Ugh, here we go.

Facebook has a dating app called “Dating”.

Points for originality there.

They built it to be super privacy-safe, only matching you with strangers and friends-of-friends to avoid the awkwardness of close friends and family checking out your dating profile.

It should be privacy-safe anyway, Facebook. You don’t get a pat on the head for finally getting something right in that department.

Anyway, they realised at some point that people might have crushes on close friends, and needed to come up with a way to capitalise on this without ruining the one time they got privacy right.

Enter “Secret Crush”.

Here’s TechCrunch:

Facebook announce… that Dating is opening in 14 more countries, bringing the total to 19. It will launch in the U.S. before the end of the year. Dating brings with it a new feature called Secret Crush that expands it beyond strangers and friends-of-friends. Choose up to 9 friends you like-like. If they’ve opted into Facebook Dating, they’ll get a notification that some friend has a crush on them. If they add you as a Secret Crush too, you’re both notified and can chat on Messenger.

So if you’re in the friend zone and don’t want to be a creeper you can match with the person you’re interested in, and then if they don’t match back, you can move on and leave them alone.

If they do match back – Yahtzee!

Users opt-in, and then browse Events and Groups they’re part of for potential matches. They send them a text-only message based on something in their profile, which goes to a special Dating inbox.

And if that person reciprocates, they can chat and maybe meet up. Now it’s opening in the Philippines, Vietnam, Singapore, Malaysia, Laos, Brazil, Peru, Chile, Bolivia, Ecuador, Paraguay, Uruguay, Guyana and Suriname.

There’s a limit, though, because not everyone is socially adept.

One concern with Secret Crush is that users might spam the feature by constantly adding and removing people from their list until they discover a match. That’s why Facebook will only let you sub out one person per day after you reach your initial limit of 9.

‘Nine’ still seems quite high…

Dating isn’t currently available in South Africa – yet.

TBH, I’m not upset about that. The world of online dating is hard enough without getting Facebook involved.

[source:techcrunch]