Back in May at the F8 developer conference, Facebook announced a dating feature on Facebook named as ‘Facebook Dating’ and today, we have started receiving updates on how it will actually look since Facebook is running a beta test of this product on its internal employees. Per the screenshots posted by app researcher Jane Manchun Wong who is known for posting updates on hidden features and upcoming tools on apps and websites even before they are officially launched. Jane posted the screenshots of the Facebook Dating feature where she was able to create a profile although she was able to sign up as it was also available for internal employees only.
When confirmed, Facebook stated that the feature is being tested by the U.S. Facebook employees who are voluntarily participating in the testing phase. Facebook has asked its employees who are ‘interesting’ in ‘dogfooding’ this feature has been asked to create fake profiles with fake details that won’t have any problems on their employments whatsoever and the data saved at the time of using the feature will be purged later before the feature is officially launched.
The feature lets the user create a separate profile apart from his/her Facebook account in order to find someone for a long lasting relationship and not just for hookups, quotes from Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. The signing up page is quite simple where the users are asked to feed in the details such as name, gender where the user can select male, female, or trans. After the user signs up, he/she will be shown a list of suitable users based on their preference.
Although the feature is in its internal testing phase, it is yet to be confirmed if Facebook would actually roll out the feature or not since most of the products are shelved off before reaching to the public as per what the company deems it appropriate.
Facebook has more than a billion users along with its acquisitions such as Instagram and WhatsApp where both have more than one billion users worldwide. It means that if only Facebook rolls out this feature, it will have an immediate impact on other dating sites. The day when Facebook announced about this project, the stock prices for Tinder and OKCupid’s parent company Match Group declined by 17 percent. It would take some more time for internal testing to conclude only after which, we will come to know if Facebook rolls out the feature or not.
