Facebook Launches New App for Couples

Tinder as displayed on a smartphone. Photo: Thomas
Trutschel/Photothek via Getty Images
Tinder as displayed on a smartphone. Photo: Thomas Trutschel/Photothek via Getty Images
TT
20

Facebook Launches New App for Couples

Tinder as displayed on a smartphone. Photo: Thomas
Trutschel/Photothek via Getty Images
Tinder as displayed on a smartphone. Photo: Thomas Trutschel/Photothek via Getty Images

Facebook launched a new social app for couples called "Tuned" that allows partners to chat, share photos, music and have a timeline of shared memories between them.

The app is currently available only on Apple's App Store in the United States and Canada, according to data from industry site Sensor Tower.

According to Reuters, a small team, known as Facebook's New Product Experimentation (NPE) team responsible for developing new interfaces, created Tuned.

NPE describes the app as "a private space where you and your significant other can just be yourselves."

Tuned is currently ranked No. 872 in the United States and No. 550 in Canada in the social networking category, Sensor Tower said.

In February, Facebook promised to launch a new website called "Facebook Dating" in Europe to attract young web lovers and compete other dating apps such as "Tinder".

Julien Pillot, a researcher and lecturer at leading French business school Inseec, said: "From social networks to dating sites is just a step which does not require enormous technological investment."

Pillot said: "Facebook has copied everything which worked well on other applications and added two or three functionalities. What interests them is getting users to link in the sharing of private content."

Until now, all the players in this market are too busy catching up with Match Group, the internet giant that dominates the field.

Match Group Head Amanda W. Ginsberg said her firm "will not underestimate" Facebook's potential to corner the market.

Given the numbers already on Facebook's platform and ease of access, she asked: "Why don't people try it?"

But for now we don't see any consequence for any of our brands," Ginsberg said noting that the use of several apps at the same time is growing.

For her part, Clementine Lalande, co-founder of French dating app Once seeking to attract French users with a remarkable selectivity, said "Facebook Dating's primary results are not impressive."



Hundreds of Firefighters Battling Wildfire in Southern France

An Airbus H125 helicopter drops water over a wildfire in Saint-Julien Les Martigues, northwest of Marseille in southern France on July 18, 2025. (Photo by Christophe SIMON / AFP)
An Airbus H125 helicopter drops water over a wildfire in Saint-Julien Les Martigues, northwest of Marseille in southern France on July 18, 2025. (Photo by Christophe SIMON / AFP)
TT
20

Hundreds of Firefighters Battling Wildfire in Southern France

An Airbus H125 helicopter drops water over a wildfire in Saint-Julien Les Martigues, northwest of Marseille in southern France on July 18, 2025. (Photo by Christophe SIMON / AFP)
An Airbus H125 helicopter drops water over a wildfire in Saint-Julien Les Martigues, northwest of Marseille in southern France on July 18, 2025. (Photo by Christophe SIMON / AFP)

Nearly 1,000 firefighters and helicopters battled a wildfire about 40 kilometers (25 miles) northwest of France's second-largest city Marseille on Friday, but officials said lower temperatures and increased humidity had improved the situation.

The 240-hectare (593 acres) wildfire flared up a week after a separate conflagration reached the northwestern outskirts of Marseille, forcing people to evacuate or into lockdown and temporarily shuttering the area's airport.

Pierre Bepoix, the colonel of rescue operations and deputy director for the area's firefighters, said 150 people had been evacuated, but firefighters had managed to save 150 homes and portions of the area's forests.

"It was a fire that swept through relatively dense vegetation ... which made our work particularly complicated," Bepoix told Reuters. "Obviously, priority was given to the preservation and protection of these homes and the lives that could be in these buildings."

Local officials said in a statement that 120 homes had been threatened by the fire, adding that it was not possible yet to identify any possible damage to them, and that two firefighters had been injured.

Meanwhile in Spain, a wildfire that broke out on Thursday evening in the central Toledo province and could be seen from downtown Madrid, ravaged 3,200 hectares of woodland.

Regional emergency services said early on Friday firefighters had secured the perimeter, though there were concerns over strong winds and high temperatures forecast throughout the day.