Technology

Posted on May 2, 2018 by staff

Match made in heaven? Facebook making online dating debut

Technology

Shares in Tinder’s parent company Match Group have taken a tumble after Mark Zuckerberg unveiled plans for a new Facebook dating service.

The 33-year-old billionaire made the announcement, among others, at the company’s annual F8 developers conference in San Jose, California.

Zuckerberg assured the audience that the feature has been developed “with privacy and safety in mind from the beginning” and is expected to launch “soon”.

“There are 200 million people on Facebook who list themselves as single,” he said.

“And if we are committed to building meaningful relationships, then this is perhaps the most meaningful of all.”

As a result of the announcement, Facebook’s shares rose by 1.1 per cent to close at $173.86, while shares in Match Group fell and closed more than 22 per cent below their opening price.

At the F8 conference, Zuckerberg admitted that 2018 has been an “intense year” for Facebook.

As part of his efforts to restore confidence in the social network, he announced that the firm would be building a new ‘clear history’ tool to provide users with more control over how their information is used.

However, the company has acknowledged that the tool will take several months to develop.

Zuckerberg also made a number of other announcements, including that video chat and new augmented reality filters would soon come to Instagram and that group video calling would soon launch on WhatsApp.

Meanwhile, thousands of US-based Facebook users have reported seeing the message “Does this post contain hate speech?” appearing under every post on their page.

Facebook has yet to formally comment on the new ‘feature’, with some users merely dismissing it as a bug.