The Silicon Review ^Asia

Facebook is making forays in the dating app market. After announcing the feature at the F8 developer conference convened in May, the social network giant is set to begin an internal testing of its dating feature. Facebook clarified that testing the app is completely voluntary for its employees and will in no way affect current employment situation of the employees who test it.

"The purpose for this dogfooding is to test the end-to-end product experience for bugs and confusing UI (user interface). This is not meant for dating your co-workers," read a message sent by Facebook to its employees asking for volunteers. In layman’s terms, dogfooding is a concept in which a corporation uses its own product to gauge its usability and assess its functionality. However, Facebook confirmed that all the testing carried out will be confidential. Moreover, the dating feature is also being tested within the main Facebook app.

This is going to be for building real, long-term relationships and not just for hookups," Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg had said during the F8 conference. Zuckerberg also confirmed that users ‘privacy and safety will in no way be compromised while using this feature. This feature will allow users to create personal profiles that are separate from their Facebook profiles. Later on, it will recommend potential matches base on a person’s dating preferences, mutual friends and so on.

This move is definitely designed to bolster the daily usage of the social networking giant.