Monday 06-08-2018 11:11 Facebook Dating Around three months ago, Facebook announced that it would be testing a dating feature within its app, putting it in direct competition with dating platforms like Tinder, Match, PlentyOfFish, and Bumble. Now, it has been revealed that the social network has begun internally testing the product. Evidence of the feature was uncovered by app researcher Jane Manchun Wong, who scoured Facebook’s code and shared her findings on Twitter. The test has since been confirmed by Facebook, but the company has not commented further. “This product is for US Facebook employees who have opted-in to dogfooding Facebook’s new dating product. The purpose for this dogfooding is to test the end-to-end product experience for bugs and confusing UI,” reads a screenshot from the feature, ‘dogfooding’ being the name given to when employees test out their own software. This is followed by a warning that the internal test is not meant to be used for dating co-workers and that everybody who has agreed to take part in the test should use fake data to setup their profiles. Facebook says all of this data will be deleted before launching the product to the public. And, despite this only being a complete dummy run, Facebook’s anti-harassment policies and code of conduct still fully apply. Other screenshots shared by Wong show the feature’s options for privacy, your gender, the gender(s) you would be interested in dating, and your location. Wong was able to fill out all of these sections but was unable to actually create a profile. According to TechCrunch, Facebook has no plans to offer premium subscriptions and, at least initially, will not show ads within the feature. In addition, the social network is considering putting a limit on the number of people that users can express interest in.
TechCrunch has started internally testing the dating platform it announced three months ago to compete with Tinder, Match, PlentyOfFish and Bumble. US employees taking part in the test have been told it cannot be used to date co-workers, however, and profiles must contain fake data which the firm said would be deleted before public launch. It also said its anti-harassment policies and code of conduct still applied. Industry observers said TechCrunch did not plan to offer premium subscriptions, would not show ads to start with and may limit the number of people users can express an interest in.