San Jose - Facebook Inc is
entering the dating game, Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg said
on Tuesday, planning a dating service to matchmake millions of
people on the world's largest online social network and nudge
them into spending more time there.
The service, which Facebook had considered offering for over
a decade and will launch soon, could help rebuild its popularity
among younger consumers and make people visit the site more
often, two key challenges for the business.
"There are 200 million people on Facebook that list
themselves as single, so clearly there's something to do here,"
Zuckerberg told software developers at Facebook's annual F8
conference.
Facebook shares rose 1.1 percent to close at $173.86 on the
news, which sparked a sell-off of established online dating
service providers.
Facebook users have been able to reveal their relationship
status on the network since it first went live in February 2004.
Zuckerberg said Facebook was building the dating service
with an emphasis on privacy, a sensitive subject for people who
use dating websites and for Facebook as the company reels from a
scandal over its handling of personal information.
A dating service could increase the time people spend on
Facebook and be a "big problem" for competitors such as Match
Group Inc, said James Cordwell, an analyst at Atlantic
Equities. Match, the owner of popular mobile dating app Tinder
and OkCupid, calls itself the "global leader in dating" on its
website.
"But the initial functionality looks relatively basic
compared to those offered by Match's services, so the impact
Facebook has on the dating space will be down to how well it
executes in this area," Cordwell said.
Facebook said in January that at the end of 2017 time spent
by users had fallen by about 50 million hours a day, after
changes designed to reduce passive video watching and stem the
spread of sensationalism.
Facebook's entry into the growing online dating market sent
shares of industry leaders tumbling.
Match Group Inc shares closed down more than 22
percent. IAC, Match Group's parent company, dropped more
than 17 percent. Sparks Networks, owner of JDate and
ChristianMingle, fell 7.3 percent before recovering and closing
up 0.8 percent.
A prototype displayed on screens at the F8 conference showed
a heart shape at the top-right corner of the Facebook app.
Pressing on it will take people to their dating profile if they
have set one up.
Potential matches will be recommended based on dating
preferences, things in common and mutual friends, Facebook said
in a statement.
The prototype was built around local, in-person events,
allowing people to browse other attendees and send them
messages.
It did not appear to have a feature to "swipe" left or right
on potential matches to signal interest, as Tinder and other
established services have. But there were two buttons for "pass"
and "interested."
The optional feature will be for finding long-term
relationships, "not just hook-ups," Zuckerberg said. It will be
launched soon, he added, without giving a specific date.
More details will be revealed over the next few months,
Facebook Chief Product Officer Chris Cox said in a separate
presentation.
Cox said he had been thinking about a Facebook dating
feature since 2005, when he joined the company about a year
after its founding.
The company began seriously considering adding a dating
service in 2016, when Zuckerberg posted on his Facebook page a
photo of a couple who had met on the network, Cox said.
Thousands of people responded to Zuckerberg's post with
similar stories about meeting partners on Facebook, Cox said.
"That's what got the gears turning," he said.
People will be able to start a conversation with a potential
match by commenting on one of their photos, but for safety
reasons that Cox did not specify, the conversations will be
text-only, he said. Unsolicited nude photos are a recurring
worry on dating services.
Facebook executives were quick to highlight other features
for safety and privacy, noting that dating activity would not
show up in Facebook's centerpiece News Feed.
Concerns about privacy on Facebook have grown since the
social network's admission in March that the data of millions of
users was wrongly harvested by political consultancy Cambridge
Analytica.
Before building Facebook, Zuckerberg created a website
called Facemash that allowed people to choose the more
attractive of two women. Zuckerberg, 33, has described the
website as a school prank when he was young.
A dating service "represents a potentially challenging
situation if Facebook can't fulfill its promise to offer dating
services in a privacy-protected and safe way," said Debra Aho
Williamson, an analyst at eMarketer.
However, "I'm sure it will make good use of the data
Facebook has been able to collect about its users," she added.
Zuckerberg also said on Tuesday that Facebook was building a
"clear history" privacy control to delete browsing history,
similar to the option of clearing cookies in a browser.