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Facebook Is Adding Online Dating Features — And Twitter Is Tearing It Apart

Mark Zuckerberg announced that Facebook is adding online dating features to its app so that users can build more “real, long-term relationships.”

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Stephen Lam

By Deepa Lakshmin

Facebook is entering the online dating game. CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced the big news Tuesday at F8, Facebook's annual developer conference, in San Jose, California.

Unlike Tinder, Bumble, Coffee Meets Bagel, and so on—the list of competing dating apps feels neverending, to be honest—Facebook’s matchmaking won’t clutter your smartphone screen with yet another app. Instead, the social network’s optional dating features will be added to its existing app.

Users who are interested in finding more than just Facebook “friends” can opt into the service and create a separate dating profile. There’s no word on whether or not Facebook “pokes” will be involved.

“This is going to be for building real, long-term relationships—not just for hookups,” Zuckerberg told the F8 audience. (He might as well have given Tinder—which, full disclosure, is owned by The Daily Beast’s parent company IAC—the stink eye.)

Zuckerberg also clarified that Facebook’s dating profiles will be hidden from nosy family members and people you haven’t talked to since high school: “Your [Facebook] friends aren’t going to see your profile, and you're only going to be suggested to people who are not your friends.”

It’s worth noting that many existing datings apps rely on Facebook to function, so perhaps Facebook wants to take complete ownership of the online dating space. But given Facebook’s recent Cambridge Analytica data scandal and association with a Russian troll farm, will users really trust the company with their love lives? Twitter has some thoughts:

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Deepa Lakshmin
Deepa Lakshmin

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