Facebook begins internal testing of its dating service

Back in May, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced that the site would soon also be used to find love, acting similar to a dating app. Now, as per reports, the company has already started testing the feature.

Zuckerberg announced about its dating service during its annual developers conference F8 in May to help users find long-term relationships and ‘not just hookups’. Recently, an app researcher Jane Manchun Wong found proof that the company has already started testing the feature among its employees.

Facebook is internally testing Facebook Dating.

I can't go past the signup screen because they are not activating all non-employee Dating profiles because, well, it's "pre-launch" ;) pic.twitter.com/VQFHUJIkuX

— Jane Manchun Wong (@wongmjane) August 3, 2018

Facebook is rolling out new ‘dating’ feature to help users fall in ‘love’

As per the screenshots shared by Wong on Twitter, seems like Facebook is encouraging employees to take part in the testing by filing in profiles with fake data, which will be cleaned out before public launch, reported Engadget.

The screenshots also show the privacy setting to limit who can and can’t see the user’s dating profile, and a list of options for gender identity and desired matches. Also, it makes clear that the service is not mandatory for all users, but instead an opt-in service.

“This product is for US Facebook employees who have opted-in to dogfooding Facebook’s new dating product,” a screenshot reads, using slang for employees testing out their own software. “The purpose for this dogfooding is to test the end-to-end product experience for bugs and confusing UI. This is not meant for dating your coworkers. Dogfooding this product is completely voluntary and has no impact on your employment.”

However, since the product is just for employee testing at the moment, nothing is sure if the final product for masses will look the same or not. Though the social media giant confirmed to The Verge about the product being in testing within the Facebook app, but did not reveal any further details such as when will the dating service go public.