How will the new Facebook dating app work, what should you expect from it, and what intentions does Zuckerberg have?
At the last F8 conference of developers that took place on May 1 the owner and CEO of Facebook announced that his company plans to launch its own dating app that will be a real competitor of other dating market giants. So, we have decided to make a list of the 10 most interesting and important facts about the new potential relationship service giant.
- Zuckerberg says there are more than 200 million single people on Facebook, and he has long wanted to create his own platform to help these people find love. He feels that allowing people to seek for partners, using the data and resources they have, is the best goal he can set for his team. That is why he believes in the idea of creating a dating service on the base of Facebook and says that it would happen anyway sooner or later.
- Some people believe this is the next part of Mark’s plan to take over the social media sphere. Facebook anyway is a social network giant, and building such a highly-demanded platform using the critical data owned by it may seem like an attempt to win the whole dating service.
- Other apps that are aimed at looking for single women online and which are also using the information provided by Facebook get rather anxious and are scared that the algorithms used by the new app will be more powerful. However, as we can all agree, after such a successful many-year-long development of Facebook, creating its own dating platform is just the next logical step for a company.
The next day after the news about the new app was shared to the world, shares of the Match Group plunged 22%. Apparently, match Group is the mother-company that unites such dating-services giants like Tinder, OkCupid, and Match.com.
- Due to many scandals and controversies concerning Facebook personal data protection policy, some people are not so sure the new app will not violate the private boundaries of its users. They believe some of their personal details can be used to improve the matching process without even them knowing.
As for this concern, Facebook made an announcement that protecting the user’s data will be a major priority for the new app. They have officially claimed that the app, working inside the main social network, will use the information the users have already shared with the app, and we have nothing to be scared of.
- The profile of the user will exist separately from their profile on the social network, although they will be able to connect the two. It means the friends of a user will not see if the person uses the dating service; any of the details form the dating account will not interfere with the regular one, and you, as a member of a new service, will not be matched to people you already know through Facebook.
- The app will launch later this year, and there still no hints or official information about how it will look, so for now, we can judge only from the semantics of the features that the new Facebook dating app will own.
- The app claims it is not just for a one-night hookup meetings but wants to grow into a serious platform people would use to seek for a long-term relationship.
- The algorithms of a new app will be targeting not only people who mark themselves as “single” on their main profile, not to exclude people who are currently in relationships and want to start a new one or are representatives of an open couple that are ok with having many partners. However, no one knows how they are going to do this without including all the 2.2 billion Facebook users (the current number of its audience).
- The main principles of a new platform will be integration and community building. Here is when Facebook contracts their own words because integration anyway means including the friends you already have to calculate the best match. If the company claims they will not use only the list of friends (well, how many other services do?) to help the matching process but rather build more complicated algorithms, to say their main principle will be integration is rather not logical. Experts say that following these principles in the realities of Facebook will transform the new app into the boring analog of already-existing Hinge or Coffee Meets Bagel.
- The short conclusion of how the new Facebook dating app will look would be the next: the user creates a profile using just their first name; the profile itself will not be shown to their friends or appear anywhere in the newsfeed. Then, the user will have to scroll the regular Facebook-like groups and events for the system to evaluate their interests. Your profile is shown to people with similar hobbies and opinions, and you can then have the conversation using the text box.