But I started checking the profiles and soon realised this was too good to be true – with the matches seemingly out of my league. Nevertheless, my phone didn’t stop buzzing for hours. My own research shows that receiving a positive signal on a dating app for a male heterosexual user is a rather rare event. I started pressing “like”, soon receiving “match” notifications, meaning people had also “liked” me.

When I activated my Facebook Dating profile (out of a pure academic curiosity), I was overwhelmed by the number of very attractive profiles that I was exposed to in the first few hours. Now, I think I have a good idea why the app failed. But as I never heard anything about its market success, it took me a while to look into it. Facebook’s own data suggest not many people use the service – about 300,000 in New York, compare with the claimed 3 million Bumble users in New York.Īs an online dating technology researcher, I had an eye on Facebook Dating since its announcement. Numerous reports claim the dating app practically doesn’t function.

After all, research shows that Facebook knows us better than our mums, so why wouldn’t it live up to its goal of creating “ meaningful relationships”?īut four years later, it hasn’t taken over the market – most people have simply forgotten about it. There was real excitement, with people expecting a revolutionary dating app that would soon beat Tinder.Īnd it is no wonder, when you consider the size of the company, its technical capabilities, and most importantly the large volume of data that Facebook has collected about its users. Facebook Inc, now called Meta, announced its dating application, Facebook Dating, in May 2018.

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