SAN JOSE, Calif. — Facebook Inc will offer its first dating service, Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg said on Tuesday, signalling the entry of the world\u2019s largest social network into a growing market that sent shares of established dating site operators tumbling.<\/p>\n
Shares of Match Group Inc, the owner of popular dating app Tinder, fell more than 18 per cent on the news. IAC , Match Group\u2019s parent company, dropped almost 14 per cent.<\/p>\n
Zuckerberg told software developers at Facebook\u2019s annual F8 conference that a dating service would be a natural fit for a company that specializes in connecting people online.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere are 200 million people on Facebook that list themselves as single, so clearly there\u2019s something to do here,\u201d Zuckerberg said.<\/p>\n
A dating service could increase the time people spend on Facebook and be a \u201cbig problem\u201d for competitors such as Match, said James Cordwell, an analyst at Atlantic Equities.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut the initial functionality looks relatively basic compared to those offered by Match\u2019s services, so the impact Facebook has on the dating space will be down to how well it executes in this area,\u201d Cordwell said.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
The prototype was built around local, in-person events, allowing people to browse other attendees and send them messages.<\/p>\n
The feature will be for finding long-term relationships, \u201cnot just hook-ups,\u201d Zuckerberg said. It will be optional and will launch soon, he added, without giving a specific day.<\/p>\n
Facebook Chief Product Officer Chris Cox said in a separate presentation that the company would share more over the next few months.<\/p>\n
The dating service is being built with privacy in mind, so that friends will not be able to see a person\u2019s dating profile, Zuckerberg said.<\/p>\n
Concerns about Facebook\u2019s handling of privacy have grown since the social network\u2019s admission in March that the data of millions of users was wrongly harvested by political consultancy Cambridge Analytica.<\/p>\n
Cox said he had been thinking about a dating feature on Facebook since 2005, when he joined the company about a year after its founding.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
Thousands of people responded to Zuckerberg\u2019s post with similar stories about meeting partners on Facebook, Cox said. \u201cThat\u2019s what got the gears turning,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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