Have you ever scrolled through your Facebook friends list during an annual cull and stopped to think: “Oh damn, my friend’s a hottie.” No? Well Facebook now wants you to reconsider your untainted platonic morals.
Say hello to Facebook’s Tinder rival, Secret Crush, an add-on feature like Messenger which encourages users to hook up with people from their existing friends list. The motive behind Zuckerberg’s latest dating feature comes from apparent calls from users who believe that they have ample opportunity for potential romance within their circle of friends. Secret Crush was created to accommodate this yearning for escaping the fatal friend zone.
So how does it work? Facebook users can select up to nine Facebook friends they’re keen on and if they’re also on the dating service, they’ll receive a notification that one of their friends has a crush on them. Love is still a mutual game though and that interest also has to have you on their own Secret Crush list. If you are then you have a match and the rest, they would say, is a fruitful friends with benefits rendezvous fairytale.
Such is the lucrative pull of online dating these days that Facebook Dating, the department responsible for Secret Crush, was announced to be rolling out in 19 countries. Australia or the U.S isn’t on that list yet but if you’re in Colombia, Thailand, Canada, Argentina and Mexico, Malaysia, Brazil, Vietnam, Singapore or the Philippines, then you could soon be getting frisky with a friend.
Whilst there’s already been some online backlash ranging from widespread embarrassment to accidentally matching with your grandmother, Facebook says that its latest dating feature won’t garner users any unwanted attention. They explained at the conference that if your crush isn’t on Facebook Dating, a platform where users can find potential matches in Facebook communities through friends of friends, or events or groups, they will not be aware of your romantic pursuits.
Seriously though, at this rate we’re anticipating a ‘sex with friends’ app soon.