Facebook has started testing a dating service internally.
Announced at the F8 conference back in March, Facebook has plans to lean into the dating app space, and plans are already afoot.
The plans were uncovered by app researcher Jane Manchun Wong, who posted her findings to Twitter. Facebook confirmed that testing was going in inside the company but added no further details.
No heavy petting
Facebook stipulated that the service is not for employees to actually date each other, but to test the functionality of the dating feature. This in mind, the company asked all participants to only use fake data on their profiles.
“This product is for US Facebook employees who have opted-in to dogfooding Facebook’s new dating product,” Facebook told The Verge.
“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.”
Of course, Facebook's internal tests do not mean that a solid product will release to the public. However, it's fair to assume that the announcement at F8 followed by company testing may mean that Facebook plans to add a separate dating function in the future.
Facebook is internally testing Facebook Dating.
— Jane Manchun Wong (@wongmjane) August 3, 2018
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