At its annual F8 conference in May, Facebook revealed that it was working on a dating service for its users. Now, app researcher Jane Manchun Wong discovered evidence that the company has begun internally testing the feature among its employees. Facebook confirmed to multiple outlets that it started testing, but didn't elaborate further.
Facebook is internally testing Facebook Dating.
— Jane Manchun Wong (@wongmjane) 3 August 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
Per Wong's screenshots, it seems Facebook is encouraging (but not requiring) its American employees to participate in the test by filling in profiles with fake data, which it will purge prior to public launch: "This product is for US Facebook employees who have opted-in to dogfooding Facebook's new dating product," a screenshot read. "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."
The screenshots reveal privacy settings to limit who can and can't see a user's dating profile. Users can also select trans and non-binary options for gender identity and desired matches. But as with any product in testing, there's no guarantee it will look like this or have these features, and Facebook hasn't set a target date for when its dating feature will go public.
