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Have a crush on Facebook? Social network may help you meet your secret admirer


You go on Facebook to connect with old friends, and, for sure, to meet new ones, too. 

And at its F8 developer conference, Facebook introduced new features to address that latter reason for spending more time inside the world’s largest social network and to possibly help secret admirers members pair up.

The first is a fresh feature added to Facebook Dating called Secret Crush, in which you might spark romance with someone who is already in your extended social circle.

Here’s how: You select up to nine of your Facebook friends with whom you would like to be, well, more than just friends. If that person has opted into Facebook Dating, they’ll receive a notification that someone has a crush on them. 

If that crush happens to adds you to their own Secret Crush list, it’s a match! If your crush isn’t on Facebook Dating, doesn’t create a Secret Crush list, or doesn’t put you on their list, no one will know that you’ve entered their name. 

And here’s hoping nobody will feel rejected.

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Incidentally, you’ll need a Facebook profile and account to meet someone through Facebook Dating. But your dating profile will be separate, and nothing about your dating experiences will show up in your main Facebook profile or newsfeed, Facebook maintains – unless you post about them.

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Of course, Facebook doesn’t exactly have the best reputation when it comes to user privacy.

The company says you can manage who sees your dating profile, including keeping your own Facebook friends off-limits. You can also block or report anyone within Facebook Dating who makes you feel uncomfortable.

Apart from dating, Facebook introduced a new feature called Meet The Friends – and, no, its main purpose isn’t necessarily about making a love connection. Instead, it’s about connecting you one-on-one with someone you don’t know yet but who shares a community you belong to.

You may work at the same place, attend the same school or live in the same town. Eventually, the two of you may also belong to the same Facebook Group, though Facebook won’t have that as part of Meet The Friends feature right away. 

To get started with the Meet The Friends feature, you choose the communities in which you want to meet new friends, adding, if you wish, a personal introduction and choosing activities you’d like to do with your new friend (grab coffee, work out, etc.).

From then on, you’ll see people from the communities you’ve selected who have also expressed an interest in meeting new friends. Suggestions will be sorted algorithmically, and Facebook says only people from those communities who have also opted in will be surfaced. 

Facebook adds that on each profile tile, you can see activities others are interested in and whether you have any friends in common. But existing friends won’t pop up.

To connect with your potential new friends, you can send a message directly through their profile or send them a friend request.

Facebook sees the feature resonating with people who are just starting out in a new job, new school or new city.

Separately, Facebook says it is also is tweaking the design of its app so that members can more easily find Facebook Groups of interest. And Facebook is fine-tuning features within the groups themselves. 

For example, a Health Support Groups feature will let members ask group administrators to post on their behalf in order to protect their privacy around sensitive topics. 

Inside Jobs groups, Facebook is making available a new template for employers to post openings. And you’ll be able to message the employer and apply directly through Facebook for those jobs.

And Gaming groups will get a new chat feature so that members can create threads for different topics within the group. 

Email: ebaig@usatoday.com; Follow @edbaig on Twitter

 

 



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