MANILA, Philippines – Facebook’s dating feature is now in the Philippines, Wednesday, May 1, Philippine time.

Originally announced at the 2018 iteration of Facebook’s annual F8 developers conference, Facebook Dating initially came out in Colombia before expanding to 4 other countries including Canada, Argentina, Mexico, and Thailand.

At F8 2019, the feature expands further, this time to 14 countries, also including Vietnam, Singapore, Malaysia, Laos, Brazil, Peru, Chile, Bolivia, Ecuador, Paraguay, Uruguay, Guyana and Suriname. Later this year, it will also come to the US.

To get the service, users need to update their Facebook mobile app to the latest version. Currently, it appears that it’s not available for the desktop version of Facebook, much like the top dating app Tinder, which for many years existed as mobile-only.

Here are the steps to set up a Facebook Dating profile:

1. Tap the bookmarks tab on the app, signified by the icon with 3 vertical lines found on the upper right portion.

2. Follow the setup procedure wherein you select a photo, choose gender and what gender you’re interested in, and opt to put in information about yourself that other Facebook Dating users can see.
   
   
   

3. Facebook will make match suggestions to you. Facebook may match users depending on their interests, events they have been to, and groups they are a part of – but only if the user opts in to these matching options.

4. You can either tap “Not Interested” or respond to one of the questions or photos of a person you like in order to start a conversation.

Facebook Dating has its own inbox separate from Messenger. Facebook users won’t be able to see their friend’s Facebook Dating profile unless they too make a Facebook Dating profile.

A new Facebook Dating feature called Secret Crush was also announced at F8 2019. Unlike the Facebook Dating service, Secret Crush attempts to help users make connections with people who are already their friends on Facebook.

While this feature doesn’t appear to be available yet, what it does is it lets people put 9 friends into a Secret Crush list. A person who gets included in a list will get a notification. If they both put one another in their list, they will match, and they will both be notified that they are in each other’s list. This, perhaps, is Facebook Dating’s most novel feature as most of the other dating apps can only pair you up with people outside your immediate social circle.

Users will not be able to make a rotating list of crushes, however, as Facebook has thought one step ahead and will only let you sub out one person per day in your list of 9, according to TechCrunch. – Rappler.com