When we gather ’round the proverbial campfire and exchange our online dating war stories, we’re usually talking about the usual suspects: Tinder, Bumble, Hinge, Grindr, and sometimes more niche apps like Lex. But ever since Facebook Dating launched in 2019, I’m not sure I’ve ever heard a story that began there — I know more people who met in Facebook meme groups than on the actual Facebook Dating product.
It turns out my anecdotal data may be wrong – because people actually use Facebook Dating! Meta shared user metrics for the first time on Monday, revealing that Facebook Dating has 21.5 million daily active users (DAUs) in 52 countries.
Facebook Dating is a feature within Facebook rather than a stand-alone app, and Facebook puts its dating product front and center in the bottom main navigation bar of the app. (Even if your relationship status isn’t set to single, Facebook Dating remains prominent.)
What is most surprising, however, is how Facebook Dating seems to be slowly catching on among young people. The platform counts 1.77 million users between the ages of 18-29 in the US, which is still not quite at the level of the “usual suspects”, but it’s getting close. App analytics firm Sensor Tower estimated that as of this summer in the US, Tinder had 7.3 million active users across all age groups; Hinge had 4.4 million. Bumble had 3.6 million. and Grindr had 2.2 million.
Facebook has publicly addressed the fact that it is struggling to keep Gen Z and young millennials on the platform, but the company said last year that daily conversations on Facebook Dating in the 18-29 demographic increased by 24%.
Facebook Dating’s best feature is not something it actively does, but rather what Facebook Dating does don’t do do. Unlike Hinge, you don’t have to pay to “unlock” your most desirable matches or buy other premium features that supposedly bring you closer to finding “the one.”
Hinge debuted its “Standouts” feature in December 2020, which has become emblematic of everything wrong with dating apps. Hinge’s algorithm finds the people it thinks you’ll be most interested in and then places them in their own elite tab within the app. The only way to swipe right on these people is to give them a “rose”, which users get for free once a week – unless you buy multiple roses at $4 each. pop. Even if you buy roses, your maybe-possible husband-to-be will know you used a precious rose on him, which is kind of embarrassing. So, just like a true star-crossed lover situation, some users have devised increasingly complex schemes to trick the Hinge algorithm into freeing these people from “rose prison.”
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In comparison, Facebook Dating’s free model looks pretty good. It’s not that Mark Zuckerberg is a benevolent Silicon Valley cupid — Meta is already making money off of you by relentlessly collecting your data, so you don’t have to buy roses. But as users become more jaded with their usual rotation of apps, Facebook Dating might not seem so scary anymore.