If you’re really looking for maximum secrecy, you can also tell Facebook Dating not to show your profile to friends of friends - which, as Insider pointed out, may be an inadvertently useful tool for cheaters looking to step out on a partner without getting caught by single friends on other dating apps, so do with that what you will.Īnyway, Facebook thinks it knows you pretty well, so when you first opt in to Facebook Dating, it offers to build you a “suggested profile” using photos and information from your regular profile. Your Facebook profile won’t indicate that you’re using Facebook Dating, and your profile won’t be shown to Facebook friends. Rest assured, your Facebook Dating profile is entirely separate from your Facebook profile, and you have to opt in to use it. Naturally, this may be cause for concern among people who are still carrying around residual dating app shame from 2014 and don’t necessarily want their Facebook friends to know they’re online dating. The primary way in which Facebook Dating differs from its dating app predecessors is that it is the first of its kind to be hosted by an existing social media platform. That’s if you’re inclined to believe the word of a notoriously shady social media platform with a vested interest in getting you to provide more personal information so they can use it for ad-targeting … er, I mean, set you up with your perfect match.Īnyway, whether we asked for it or not, Facebook Dating is here, and based on the 219 notifications I had this morning, someone is in fact using it, so let’s review. The platform’s whole schtick is that it uses the information it assumes you’ve been feeding Facebook for years in order to play matchmaker based on common interests, events, etc., thus presumably leading to more “authentic” matches than your standard swiping apps.
In other words, I’m not really Facebook Dating’s target user. Today I will tell literally anyone anything they want to know - and plenty of things they probably don’t - about my swiping habits, but will still rarely post anything on Facebook. In those days, being on Tinder was almost as shameful as being on Facebook is now, so I kept both accounts largely under wraps. I didn’t make a Facebook account until 2014, and I only did it then because at the time you had to have one to use Tinder. Or, rather, I was over Facebook when Facebook was still cool. It also turns out I hadn’t been missing much in the interim!įull disclosure, I was over Facebook before being over Facebook was cool.
At long last, however, Facebook finally coughed up some matches, and it turns out people actually are using it.
People have a lot of questions about Facebook Dating, like, “Why does this exist?” and “Who would use this?” My own most pressing question following the release was not the why or the who, but rather, has anyone actually used this? This question was prompted and gradually exacerbated by the nearly two full weeks it took for the platform to start suggesting matches after I initially set up my profile on the supposed launch date. earlier this month following a presumably (if surprisingly) successful international run in 19 countries outside America over the past year. From an ill-advised return to news to a weirdly Orwellian streaming service, Facebook has recently insisted on presenting us with a variety of new features no one asked for instead of the one thing everyone actively wants from the platform: i.e., for it to stop mishandling our personal data and/or to maybe just cease existing entirely.įacebook’s most recent attempt to win us over comes in the form of Facebook Dating, the in-app dating feature that launched in the U.S.