As Facebook enters online dating business, doubts are being raised if its service will be a hit, given the market share of Tinder and other online relationship apps.
No sooner did WIRED website flash the news that Facebook has stated testing its dating service in Colombia, the social network founder Mark Zuckerberg adopted it as his timeline update.
“I’m pretty excited about this. Bringing people closer together in new ways. Launching first in Colombia and then more places soon,” Zuckerberg said.
But, technology website TechCrunch wondered: The big question remains how far Facebook will go to making Dating a hit.
The feature could live or die by whether Facebook is willing to constantly nag its single users to sign-up, TechCrunch pointed out.
It cautioned that Facebook is in a precarious time for its brand, and may have trouble getting people to trust it with an even more sensitive part of their lives.
Social Media reacted to Facebook’s dating business saying, it seems there’re no innovations at all.
Facebook dating service is the same as any online dating site. “The online dating industry needs innovations, not more bells and whistles,” stated one comment.
Facebook launched online Dating product in its first market in Colombia on September 20, 2018. Besides Tinder, other popular dating apps available to people are Bumble and Hinge.
For now, users aged 18 and older in Colombia will be able to create dating profiles and, once those reach a critical mass, find some matches via Facebook Dating.
WIRED website got to preview an early version of the service, and said: ‘it looks promising—especially for users looking for meaningful long-term relationships rather than hookups.’
At the company’s developers conference in May 2018, Zuckerberg had announced Facebook will add features around dating and building long-term relationships on its social platform.
With Facebook dating, your profile will only be visible to people who aren’t your Facebook friend and that have also opted into dating.
“Dating has been a behaviour that we’ve seen on Facebook for a really long time,” product manager Nathan Sharp told The Verge in an interview. “We want to make it easier and more comfortable for people to engage in. We just thought that now was the right time.”
Some 21 million people log in to Facebook every day in Colombia, a country of 50 million people. Facebook viewed this as an incredible opportunity to ‘continue helping people build relationships in meaningful ways’.
