Friends With Benefits: Can Facebook Tackle Your Love Life?

Facebook is tackling a new frontier: love. Facebook Dating, a matchmaking service the company already offers in Brazil, Canada and 17 other countries, arrives in the U.S. on Thursday. But after years of privacy missteps by the social network, will people trust it with their love lives? For a company that’s also developing its own digital currency and dabbling in e-commerce, love is another step toward reaching into all aspects of human existence.

Although many features resemble what other matchmaking services offer, Facebook’s version promises to be different, just as Tinder brought swiping and Bumble brought female-first messaging. Your Facebook Dating profile will be separate from your main one, but it will let you tap your network of friends to identify “secret crushes.”

Facebook Dating, a mobile-only service that’s free to use and free of ads, can still help Facebook make money if it keeps people glued to its other services longer. That’s if users can get over concerns about privacy.

“A feature on Facebook that people don’t trust isn’t going to be successful,” said Rob Sherman, the company’s deputy chief privacy officer. “We built in privacy from the ground up.”

Tell that to Seth Carter, 32, an engineer from Terre Haute, Indiana, who tried a host of dating apps ranging from Match to Bumble, Tinder and Christian Mingle prior to his current relationship. “Facebook is here to make money and I get that,” he said. But he worries that Facebook’s stated commitment to privacy would ultimately buckle under pressure to make money offthe service. “That likely means they’re going to sell my dating preferences, which means even more intrusions into my life.”