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Join RSVP Australia | RSVP Join for Free Dating: Prior to dating apps like Tinder, dates were almost always the result of some shared experience. Facebook wishes to travel through time.

One of the most common concerns about dating in the age of Tinder is that people often end out on dates with people they have never met before. As I wrote last year in a column about how Tinder and related apps have altered dating in just half a decade: “Being on the apps frequently means dating in a type of context vacuum.”

According to all accounts, people still prefer Tinder, Bumble, and other similar apps, or at the very least accept them as the modern way to find dates or relationships. Last year, Tinder’s global user base was estimated to be around 50 million.

Individuals may feel worn out and yearn for the days of offline dating if searching through every possible date in your area based on little more than a photo and a few words of bio becomes the norm.

Facebook, a vast online repository for almost 3 billion people’s hobbies, social circles, family connections, career and education histories, and relationship histories—in other words, a massive online repository for people’s context—appears to have taken notice of these issues.

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Facebook Dating, the social media giant’s matchmaking service, debuted in the United States on Thursday, after previously launching in 19 other countries. It aims to bring back some of the more human aspects of internet dating with features that mimic how people used to meet-cute before the Tinder era.

Users can “unlock” certain Facebook groups they’re a part of and certain Facebook events they’ve RSVPed to via the Facebook mobile app (it’s not available on the Facebook desktop site). Facebook Dating promises to connect singles who opt into the service by algorithmically matching them based on geography and shared “interests, events, and groups”; users can “unlock” certain Facebook groups they’re a part of and certain Facebook events they’ve RSVPed to via the Facebook mobile app (it’s It also allows users to transfer biographical information from their Facebook profile, such as name, age, location, job title, and photographs, onto their Facebook Dating profile.

Through the app’s privacy settings, users can also opt-in or out of matching with their Facebook friends’ Facebook friends. The program does not connect people with their own Facebook friends unless they specifically request it: The “Secret Crush” tool, according to Facebook’s Newsroom blog, allows users to identify up to nine of their Facebook friends as someone they have a crush on, and “no one will know that you’ve typed their name” unless your name also appears on their Secret Crush list. Both parties are notified through Facebook Dating in this case. (Facebook doesn’t indicate what happens if a person’s secret infatuation is reciprocated by two, three, or even all nine of their crushes.)

It’s intentional if those seem eerily similar to old-school methods of finding dates and partners—joining groups and organizations, meeting through friends, attending events, and even informing a mutual friend about a crush and having them investigate and report back—because they are. According to a Facebook spokeswoman, the developers wanted to address a few specific problems they had with the way current dating applications had reformed, and even gamified, dating.

Earlier this summer, Facebook commissioned a poll of 3,000 adults in the United States. It was observed that 40% of people who were currently online dating believed the apps and sites available didn’t meet their needs. It also found that, over and above looks and financial prospects, similar interests were the most important attribute most people were looking for in a partner (which could explain why apps like Bumble, which prominently displays photos and job titles but requires users to click through to a profile for more information, weren’t cutting it for a large portion of those polled).

As a result, according to a Facebook official, the developers decided not to add a quick “swipe” option to Facebook Dating; rather than being able to approve or reject potential date candidates in real-time after only looking at a single photo, as Tinder allows, users must first browse someone’s entire profile before opting in or out on a potential match. According to the source, the need for more interaction with potential matches is one of the main reasons why Facebook decided to integrate Instagram and Facebook stories into Facebook Dating at some point next year, in order to show what potential matches are up to right now and counteract the “static” nature of dating profiles as we know them.

One of the opponents of Facebook Dating’s promise of finding meaningful matches through common interests and activities is Madeleine Fugère, a psychology professor at Eastern Connecticut State University who specializes in romantic relationships and sexual attraction. Although many individuals feel that shared interests lead to attraction, Fugère claims that they aren’t a strong predictor. “Loving someone relies heavily on that in-person ‘clicking,’ which is quite impossible to predict ahead of time,” she noted.

In addition, Fugère questioned if Facebook Dating would be effective among its target demographic of unmarried adults in their twenties and thirties. While Facebook is attempting to electronically recreate the experience of meeting someone in person, it is unclear whether users will want so much personal information shared with someone they have yet to meet: According to a recent Pew study, young people are abandoning Facebook, particularly since it was revealed that Cambridge Analytica, a voter-profiling firm, obtained the private Facebook data of millions of Americans prior to the 2016 election.

How Facebook Dating Is Different From Other Dating Apps

Facebook Dating, for example, appears to be one of a few recent projects geared at reminding people of Facebook’s benefits as a tool for building and maintaining relationships. For example, a recent ad campaign reminded viewers of Facebook’s origins—as a platform that connected people through shared connections and hobbies and facilitated the sharing of pleasant or humorous moments, rather than a surprisingly pervasive database storing a large amount of the world’s personal data—rather than a surprisingly pervasive database storing a large amount of the world’s personal data.

While Facebook Dating is a more curated, personalized alternative than other dating apps, it’s still robotic and random when compared to, say, simply talking to attractive or intriguing individuals in the real world. Camille Virginia, author of The Offline Dating Method, for example, understands the appeal of Facebook’s “Secret Crush” feature, which was created in response to a poll indicating that 53% of online daters had a crush on someone they already knew in real life but were too afraid to ask out, according to a Facebook official.

However, if you enjoy the thrill of telling a helpful dating robot that you’re into someone and then wondering if that person has also told the dating robot that they’re into you, you’ll enjoy “finally chatting up that cute guy you’ve seen at the dog park recently—or asking that intriguing woman in line behind you at Starbucks which drink she recoils from,” as Virginia pointed out.

To some, a more curated and personalized approach that matches people based on their common interests isn’t a better experience than other apps’ completely uncurated, here’s everyone who’s available to you experience. While in the Philippines this summer, Ross, a 24-year-old Californian (who requested that I only use his first name because he didn’t want to discuss his dating life in public), used Facebook Dating and discovered the natural endpoint of the benefits of an algorithm that matches people based on shared interests and connections: As soon as he got on, he partnered with an ex-girlfriend he’d previously unfriended.

He explained, “I believe Facebook connected me with her because we had mutual [friends], shared a residence, and liked the same pages.” He claims that he did not make contact with her. He ignored her profile and said, “And had a laugh.”

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