing photos and videos is not possible. Do you hate to match first before you can send a message? This is not necessary with Facebook Dating. You can send a message to anyone interested, even if you are not matched yet.
Who is it?
Young people from the age of 13 may have an account on Facebook, but a different age applies to date functions. Facebook Dating is only available for users older than 18 years. In the speech in which the dating functions were announced, Mark Zuckerberg made it clear what the dating service is for: “This is going to be for building real long-term relationships, not hookups.” the expected target group.
The average age of the Facebook user continues to rise and, as everyone knows, that also changes the relationship wishes 1. The older the users, the more people are looking for a serious relationship. As a result, Facebook Dating will focus on serious relationships, especially among the elderly.
Not for hook-ups
Facebook Dating is therefore not at all suitable for hook-ups. The hook-up culture requires a certain degree of anonymity. Volatile sex contacts are often done relatively anonymously, as is the case with Tinder. This anonymity is far from ideal at Facebook since the name and surname of each user are known and also the common friends.
No complete anonymity
Fortunately, only your first name and age are taken from your Facebook profile in the first instance. As a result, other Facebook members do not immediately have access to all information that you share on your “normal” profile so that you enjoy a certain degree of privacy.
Why many people still choose traditional dating sites is not because most singles can be found here. A large proportion of these dating sites opt for relative anonymity. On these dating sites, users write personal stories, share personal information and open themselves to other users. What you share on Facebook goes far beyond what the average Tinder user shares. Do you want everyone to see your position, place of residence, work history and family relationships before you have even changed a word?
A dating app connects you with strangers. The goal is to get to know one or more of these strangers so that they are no longer strangers but a friend, acquaintance or love. Of all the people you meet on the dating app, you only speak a few and even then the short-term contact diluted with many. Do you want all these strangers to know everything about you?
What about privacy?
Dating on Facebook brings several concerns about privacy. Recently there was the major Cambridge Analytica scandal that demonstrated how much information can be shared with third parties 2. The data company linked to President Donald Trump received access to the personal information of more than 87 million users 3.
It is therefore questionable whether your privacy is not violated when you try the dating section. During the presentation of the new dating function, CEO Mark Zuckerberg indicated that Facebook Dating was developed with privacy and security in mind. However, it is still unknown what measures the social network takes.
Compared to the other dating apps, there are many more concerns about privacy with Facebook Dating. Especially since singles demonstrably share more personal data during dating, Facebook gets even more data at its disposal. Facebook already has a huge pile of personal information and Facebook Dating can make this mountain grow quickly. For Facebook and, moreover, the shareholders, the users of the network are not only people but also the product that is sold to advertisers.
Is your data secure?
Facebook itself indicates that the same security protocols and measures apply to date functions as to the entire social media network. However, the question is whether this is sufficient. If we have learned anything from the past, then the only thing we know about these measures is that we can still work on it. If a data company without the knowledge of Facebook can misuse the data of millions of users for political gain, then you may wonder if you want to cooperate.
It is also not clear whether advertisers will get access to your dating use within the app. Before you know it, you are confronted with ads about sex toys every day when you joke about a dildo in a conversation. Who knows, your sexual preferences will be used in political advertisements.
Competitor of?
Facebook Dating does not compete with Tinder but will focus primarily on the same target group as Relatieplanet and Lexa, but also dating sites that target the elderly. Older singles do not like the swipe apps for young people and this is precisely the target group where Facebook is still seeing growth. The rivals of Facebook Dating have heard the news with panic, although they all deny it. Not only is there the large Match Group that no doubt wonders what is left of the current members after the introduction of Facebook Dating, but this also applies to local dating sites such as Relatieplanet. The impact of Facebook Dating on the use of these dating sites will have to be learned over time.
Unlike Tinder.
At first glance, you would think that Facebook Dating will be a direct competitor of Tinder but the method is completely different. The way the dating function works differs from the sweep model that has been popularized by Tinder. The social media giant does not want to make a speed dating session as it does with the swipe apps.
At Facebook, there is more depth in personality. You will be asked questions that you can answer to let your matches find out more about you. The conversations are started based on shared interests or based on the information in the profile.
What sets Facebook Dating apart from other apps is the integration with Groups and Events. For example, Facebook proposes matches in the Facebook groups in which you are active. For example, if you are in a group for aircraft spotters then members of this group can be introduced to you. That is if they have also registered for Facebook Dating.
The same applies to Events. If you have indicated that you are interested in an event or are going there, members who are going there may be introduced to you. In this way, Facebook Dating can encourage users to meet in public.
In-app time spent
Facebook still sees impressive growth in the number of new members among older users. While younger users are increasingly leaving Facebook for Instagram and Snapchat, Facebook will do everything to hold on to older users. In this respect, the dating service will serve to allow this group to spend more time within the app.
The time that users spend in the app is a piece of information that tells a lot about the growth and use of Facebook. At the beginning of this year, Facebook announced that the time spent in-app had fallen by 50 million hours a day. It was previously thought that this time spent in the app could be increased by offering more videos, but this did not lead to the desired effect.
When is the release?
The unveiling of the dating features took place during the Facebook F8 development boot conference 4. This was not yet an official announcement but a message that Facebook is working on it. The test phase is not even over yet. Facebook has indicated that it will test the dating service in 2018. This means that it can take a while before Facebook Dating is available to the general public. The first country to test Facebook is Colombia that was given access to the dating functions on 20 September.
Back to where it started
For Zuckerberg, the announced dating function is a return to the roots. The current leader of the social network developed a different website for Facebook, called FaceMash. Zuckerberg wrote the software for the website when he was in the second year of his education. FaceMash was set up as a Hot Or Notcopy but only for Harvard students. Through the website, visitors were shown two photos of female students to then determine who was the prettiest and who wasn’t.
The website was soon discovered by Harvard employees who had the website closed shortly after the go-live. Shortly afterward, Zuckerberg was accused by the university of violating copyright laws, protecting the campus and violating the privacy of his fellow students. The charges were eventually withdrawn and the banishment of the prestigious school was prevented. Whether Zuckerberg will be successful in setting up a dating site will have to be proven when Facebook Dating goes live.
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