“Now this is going to be for building real long-term relationships,” says Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg. “Not just hook-ups.”

Facebook delivers this pitch to fans and sceptics alike as a likely competitor to popular dating app, Tinder. Despite fierce criticism with the Cambridge Analytica scandal, Facebook is still hard at work developing new disruptive technologies. Specifically, we will soon receive a Facebook online dating service.

Zuckerberg describes the service as “totally opt-in” and “not for hook-ups.” He also emphasises on privacy and safety as the forefronts of this service. Essentially, the service does not connect to existing friends and only suggests people from outside your friend’s list. Additionally, the service only uses a user’s first name and doesn’t appear in anyone’s News Feed either.

As for how the dating service works, Facebook offers a sample. For instance, once a user has created their dating profile, they can then browse Events and Groups. The service then shows cities and groups related to the user’s interests. By ‘unlocking’ an event, users can start looking at people also associated with that event and begin communicating. Although the conversations take place in a private messaging box, the feature is text-only to avoid nefarious uses.

Availability of the dating service has not yet been revealed.

(Source: Facebook)