Ireland’s Data Protection Commission (DPC) has decided to wreck Facebook’s Valentine"s plan of launching its Dating service in Europe. According to the DPC, Facebook contacted it about rolling out the Dating feature in the EU on February 3 with plans to launch the service today (Feb 13).
The DPC, in a statement, said it hadn’t received prior information from Facebook about the planned launch. To compound problems further, the social media giant hadn’t even produced information or documentation concerning the Data Protection Impact Assessment. Not wanting to stymie Facebook and all the singletons waiting for the product to launch, the DPC expedited efforts to acquire the relevant documentation which it obtained on Monday.
Seemingly caught off-guard by the turn of events, Facebook contacted the DPC on Tuesday to say that it would be postponing the launch of the feature in Europe. It hasn’t said how long it’ll delay its dating service but it has nearly been two years since it first announced the product and people in the territory are still waiting.
Facebook Dating has already launched in the United States and has been available for about five months. When it was first announced, Mark Zuckerberg hoped that the dating service would help match the then 200 million single people using Facebook.