While Facebook’s new Dating application — revealed at its F8 developers conference earlier this week — hasn’t entirely taken everyone’s eyes off of Zuckerberg’s congressional testimony, the Cambridge Analytica scandal or the censorship of politically-unpopular voices, it certainly hasn’t hurt.
While data privacy was mentioned in almost every article about the new service (Ars Technica noted that while the company said data sharing with the service was “totally opt in,” Dating “apparently has rich ties to default profile data”), the articles were mostly about the service, putting Facebook’s recent woes in the background.
And that, according to the CEO of a competing matchmaking service, is entirely the point.
Didier Rappaport, CEO of online dating platform Happn, says the timing of the announcement makes it appear an awful lot like a distraction as opposed to a serious move into the dating market, implying it was designed to make the social media giant’s problems “disappear.”
“I have been quite surprised that Facebook would launch a dating service,” Rappaport said in an interview with Business Insider.
“The DNA of a social network and dating service are totally opposite. People like to share lots of things with their friends and family, but not what concerns their private life and dates.”
“It’s quite interesting to note this announcement has been done just a few weeks after the Cambridge Analytica concerns,” he added, telling Business Insider that it might have been launched in part so that Facebook wasn’t forced to “talk about the past.” – READ MORE
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