Facebook to play matchmaker in first dating service

SAN JOSE - Facebook Inc will offer its first dating service, Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg said on Tuesday, signaling the entry of the world's largest social network into a growing market that sent shares of established dating site operators tumbling.

Zuckerberg told software developers at Facebook's annual F8 conference that a dating service would be a natural fit for a company that specializes in connecting people online.

"There are 200 million people on Facebook that list themselves as single, so clearly there's something to do here," Zuckerberg said.

Facebook users have been able reveal on the network whether they are single or in a relationship since it first went live in February 2004.

Zuckerberg said Facebook was building the dating service with an emphasis on privacy, a sensitive subject for people who use online dating and for Facebook as the company reels from a scandal over its handling of personal information.

A dating service could increase the time people spend on Facebook and be a "big problem" for competitors such as Match Group Inc, said James Cordwell, an analyst at Atlantic Equities. Match, the owner of popular mobile dating app Tinder and OkCupid, calls itself the "global leader in dating" on its website.

"But the initial functionality looks relatively basic compared to those offered by Match's services, so the impact Facebook has on the dating space will be down to how well it executes in this area," Cordwell said.

Match Group shares fell more than 23 percent on the news of Facebook's service. IAC, Match Group's parent company, dropped more than 15 percent. Sparks Networks, owner of JDate and ChristianMingle, fell 7.3 percent.

A prototype displayed on screens at the F8 conference showed a heart shape at the top-right corner of the Facebook app. Pressing on it will take people to their dating profile if they have set one up.

The prototype was built around local, in-person events, allowing people to browse other attendees and send them messages.

It did not appear to have a feature to "swipe" left or right on potential matches to signal interest, as Tinder and other established services have.

The feature will be for finding long-term relationships, "not just hook-ups," Zuckerberg said. It will be optional and will launch soon, he added, without giving a specific day.

Facebook Chief Product Officer Chris Cox said in a separate presentation that the company would share more over the next few months.

Cox said he had been thinking about a dating feature on Facebook since 2005, when he joined the company about a year after its founding.

The company began seriously considering adding a dating service in 2016, when Zuckerberg posted on his Facebook page a photo of a couple who had met on the network, Cox said.

Thousands of people responded to Zuckerberg's post with similar stories about meeting partners on Facebook, Cox said. "That's what got the gears turning," he said.

People will be able to start a conversation with a potential match by commenting on one of their photos, but for safety reasons that Cox did not specify, the conversations will be text-only, he said.

Facebook executives were quick to highlight other features for safety and privacy, noting that dating activity would not show up in Facebook's centerpiece News Feed.

Concerns about privacy on Facebook have grown since the social network's admission in March that the data of millions of users was wrongly harvested by political consultancy Cambridge Analytica.

A dating service "represents a potentially challenging situation if Facebook can't fulfill its promise to offer dating services in a privacy-protected and safe way," said Debra Aho Williamson, an analyst at eMarketer.

However, "I'm sure it will make good use of the data Facebook has been able to collect about its users," she added.

Zuckerberg also said on Tuesday that Facebook was building a new privacy control called "clear history" to allow users to delete browsing history, similar to the option of clearing cookies in a browser.

source: news.abs-cbn.com

Twitter results need to wow to reassure investors

When Twitter Inc. reports results on Wednesday, a less than stellar showing could hammer the stock further as a broad selloff in the technology sector has made investors jittery.

Twitter's shares have lost more than two-thirds of their value in the past 12 months.

Several tech stocks with lofty valuations have plunged in the past few days after dismal sales outlook from LinkedIn Corp and business-analytics company Tableau Software fueled growth fears for the entire sector.

"I think the problem is that in the current market any sign of a weak outlook will be quite harshly punished," Atlantic Equities analyst James Cordwell said.

Investors want to see Chief Executive Jack Dorsey's strategy to reignite growth in user numbers.

Twitter reported an 11 percent growth in active monthly users in the third quarter to 320 million, the slowest growth since the company went public in 2013.

But one effort, Moments, which showcases Twitter's best tweets and content, has failed to take off as expected, analysts have said.

Twitter is also planning to reorder tweets to prioritize those it believes more users will want to see, BuzzFeed reported on Friday.

Many users decried the reported plan, with the hashtag #RIPTwitter becoming the top trending U.S. item on Twitter on Saturday.

Twitter has been criticized for trying to become more like Facebook Inc, which has been growing at a much faster rate and reported 1.59 billion active monthly users in January.

"We expect only modest sequential user growth (for Twitter) in 2016, likely 1 percent per quarter," Wedbush Securities analysts wrote in a preview note on Friday.

Analysts expect Twitter to report earnings of 12 cents per share on revenue of $709.9 million, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.

JACK OF TWO TRADES

Another lingering concern has been Dorsey's dual role of running Twitter as well as mobile payments company Square Inc.

Dorsey, who became interim CEO in July and then CEO in October, has called for "bold rethinking" about the company but has not yet clarified what that means.

Dorsey has also moved to restructure the company by laying off more than 300 employees and making marquee hires, notably that of former Google executive Omid Kordestani as executive chairman.

But four senior executives have quit the company in the past few months, adding another concern about the company's ability to restart growth.

"We believe that had Moments been an early success, the executives would not have left so soon, voluntarily or otherwise," Wedbush analysts wrote.

As of Monday, Twitter shares were trading at 25.7 times forward earnings, shy of Facebook's 30.4.

"Why would you invest in something like a Twitter when Facebook is on a similar valuation with a stronger trajectory - that's the kind of questions investors are asking," Cordwell said.

source: www.abs-cbnnews.com