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When we gather \u2019round the proverbial fire and exchange our online dating war stories, we\u2019re usually talking about the usual suspects: Tinder, Bumble, Hinge, Grindr, and sometimes more niche apps like Lex<\/a>. But ever since Facebook Dating launched in 2019, I\u2019m not sure I have ever heard a tale that began there \u2014 I know more people who met in Facebook meme groups<\/a> than on the actual Facebook Dating product.<\/p>\n Turns out my anecdotal data may be wrong \u2014 because people actually do 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.<\/p>\n Facebook Dating is a feature within Facebook, rather than a standalone app, and Facebook puts its dating product front and center in the main bottom navigation bar on the app. (Even if your relationship status is not set to single, Facebook Dating remains in its prominent spot.)<\/p>\n What\u2019s most surprising, though, is how Facebook Dating seems to be slowly catching on among young people. The platform counts 1.77 million users between the ages of 18-29 in the U.S., which is still not quite up to par with the \u201cusual suspects,\u201d but it\u2019s getting closer. App analytics firm Sensor Tower<\/a> estimated that as of this summer in the U.S., Tinder had 7.3 million active users across all age groups; Hinge had 4.4 million; Bumble had 3.6 million; and Grindr had 2.2 million.<\/p>\n Facebook has publicly addressed<\/a> the fact that it struggles<\/a> to keep Gen Z and young millennials on the platform, yet the company said last year that daily conversations on Facebook Dating in the 18-29 demographic spiked 24%<\/a>.<\/p>\n Facebook Dating\u2019s best feature is not something it actively does, but rather, it\u2019s what Facebook Dating doesn\u2019t<\/em> do. Unlike Hinge, you don\u2019t have to pay to \u201cunlock\u201d your most desirable matches or buy other premium features that supposedly bring you closer to finding \u201cthe one.\u201d<\/p>\n Hinge debuted its \u201cStandouts<\/a>\u201d feature in December 2020, which has become symbolic of everything wrong with dating apps. Hinge\u2019s algorithm finds the people whom it thinks you will be most interested in, then places them in their own elite tab of the app. The only way to swipe right on these people is to give them a \u201crose,\u201d which users get for free once a week \u2014 unless you buy more roses for $4 a pop. Even if you buy roses, your maybe-possibly future husband will know you used a precious rose on him, which is kind of embarrassing. So, like a true star-crossed-lovers situation, some users have devised increasingly complex schemes to trick the Hinge algorithm into freeing these people from \u201crose jail.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n Techcrunch event<\/p>\n \n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSan Francisco<\/span> By comparison, Facebook Dating\u2019s free model looks pretty good. It\u2019s not that Mark Zuckerberg is a benevolent Silicon Valley cupid \u2014 Meta is already making bank off of you by relentlessly collecting your data<\/a>, so it doesn\u2019t need you to buy roses. But as users grow more aggrieved with their usual rotation of apps, Facebook Dating may not seem so cringe anymore.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tOctober 13-15, 2026<\/span>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n