You know the story. Boy meets girl, girl meets boy, boy and girl both work for company where the stocks are diving and they’re known for stealing intimate data.

A few months back at the F8 developers conference, Mark Zuckerberg revealed that Facebook will launch a new dating feature which he says will deliver strong privacy and safety protections for its users. It appears that the company has launched the function in-house and only employees can currently sign up for it to test the bugs. The feature is integrated into the regular site and has allowed staff to search for dates among their network of Friends.

“This product is for US Facebook employees who have opted-in to dogfooding (testing) Facebook's new dating product,” states a screengrab shared by the computer scientist. “This product is confidential.” At the time Zuckerberg specified this function is “going to be for building real, long-term relationships – not just for hookups”.  

Dating app giants have been throwing shade since the announcement with the CEO of Match Group – owner of Tinder, OKCupid, Plenty of Fish and Match.com – saying they were “surprised”.

“We're surprised at the timing given the amount of personal and sensitive data that comes with this territory,” Mandy Ginsberg said. “Regardless, we're going to continue to delight our users through product innovation and relentless focus on relationship success. We understand this category better than anyone.”