Rate your Hook Ups and Friends like they’re Restaurants

Just when you thought that the Secret and Mean Girl apps were dying away here comes the next app to rate people you know or have meet.

In a world where you see a new million dollar backed startup launching on a daily basis comes another one that can ruin you or make you look good to others. A ‘Yelp’-style app for rating people similar to rating a restaurant where you can give a review and a star from one to five is a Mean Girl’s dream. The new app called “Peeple” which has already raised $7.6 million in venture capital lets anyone with a Facebook account and cell phone rate another person.

The app has three categories: personal, professional and romantic. Peeple calls itself “a positivity app for positive people,” the idea of the app is already being slammed on social media. Most people are NOT happy about such a thing.

One commenter said “It should be opt in only. More people want nothing to do with this hair brained idea and its 7th grade adaptation of Mean Girls than want to be part of it.

I cannot even imagine the thought process behind this app being a good idea. I seriously can’t. Even my high school aged daughter said that something like this in her school would be grounds for expulsion, and she is right.”

Another person wrote “Forget Opt-OUT. Opt-IN should be choice. If you don’t create a profile yourself no one should be able to review you. My first choice is to get rid of this awful idea of an app, but opt-in should be what people are fighting for instead of opt-out. Why should you have to provide personal information and agree ot their TOS to not be reviewed?”

One Facebook commenter went on about a cyberbully attack where they were accused of rape: “My cyberbully used to be a friend of mine, who presumably still has my phone number. A few years ago she told people that I raped her. She convinced all of her friends, who had never met me, that it was true. I received abuse and death threats every day for two years. How will Peeple protect me and other victims of bully? These people have no interest in your positivity ratings, only in spreading hate. Just talking about this is giving me a panic attack, I’m so scared this is going to destroy my life all over again.” Peeple
responded to “please read our FAQ, all your answers are there. I’m sorry that you have had such a rough time with your friend. Bullying is not tolerated on our app.”

While everyone is raising concerns about online bullying and shaming the Peeple founder Julia Cordray told the Washington Post that the app’s “integrity features” will largely stem such problems. You must be 21, have a Facebook account at least six months old, and make reviews under your real name to use the app. In addition, you must affirm that you know the person you’re reviewing and input their cellphone number if they’re not in the database. Negative ratings for people won’t show unless they’ve registered for the site, and you have 48 hours to dispute a negative rating if you do register.

We already have enough bullying and shaming going on with apps related to Secret and Online Mugshots that are clearly extortion. This is also not the first rate-a-guy type app out there because Lulu is an app where “girls can rate guys” from 1 to 10 and place reviews about them if they are hooked up to their Facebook. We also found a “Rate Your Friends” app made out of an app design company in Oklahoma City but could not find it in the app store any longer.

Pplkpr is another similar app also known as “People Keeper,” but works in a totally different way by measuring your heartrate around certain people. It connects to a Bluetooth heartrate monitor and measures your response when certain people are around. They try and help you identify your most toxic friends. A student who tested out the app explains in this video that pplkpr helped her realize that her friend Mark is “kind of a dick.”

It will be interesting to see how long these apps stay around, get sued, go bankrupt, or possibly develop into a useful tool.