Queenie Wong is a senior writer for CNET News, who focuses on social media companies including Facebook’s parent company Meta, Twitter and TikTok. She previously covered social networks for The Mercury News in San Jose. Before that, she wrote about politics and education for the Statesman Journal in Salem, Oregon. A native of Southern California, she took her first journalism class in middle school.
So when Facebook launched its new dating feature in Canada last year, she signed up because the social network made it easy to dopared with Tinder, Ruth noticed, users share more profile information on Facebook Dating . But there are also downsides.
“I have not put a lot of effort into it because to me it does not have a lot of possible bachelors for me,” she said. “I personally believe there is one type of demographic that Facebook Dating is getting and that is the older, possibly middle-aged people.”
Ruth looks through her likes on Facebook Dating about once a week, but she hasn’t met any of her matches in real life. She only chatted with one person over more than a couple of messages before the conversation died.
As Facebook’s ambitions for online dating grows, the social media giant will have to convince people like Ruth that its dating service is worth using over other popular dating apps like Tinder, Bumble, Grindr and Hinge. Oh, and then there’s that whole litany of privacy concerns.
On Thursday, the social media giant said it’s launching Facebook Dating in the US and plans to expand the feature to Europe by early 2020. Facebook’s dating service, unveiled at its developer conference in , is available in 19 other countries including Canada, Mexico and Singapore. Eventually, Facebook plans to release the service globally.
The social network is also integrating Instagram features within Facebook Dating, a move that could entice people in their late teens and into their 20s to try out the service. Facebook Dating users, who have to be at least 18 years old, will be able to add recent Instagram posts to their dating profile. They can also add an Instagram follower as their “Secret Crush,” a feature that lets users select up to nine Facebook friends they’re interested in romantically. By the end of this year, the social network plans to bring Instagram and Facebook “Stories” to Facebook Dating, allowing users to post photos and videos that vanish within 24 hours so their profiles are less static.
US smartphone owners are turning to dating apps but adoption is growing slower than expected
The company’s venture into online dating could give it a way to get users to spend more time on its app, attract more revenue and rope in a younger audience.
“Facebook may be interested in this ong millennials,” said Monica Peart, eMarketer’s vice president of forecasting. “This age group is quite prevalent and in more developing nations that skew younger and have very high Facebook usage.”
Facebook declined to say how many people use its dating service
In 2019, about 25.1 million adult smartphone users in the US are expected to use at least one dating app at least once per month, a 5.3% uptick compared with 2018, according to Bewertungen von sГјdafrikanischen Dating-Seiten eMarketer. The market research company in July lowered its previous forecast of 9.8% growth. The forecast doesn’t include Facebook Dating, a feature within the social network’s main app.
Like Facebook, online dating apps also face their share of privacy and security concerns, including fake profiles, scams and cyberstalking. The social network was hit with a record $5 billion fine in July from the Federal Trade Commission for its alleged privacy mishaps.
