How To Set Up Your Facebook Dating Profile

Here’s a step by step guide to setting up your Facebook Dating profile, with our impressions down below.

1. Tap on the menu button on the top right for Android, or bottom right for iPhone, the Dating option should be right at the top below the option to view your profile.

2. There are four pages of brief information about Facebook Dating, click on Get Started below

3. This page is where you can edit your Facebook Dating privacy settings, most importantly whether you’ll allow matching with friends of friends. Once that’s done, click Next.

4. Choose the gender you most identify with. There’s a More Options at the right which includes options like Trans woman, Trans man and Non-binary.

5. Select which genders you’ll be interested in matching with. Similarly, there’s a More Options button which has the same options as the step before.

6. Allow Facebook Dating access to your phone’s location in order to suggest matches nearby. Do note that your location will not be automatically updated, so you’ll have to manually change it if you’re travelling.

7. You’ll get to choose a photo of yourself to use as your main profile photo, either from photos uploaded on Facebook or from your camera roll. Unfortunately, you won’t get to choose photos from Instagram.

8. You get to review your profile at this stage, although it’s just your photo, gender and the gender(s) that you were interested with matching.

9. This is the last step. You’ll get to choose whether you’d like to add more photos here, write a short introduction or biography of 500 characters, include your religious views, height and more.

–

Facebook has finally thrown their hat in the Singaporean dating service ring alongside Tinder, Bumble, Coffee Meets Bagel and others. With Facebook Dating being rolled out on 1st May 2019 in 14 additional countries, one being Singapore, singles here now have a plethora of options to choose from for their dating needs.

Built as a feature in the main Facebook app, Facebook Dating uses information from your main profile such as your name, profile photo, age and interests to show you other singles in the area who share similar interests.

If you prefer to keep your online dating life a secret from nosy family members, rest assured that you won’t be matched with your friends on Facebook and activities from Facebook Dating will never be shared on your main facebook profile.

Facebook is going all out with their security on this feature as well, disabling my phone’s screenshot function while on any page related to Facebook Dating. This means that you won’t be able to screenshot profiles and send them to your friends anymore, a clear departure in intention from Tinder, where you can share a profile with friends straight from the app itself.

Tired of receiving a bunch of (potentially abusive) messages from a match who doesn’t comprehend the idea of others having jobs and other things to do aside from staring at their phone? Facebook Dating solves that easily by only allowing one message per match until the other person replies. With all the stories of men raging at their matches on Tinder because of a late reply, this is definitely a welcome change.

There’s even a Second Look function, where you can see the matches you’ve passed on before. Tinder has something similar, but only available to paying subscribers. Facebook has also mentioned that there are no plans to monetise Facebook Dating for the moment, in the way that Tinder has Tinder Gold.

Facebook also announced the launch of the Secret Crush feature which allows you to choose up to nine of your friends that you might be romantically interested in, before notifying them. Your friend will then be notified that they have an anonymous crush, but will not know who the person is unless they choose you as well and get matched together.

With that being said, Facebook Dating is a barren wasteland for now. I created my profile and was met with a message on the front page that said Facebook Dating isn’t suggesting people in my area yet. Facebook did mention that it will take a bit of time before other singles can be recommended as users need to register for the feature, so I suppose it’s back to Tinder for me, while hoping that more people join Facebook Dating soon.