Mark Zuckerberg has announced that Facebook will launch a dating service to match the 200 million single people that currently use the site. Given the recent turmoil around Facebook, users may take some persuading to dump services such as Tinder for Facebook’s new offering.
At the F8 conference, Zuckerberg said:
“Now this is going to be for building real long-term relationships – not just hook-ups. It’s going to be in the Facebook app but it’s totally optional. it’s opt-in. If you want you can make a dating profile. I know a lot of you are going to have questions about this so I want to be clear that we have designed this with privacy and safety in mind from the beginning. Your friends aren’t going to see your profile. You are only going to be suggested people who are not your friends who have opted into dating and who fit your preferences.”
According to BBC News, Match Group, the firm that owns Tinder, saw a drop in its share price by 22%. The fall could be somewhat premature as it isn’t clear that Facebook is looking to compete directly with Tinder. Facebook says it wants to create long-term relationships, whereas Tinder is definitely pitched at people looking to “hook-up”. Additionally, it was pointed out that 54% of Facebook users are 35 and over which suggests Facebook could go after an older audience.
Facebook’s dating service could offer users much more than Tinder and other services in terms of matching ability due to the amount of data it already has on users. One of the things most people have noticed is the website’s ability to suggest friends to you by correlating things such as friends of friends and phone numbers that have been uploaded to the site. With this prior experience, Facebook could be quite adept at matchmaking.
Let us know in the comments whether or not you’ll use the new dating service, or whether you’ll avoid it because you believe Facebook already holds too much data.
Source: BBC News