Facebook expands dating feature in Canada and Thailand: Bad news for Tinder, Bumble?

Published : Nov 09, 2018, 06:55 PM ISTUpdated : Nov 09, 2018, 11:57 PM IST
Facebook expands dating feature in Canada and Thailand: Bad news for Tinder, Bumble?

Synopsis

Colombia is the first country to witness the service test of "Facebook Dating" in September. User-integration with Groups and Events on the social networking platform is one of the main features included to encourage people to meet in public

Facebook is all set to introduce a dating feature test in two new countries -- Canada and Thailand and this latest move can be considered as a tough competition to existing dating apps like Tinder and Bumble.

Colombia is the first country to witness the service test of "Facebook Dating" in September. User-integration with Groups and Events on the social networking platform is one of the main features included to encourage people to meet in public. 

For the tests in Canada and Thailand, Facebook has new functionalities. Among them is a feature called the "Second Look" that allows users to reconsider a previous decision. So one can pause matching in case they are no longer looking to date, The Verge reported on Thursday. 

The feature is available inside the main Facebook app itself. 

The social networking giant believes that this test feature expansion would initiate more signups and increase the userbase on "Facebook Dating" with enough people who opt into the app and begin matching, the report added. 

The company began testing the app internally in August and asked its employees to use fake data for their dating profiles and plans to delete all data before the public launch. 

The test feature is now available to users 18 and above, free of cost and without any advertisements or premium features. 

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg originally announced the app at the company's F8 keynote, popularly called F8 developer conference in San Jose, California in May 2018 

With inputs from IANS

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