On September 5 2019, Facebook hinted that the company is gunning for the ever-growing online dating market space by announcing the release of ‘Facebook Dating’. Now in a recent turn of events, Facebook revealed that they have launched another app that will act as a safe and private space for a romantic couple to interact. The launch of the new Facebook app is a clear indication that the social media behemoth is looking forward to solidifying their presence in the online dating space with more innovative offerings.
This new app from the social media behemoth is being called ‘Tuned’ and has been rolled out in the U.S only as of now. It will essentially act as a social media platform for a singular romantic couple. The Facebook Tuned app allows the users to share their private engagements which they might not have been open to sharing on other more ‘public’ social media platforms.
“With Tuned, you can be as mushy, quirky, and silly as you are together in person, even when you’re apart. Creatively express your love, share your mood, exchange music, and build a digital scrapbook of your special moments.” – says the App Store description for Tuned.
Tuned will reportedly provide the capability to connect one’s Spotify account to share songs, send custom stickers made from photos, leave notes and much more. It is aimed to help a couple stay connected in their own ‘couple-centric’ dedicated space.
Facebook Tuned: A Shot In The Dark or A Well-Planned Launch?
The newly rolled out Tuned app has been developed by Facebook’s NPE, aka New Product Experimentation, team. The social media giant uses the developer name ‘NPE Team, LLC’ to roll out new apps which focuses on providing people with new experiences for building communities. This is the not the first time when the team has worked for an app. Other popular apps from the NPE Team are Hobbi, Whale and AUX.
Interestingly, Facebook has openly admitted to the fact that they expect many failures from the apps launched by the NPE Team and that it is, as the name suggests, mostly for experimentation purposes only.
The company has also mentioned that there will be rapid changes in the apps launched by the NPE Team and if Facebook realizes these apps don’t add any significant value to people, they will be immediately shut down.
However, the launch of Tuned app leads us to more questions than answers at this time.
- Whether Tuned is just another project that Facebook has randomly thrown at a wall to see if it sticks or, If it doesn’t, then what insight into consumer usage behavior has led Facebook to develop Tuned.
- Is it possible that Facebook has found that the activity of couples on their main app is low?
- What more ‘intimate’ engagement types Facebook is looking forward to putting a pin on with their Tuned app?
- Why did they need to develop an entirely dedicated app for couples wherein most of its features are available either on Messenger or on WhatsApp?
As an outsider, it is impossible to know exactly about Facebook’s motivation behind rolling out Tuned. However, it can be said with confidence that the social media giant, by leveraging its mammoth user base of 2.5 billion monthly users worldwide, will quickly be able to find out whether it is going to fly or fail.
Either way, it will be interesting to see how things unfold and develop further for this new app from Facebook. We will keep you posted.
