How Does Facebook Dating Match Up To Tinder? And Other Burning Questions We Have About Finding Love On FB

Facebook recently launched Facebook Dating, presumably in a bid to expand its presence in our lives/be relevant to Insta-loving millennials/help people find their one true love. Not everyone gets a shot at finding romance on FB, okay? The service is only available in 19 countries worldwide, including Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam.

How is this different from the existing dating apps out there? Should you delete your Tinder and Bumble profiles right now? Read on to find out.

What happens Facebook Dating, stays on Facebook Dating. While it’s a feature housed within the main Facebook, your FB friends will not be able to see your dating profile or Facebook Dating. In fact, your dating profile is separate from your actual FB account, and the former only shows your first name, age and GPS-verified location. However, FB Dating does draw information and photos from your main FB profile for the initial suggested dating profile, but you can always make changes if you’d rather have that photo of you and your dog you uploaded during skinnier days, as opposed to that shot of you and your ex on your last vacay that FB picked.

No. So don’t fret about awkward matches with your siblings, exes, or acquaintances you wouldn’t even say hello to if you bumped into them on the streets. Facebook friends or people you’ve previously blocked will never show up as suggested matches. You're interested in someone on your friends list but are too shy to make a move? We'll get to that in a bit.

Unlike Tinder where you plough through a heap of potential matches, FB plays matchmaker and selects your potential OTL based on your preferences and interests. There’s even an events and groups feature for you to suss out who else on Dating is attending an event. You can also tweak your privacy settings to allow Facebook Dating to introduce friends or friends.

Strangely, when we set up a FB Dating profile (all in the name of work, okay?), we were notified that “we aren’t suggesting people in your area yet.” Certainly not the sort of instant gratification and intensive swiping activity that Tinder users are used to. But, hey, the folks at Facebook say the Dating function is aimed at helping people form “long-lasting relationships”, rather than one-night stands, okay?

Users who have matched are now free to message each other. But bear in mind, you’re only allowed one message, so that first pick-up line has never been more important (stressful, much?). You can only continue the conversation if the other party responds. Nope, you cannot repeatedly message/harass people here, thankyouverymuch. Oh yes, and only text messages are allowed. What’s that we hear? That’s the cheers of every person who’s received unsolicited lewd pictures on a dating app. Wait, or is that the collective cries of millennials all over lamenting the fact that they won’t be able to send gifs? Only old people use words to communicate anymore, right?

Get on the Secret Crush bandwagon, stat. FB’s new tool will let you pick nine people on your existing FB friends list to let them know that you’ve got a crush on them. Once you’ve identified your object(s) of affection, FB will notify them that they’ve been added to someone’s Secret Crush list, and if they reciprocate and put you on their Secret Crush list will you both be matched and can start chatting on Messenger. Here’s the catch: they have to be on FB Dating as well. Depending on how you look at it, this could either go very right, or very, very wrong. But still, can we celebrate how far we’ve come since the days of poking?

The Dating feature is free of charge, and is only available via the Facebook app. Users have to be at least 18 years old to access Dating.