Facebook launched its new dating app, called Dating, on Thursday for a country-wide test in Colombia. The social network announced in May its plans to roll out a dating app during its annual F8 developer conference.
The app uses algorithms and data it collects about users—information that other dating apps don’t have the same access to—to match them with potential romantic partners, according to TechCrunch. One key difference between Facebook’s Dating app and others like Tinder, is that there is no swiping involved.
“The goal of the team is to make Facebook simply the best place to start a relationship online,” Nathan Sharp, Facebook Dating’s product manager told TechCrunch. Sharp explained that the product isn’t trying to compete with Tinder’s endless swiping, but instead hopes to help its users find longterm partners, competing with apps like eHarmony or Hinge.
Facebook’s Dating will only be available via the Facebook mobile app, for now, and is available to users who are 18 and older. Users will have to opt in to the service and create a dating profile, but it won’t use all the personal information from a person’s private Facebook profile, The Verge reported. Instead, the only information that will carry over from a user’s private profile is their name and age. The individual will fill out their profile with a short introduction and will include a mix of photos and responses to question prompts.
“Dating has been a behavior that we’ve seen on Facebook for a really long time,” Sharp told The Verge. “We want to make it easier and more comfortable for people to engage in. We just thought that now was the right time.”
Facebook is launching its Dating app for the first time Thursday in Colombia, where users can start creating a profile, but Facebook won’t start matching people until there are enough signups, according to TechCrunch.
