Source: JOSH EDELSON / Getty
It looks like Tinder is about to have some healthy competition when it comes to finding love for life or… just the night.
This week at Facebook’s annual F8 developer’s conference, Mark Zuckerberg announced that the site’s developing a dating feature, but didn’t give a timetable on when it’d debut.
“I know a lot of you are going to have questions about this. We’ve designed this with privacy and safety in mind from the beginning. It’s still unclear how those features are going to help users manage or limit the amount of data Facebook gleans from their dating interactions,” Zuckerberg said during his keynote.
But when it comes to privacy, your friends won’t be able to see the dating profile, and it won’t even appear in your News Feed. Plus, once you opt-in to the feature, you won’t be matched with people you’re already friends with. So if you thought this would be a way to finally date the girl in high school that you never had a chance with… nah, this isn’t it.
We’re just weeks removed from the Cambridge Analytica scandal so ads won’t be shown and user info won’t be used to target ads. Dating apps like Tinder require a Facebook sign in to speed up the profile making process, so while Facebook is joining the game a bit late, it’s already got a massive head start because of its user base.
In the demo shown on stage there will be a heart at the top of your profile that you click that takes you to your “dating home,” and from there you can browse nearby events and potential matches that even include conversation starters. The built-in chat feature will be text only, and if you’ve heard enough dating app horror stories, you know exactly why.
