Can Facebook Dating Be The Next Game Changer Among Dating Apps?

6 min readMay 5, 2019

If you haven’t heard already, social media giant Facebook has announced the next step in its mission to help you find love: the addition of a “Secret Crush” feature. The update lets single users populate a list of up to nine friends they like-like — if their crush adds them to their lists too, then the match is revealed.

You can create a secret list of Facebook friends you’re attracted to, whether or not they have a dating profile. If they’re also using Secret Crush and they add you to their list, Facebook will notify the two of you that there’s a match.

How Facebook Dating will work. Pic credit — The Verge

This announcement was made in its annual F8 developers meet. Facebook CEO, Mark Zuckerberg in his speech emphasized all the ways that Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram can help you connect with the people you love.

Facebook Dating is also going global. As part of the update, the company also announced that it has expanded to 14 new countries: the Philippines, Vietnam, Singapore, Malaysia, Laos, Brazil, Peru, Chile, Bolivia, Ecuador, Paraguay, Uruguay, Guyana, and Suriname. The service has been active for a year in Colombia, Thailand, Canada, Argentina, and Mexico.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg at the annual F8 conference. Pic Credit — ABC News

How Will Facebook Dating Be Different from Other Apps

Now the question that you may ask how is Facebook Dating going to be significantly different from other dating apps. Well, one difference is that Facebook will let users create a separate dating account, where they are matched with one another based on their interests, Facebook Groups, and events they’re both attending.

The person who sends the first message needs to respond to either one of their match’s profile photos (something like, “Hey are you in Rome in that pic? I’ve been there too.”) or answer one of Facebook’s ice-breaker questions (like, “What’s your idea of a perfect day?”).

Secret Crush will help give Facebook an advantage over competing dating apps, which can’t similarly leverage information about your existing friendships. Facebook is likely hoping that instead of getting someone’s number at a party, you’ll add them on Facebook and then to your Secret Crush list. Only people who have opted into the dating service will be able to view your dating profile, so it won’t show up in News Feed.

Pic credit — Engadget

Your current Facebook friends won’t be able to see your dating profile, nor will Facebook ever suggest your friends as a possible match. But you can choose whether or not you want the friends of your friends to be suggested as matches simply by toggling that feature on or off in the privacy settings.

Concerns Over Privacy

After Facebook was embroiled in the Cambridge Analytica scandal, concerns over the privacy of users data were rife. In an explosive expose published in mid-March 2018, The Guardian and The New York Times initially reported that 50 million Facebook profiles were harvested for Cambridge Analytica in a major data scandal. This number was later revised to as many as 87 million Facebook profiles.

The articles sought to outline how the data of millions of Facebook users ended up being given to Cambridge Analytica. Christopher Wylie, a co-founder of the political data analytics firm, revealed the alleged practices to both newspapers. Wylie claimed the data sold to Cambridge Analytica was then used to develop “psychographic” profiles of people and deliver pro-Trump material to them online.

Christopher Wiley. Pic credit — Disneyrollergirl

Hence, it is natural for people to be skeptical about Facebook and show reluctance in sharing their personal data with Facebook. Some people took to Twitter to express their dissatisfaction over the introduction of Facebook Dating.

Pic credit — Twitter

Pic credit — Twitter

But, there were others too who welcomed Facebook Dating with open arms and were excited to try it.

In a conversation with The Verge, product manager Nathan Sharp said: “Dating has been a behaviour that we’ve seen on Facebook for a really long time. We want to make it easier and more comfortable for people to engage in. We just thought that now was the right time.”

Analysts point out that the dating apps market could be worth $12 billion a year by 2020, based on the business model pioneered by Match Group. Match Group, which owns Tinder, OkCupid, Match.com, Plenty of Fish, Hinge, and more than 40 other dating-related businesses, brought in $1.7 billion in revenue last year from advertising, paid memberships, and à la carte premium features, like Tinder’s supposedly popular “Super Like.”

Therefore, the introduction of Facebook Dating could be a strategy for Facebook to earn more revenues in the future.

Future Prospects

William Chopik, a social-personality psychologist and assistant professor at Michigan State University, in a conversation with Inverse says that this combination has the potential to make Facebook the online dating service to rule them all.

“Based on polling data, the most common ways people meet is through friends in common followed by in a social setting, like an activity or group event,” he said. “Based on those things alone, facilitating the ways that people most commonly meet sounds like a promising direction. In this way, Facebook Dating has a considerable advantage over other apps.”

Facebook Dating. Pic credit — TechNave

However, the concerns over privacy may affect the adoption of Facebook Dating by people. In a world that is now flooded with dating apps, Facebook Dating will have to prove itself to be better and truly different than the others.

It has to build its credibility again, by making sure that people’s privacy and data is protected at all costs, especially if Facebook is now asking for even more personalized information such as “secret crushes”. Some even fear that this could be used to prank or bully someone by adding them to the secret crush list under false pretences.

Will Facebook Dating be a hit amongst the users? Will people trust Facebook again after the Cambridge Analytica scandal? These are questions that only time will provide the answer to.

Edited By Devyanshi Agarwal

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Can Facebook Dating Be The Next Game Changer Among Dating Apps?

Written by Dikshay Gurung