CEO Mark Zuckerberg: Facebook Launching Dating Service
NEW YORK (CBS NEWS) -- Facebook will roll out a series of features to facilitate dating, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced Tuesday.
He said the service will be optional and, to preserve people's privacy, not viewable to users' friends. It will also only suggest possible partners who are not already Facebook friends with a user.
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"This will be focused on long-term relationships, not just hookups," Zuckerberg said at the company's developer conference, called F8.
"We're focused on helping people build meaningful relationships," he said, and "this might be the most meaningful of all."
Interested users will be able to set up dating profiles that are separate from their main Facebook profiles, including only the person's first name. Users of the dating app will be able to browse events near them, check out profiles of other users attending those events and chat privately with people they're interested in.
"We like this because it mirrors the way people actually date, which is at events and institutions they're connected to," said Chris Cox, Facebook's product head.
News of the social network's dating venture sent shares of online dating site Match Group tumbling 22 percent Tuesday afternoon. IAC, which owns Tinder and OKCupid, was down 16 percent.
Zuckerberg noted that 200 million people on Facebook are listed as single, and that one in three marriages in the U.S. start online. (This is true of recent marriages, according to a 2013 study.)
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The company announced several other new initiatives as well, including one called "Clear History," a tool that will allow users to see what apps and websites share information with Facebook and delete this information from their account.