Technology

‘It’s Facebook Official, Dating Is Here’: Facebook Launches First-Ever Dating Feature Using Its Instagram App

Facebook_logo_2014_wiki_blue | By Vojtěch Dostál (Own work) [CC BY-SA 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

Facebook officially launched its new dating feature, Facebook Dating, in the United States on Thursday.

The tech giant says the new feature will take “the work out of creating a dating profile and gives you a more authentic look at who someone is” in a Thursday newsletter.

The feature will allow users to connect their Dating profiles with their Instagram profiles for photo purposes. It will also allow users to add Facebook friends and Instagram followers to their “Secret Crush lists,” or lists of potential matches users are already friends with on Facebook.

If you’re in the US and 18+, you can sign up for a Facebook Dating profile today and match with people who have similar interests – or use Secret Crush to match with people you already know on Facebook and Instagram pic.twitter.com/QWHbhXHFq7

— Facebook (@facebook) September 5, 2019

If a user adds a name to his or her “Secret Crush list,” the person they add will only get a notification if they use Dating. Users who do not use the feature or don’t use the “Secret Crush list” on the feature won’t get a notification so “no one will know that you’ve entered their name.”

By the end of 2019, users will be able to add Facebook and Instagram “stories” to their Dating profiles to “show, rather than tell” potential matches who they are.

Additionally, Dating users will be able to opt into events or groups made up of people with similar interests.

Get ready US singles: The company that sold all your data and surfaces old pictures of your ex all the time would now like to help you find love. https://t.co/4OswkJPyvW

— Alex Whitcomb (@AlexWhitcomb) September 5, 2019

The company also said it took privacy and security concerns seriously while designing the feature by working with experts to build protections for users, “including the ability to report and block anyone; prohibiting people from sending photos, links, payments or videos in messages; and by providing easy access to safety tips.”

Dating is already available in 19 countries and is coming to Europe in 2020.

Facebook agreed to pay a record $5 billion on July 24 to settle an investigation initiated by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and promised new privacy guarantees after the agency argued that Facebook violated the terms of its 2011 settlement “by deceiving users about their ability to control the privacy of their personal information” a July FTC statement reads.

The tech giant also faced pressure after it was reported that Cambridge Analytica, the British data analytics company hired by the Trump campaign ahead of 2016, harvested the data of millions of Facebook users and providing that information to the campaign.