The IT Nerd

No I am not making the last part up. But first, Facebook is introducing a new privacy tool called “Clear History” The CEO of Facebook Mark Zuckerberg has this to say:

Once we roll out this update, you’ll be able to see information about the apps and websites you’ve interacted with, and you’ll be able to clear this information from your account. You’ll even be able to turn off having this information stored with your account.

To be clear, when you clear your cookies in your browser, it can make parts of your experience worse. You may have to sign back in to every website, and you may have to reconfigure things. The same will be true here. Your Facebook won’t be as good while it relearns your preferences.

But after going through our systems, this is an example of the kind of control we think you should have. It’s something privacy advocates have been asking for — and we will work with them to make sure we get it right.

If he really believed that, Facebook users would have had this control long ago. They’re only getting it because of the #DeleteFacebook movement. Now onto that dating app. No, seriously. Facebook has a dating app:

“There are 200 million people on Facebook who list themselves as single, so clearly there’s something to do here,” Zuckerberg said. “Today, we are announcing a new set of features coming soon, around dating.”

The feature will be opt-in, and will not match users with people they’re already friends with. Users can meet other single Facebook users interested in similar events and groups by unlocking their dating profile (built inside Facebook) to make it discoverable to others interested in the same events and groups. To start a conversation, you can pick a picture from a profile of the person you like and comment on it in a dedicated experience. That gets the conversation going. Friends will not be able to see each others’ dating profiles, Zuckerberg said.

Zuckerberg took a shot at his new competitors. “This is going to be for building real long-term relationships, not just hookups,” he said.

Of course one can expect that Facebook will pivot to Tinder style hookups if the money is there. But starting out with relationships is good PR. Something that Facebook needs right now.

UPDATE: Facebook has clarified that married people too can use the dating service.

This entry was posted on May 1, 2018 at 2:53 pm and is filed under Commentary with tags Facebook. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.