Facebook starts internal testing of its dating feature

Anca Alexe 06/08/2018 | 08:11

Facebook has started testing its dating product internally with employees, two months after announcing it at its F8 developer conference, according to The Verge.

Facebook employees will be testing the software to find possible bugs and confusing UI, and all the data they will use will be fake and will be deleted before the feature’s public launch. Facebook has also warned employees that its anti-harassment policies apply to the dating product.

However, the fact that Facebook Dating is going through internal tests does not necessarily meant that it will be launched publicly, as many products are killed before they are released depending on what the testing phase reveals.

The stock price of Match Group, which owns popular dating apps including OKCupid and Tinder, plunged 17 percent the day Facebook Dating was announced.

According to information provided at the developers’ conference, Facebook Dating will allow users to create a separate profile for dating. When two people like one another’s profiles, they will be allowed to contact each other. The company also described a feature that would let users make their dating profile visible for people attending the same events, in hopes of generating more offline connections.