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Facebook Dating may let you keep secrets from friends and family

It seems your annoying aunt doesn't have to know about your dating life after all.

Abrar Al-Heeti Technology Reporter
Abrar Al-Heeti is a technology reporter for CNET, with an interest in phones, streaming, internet trends, entertainment, pop culture and digital accessibility. She's also worked for CNET's video, culture and news teams. She graduated with bachelor's and master's degrees in journalism from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Though Illinois is home, she now loves San Francisco -- steep inclines and all.
Expertise Abrar has spent her career at CNET analyzing tech trends while also writing news, reviews and commentaries across mobile, streaming and online culture. Credentials
  • Named a Tech Media Trailblazer by the Consumer Technology Association in 2019, a winner of SPJ NorCal's Excellence in Journalism Awards in 2022 and has three times been a finalist in the LA Press Club's National Arts & Entertainment Journalism Awards.
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Abrar Al-Heeti
2 min read
Facebook Dating
Twitter user @wongmjane

Facebook has begun internal testing for its new dating app. 

Twitter user @wongmjane tweeted screenshots Friday of what she said was the sign-up screen for the social network's new dating app. 

"Facebook is internally testing Facebook Dating," she wrote. "I can't go past the signup screen because they are not activating all non-employee Dating profiles because, well, it's 'pre-launch.'" 

A Facebook representative confirmed testing has kicked off, saying, "We are testing Facebook Dating internally (as we regularly do with new features), but we don't have anything more to share right now."

During Facebook's F8 developers conference in May, CEO Mark Zuckerberg  announced the company was launching a new dating tool. 

"This is going to be for building real, long-term relationships, not just hook-ups," Zuckerberg said at the conference. The feature will be optional for users, and your dating profile won't be public unless you opt in.

A screenshot in @wongmjane's tweet shows a page that says "Your current Facebook friends can't see your dating profile." Other screenshots show that the app prompts users to specify their gender and current city, as well as which genders they're interested in seeing.  

Facebook is hoping users will trust the social network with their personal information, even after the Cambridge Analytica scandal earlier this year, in which data from as many as 87 million Facebook users was improperly shared with the political consultancy.

In April, Facebook reported that sales had risen in the first quarter of 2018 and said it saw an increase in the amount of time people spent on the platform.