Facebook Dating: Getting into the business of love

If your Tinder or Bumble dates are not going well… you’re in luck! Mark Zuckerberg wants to find you a date, because now Facebook is getting into the business of love. It’s called Facebook Dating.

How does it work?

Let’s start off by saying that Facebook Dating will be as separate as possible from its regular app. Users opt in to the service, then create an entirely distinct profile. Facebook Dating does not show users their Facebook friends, and also gives people the ability to remove friends of friends from their potential matches, you know those bros you don’t want to be associated with. You can also block specific people on Facebook from seeing your dating profile. Thank you, next!

Something different? Users can, however, message one another without matching first.

Then there’s a whole thing called “Secret Crush” where you can add up to nine (!) Facebook friends or Instagram followers to a list, and if they secretly crush you back, you’ll both get notified. The tool only works if both people have set up Facebook Dating profiles.

Facebook is getting those who want to hook up/ be in a relationship a plethora of new people to add to the dating pool, but for privacy activists, it’s raising fresh questions about its users’ privacy even as it tanked shares of the company that owns the Tinder hookup app.

“If you’re looking for love, we don’t keep the best features behind a paywall,” Facebook exec Nathan Sharp said at a New York media event. “You shouldn’t have to go through endless swipes to find somebody you like.”

The Thursday announcement sent shares of Match Group — the company that owns Tinder, OKCupid and Match.com — tumbling 4.5 percent to $81.74. Facebook shares rose 2 percent to $190.90.

Zuckerberg, Facebook’s chief executive, first revealed the new platform last spring — an awkward time, as the Cambridge Analytica privacy scandal had broken just a few weeks earlier.

Since then, Facebook has been beta testing the dating service in about 20 countries abroad.

Is this something you will use? To be honest, back when I was single… I was using FB like a dating app anyways.