Facebook wants you to make friends. And now it wants you to find our soul mate. At the F8 developer conference earlier this year, Facebook announced that the company will soon launch a dating service integrated into its social media platform. Facebook began testing the Dating feature last month and now, the company has officially rolled out Facebook Dating exclusively for users in Colombia.
Facebook Dating is a mobile-only feature for now and is currently available in the Facebook app for Android and iOS. Users in the South American country are now able to create a Facebook Dating profile, with the rest of the world having to wait for some few weeks to access the dating service.
As revealed earlier by Facebook, the dating service will exist within the Facebook app, but an individual’s dating activities will be a completely private as the dating profile will be separate from users’ Facebook profile.
In Facebook Dating, one can set up a dating profile, check out the nearby events and groups that are of interest to them, and sign-up for one of the events. Facebook will then match users with other people who are also attending the same event based on their interests and mutual friends.
But, starting a conversation won’t be a straightforward process. In order to start a conversation, you have to first comment on a profile element such as photos of the person you are interested in, and if he/she chooses to respond to it, a conversation channel will open. The messages exchanged between two people will be stored in a separate Facebook Dating chat section, and will appear in the recipient’s ‘Interested’ tab.
Will people jump on board?
Facebook is entering into a crowded space, with the likes of Tinder having already made a foothold in the dating space. But given that many people already use Facebook, meaning they are already linked to many people, this might give the social media giant an edge over other dating services and urge many people to use Facebook’s dating app.
But the adoption of Facebook’s Dating app hinges on the trust people have on Facebook. Considering that Facebook’s image was tarnished in the Cambridge Analytica scandal, some users could be skeptical to embark on its dating service fearing that it will harvest more of their information.
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