When we gather around the proverbial bonfire and swap online dating war stories, we’re usually talking about the usual suspects: Tinder, Bumble, Hinge, Grindr, and sometimes more niche apps like Lex. But since Facebook Dating launched in 2019, I’m not sure I’ve ever heard a story that started there — I know more people who have met in Facebook meme groups than people who have met in the actual Facebook Dating product.
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) across 52 countries.
Facebook Dating is a feature of Facebook, not a standalone app, and Facebook puts its dating product front and center in the main bottom navigation bar in the app. (Even if your relationship status isn’t set to Single, Facebook Dating still stands out.)
But what’s even more surprising is how Facebook dating seems to be slowly catching on among young people. The platform has 1.77 million users between the ages of 18 and 29 in the US, which still doesn’t quite meet the “usual suspects” level, but it’s getting close. Application analytics company Sensor tower It is 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. Grindr had 2.2 million.
Facebook has publicly addressed the fact that it struggles to keep Gen Z and younger millennials on the platform, yet the company said last year that daily conversations on Facebook Dating in the 18-29 age group increased by 24%.
The best feature of Facebook Dating isn’t something you actively do, it’s what Facebook Dating does no He does. Unlike Hinge, you don’t have to pay to “unlock” your most desired matches or purchase other premium features that are supposed to get you closer to finding “the one.”
The joint appeared for the first time”Highlight“A feature in December 2020, which has become emblematic of everything wrong with dating apps. Hinge’s algorithm finds people it thinks you’ll be most interested in, then puts them in their elite tab in the app. The only way to swipe on those people is to give them a ‘rose,’ which users get for free once a week — unless you buy more roses for $4 apiece. Even if you buy roses, your future spouse will probably know you used a pricey rose. It’s kind of embarrassing.” What, like the real situation of star lovers, some users have devised increasingly complex schemes to trick Hinge’s algorithm into freeing these people from. “The Rose Prison.”
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In comparison, the free model of Facebook Dating looks pretty good. Not that Mark Zuckerberg is Silicon Valley’s benevolent Cupid — Meta is already making money from you by relentlessly collecting your data, so you don’t need to buy roses. But as users grow increasingly dissatisfied with the usual rotation of apps, Facebook dating may not seem so annoying anymore.
