Facebook Dating is Here, and It’s Free

Great, another dating site to groom, maintain, check and stress over.

Facebook finally launched its long-promised dating platform in the U.S. on Thursday, UPI reports.

Simply called Dating, it's free for Facebook users, although you must be 18 years or older to use it and you must create a separate Dating profile. A special matchmaking algorithm powers the service, which will let you tap into your network of friends to identify secret crushes. However, Dating won't suggest matches and your Dating profile won't show up to friends or in your main news feed.

In the wake of its well-publicized privacy issues, Facebook insists it won't use your dating info to sell ads. “A feature on Facebook that people don’t trust isn’t going to be successful,” explains Facebook privacy officer Rob Sherman. “We built in privacy from the ground up.”

Dating has already launched in the US, Canada, Brazil and 17 other countries, the AP reports. Facebook hopes to have full integration between Dating and companion site Instagram by the end of the year.

Dating on Facebook and potentially instagram?! Oh, this could get interesting really quickly. I can already hear the fights "Oh.. you started following that girl because you want to see if she has a secret crush on you?! Okay.. go follow that girl then!"

Yikes.