Meta Shutting Down Speed Dating Service Sparked

Less than a year after its debut, Meta is shutting down its virtual speed dating service Sparked as it moves forward with the Audio Dates feature for Facebook Dating.

Meta, the company formerly known as Facebook (name change happened in Oct of 2021), confirmed that Sparked would be shut down on January 20th, according to Tech Crunch. Sparked was developed by Meta’s in-house testing group the NPE Team in the hopes it would drive people to join the Facebook Dating service. 

Sparked sent an email to its users which read:

"We started building Sparked in late 2020 to help people find love through an experience rooted in kindness. Since then, thanks to regular input and feedback from you, we improved where we could, learned a ton, and made connections between people…Like many good ideas, some take off and others, like Sparked, must come to an end."

Sparked offered real-time virtual speed dating events as an alternative to swiping through profiles. The company began beta testing by creating local events in select markets, starting in Chicago, as well as hosting “global” online events throughout 2021. The company also created dedicated events for LGBTQ+ users as well as for different age groups, according to Tech Crunch.

Daters would join with their screens and go from one virtual date to the next, each about four minutes long. If one went well, they could follow up with a second ten-minute date, and from there exchange social handles or contact information.

Meta also began testing audio dating last summer and found that it generated more interest than video dates. As a result, Sparked began hosting several audio-only date nights where users could chat in a more low-key fashion, without having to be camera-ready. Because of its growing popularity, a new feature called Audio Dates was added to the Facebook Dating platform, and the company decided to jettison Sparked altogether. (Hinge, a Facebook dating competitor, also launched an audio feature that really took off, with singles posting their awkward chats on TikTok.)  

Facebook has been struggling to compete in the saturated online dating market with popular apps like Tinder and Bumble, especially as they expand their market share. Both have added more social networking features and have announced plans to expand their platforms to include the metaverse, where users can go on virtual dates and exchange virtual currency and goods. Facebook is headed in the same direction, hence its name change, but its dating platform efforts haven’t been as successful so far, despite the millions of users around the world who have access to join the service.

As Tech Crunch pointed out, the pandemic fueled many dating apps with record numbers of new members and active users over the past two years, while Meta, which hasn’t revealed its Facebook Dating numbers, seems to lag behind. Closing down Sparked is an indication that Meta wants to consolidate its features on the Facebook Dating platform to make it more competitive.