FACEBOOK WILL ADD A NEW DATING FEATURE TO THE PLATFORM

Facebook announced that the social media giant will now look into adding a dating layer to its main app.

What makes Facebook's dating effort different than that of Bumble or Tinder, it is the fact that their efforts are geared towards helping individuals find stable, long-term relationships – not short time hookups.

"There are 200 million people on Facebook who list themselves as single, so clearly there’s something to do here," Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook said. "Today, we are announcing a new set of features coming soon, around dating."

"This is going to be for building real long-term relationships, not just hookups," he added.

The dating feature will be opt-in only and users would be able to build their profile out of the view of their Facebook friends. With this new dating app, Facebook could potentially leverage its extensive web of connections among people and data on relationships – users are able to publicise their relationship status on their profile pages – as well as its massive financial resources, to compete with the incumbents.

People will be able to meet other single Facebook users via similar events and groups, and your friends won’t be able to see your dating profile within the app. Essentially you’ll be getting a separate profile in the Dating app, with a matching inbox.

Facebook will be testing the feature in the coming months, with a bigger roll-out once the testing phase is done.