{"id":4292,"date":"2017-03-11T23:26:41","date_gmt":"2017-03-12T04:26:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/digital.hbs.edu\/platform-digit\/submission\/kissandtell-lulus-failed-attempt-to-crowdsource-dating-intelligence\/"},"modified":"2017-03-11T23:30:17","modified_gmt":"2017-03-12T04:30:17","slug":"kissandtell-lulus-failed-attempt-to-crowdsource-dating-intelligence","status":"publish","type":"hck-submission","link":"https:\/\/d3.harvard.edu\/platform-digit\/submission\/kissandtell-lulus-failed-attempt-to-crowdsource-dating-intelligence\/","title":{"rendered":"#KissandTell: Lulu\u2019s Failed Attempt to Crowdsource \u201cDating Intelligence\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"

In 2011, Alexandra Chong and Alison Schwartz founded Lulu<\/a>, a mobile app with a clear and controversial mission: allow women to rate men online. Chong described the female-focused product as a way to gather \u201call this powerful information\u201d[1]<\/a> to create a \u201cdating compass\u201d for women. In a 2015 interview, she shared that Lulu was the \u201cnumber one app in the U.S. for women to do research and review guys. It\u2019s basically making us smarter when we\u2019re dating\u2026 we just want to help women find their Prince Charming and do the research along the way.\u201d[2]<\/a><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Any woman 18+ could authorize the Lulu app exclusively via her Facebook account. Facebook Login gave Lulu several important pieces of information: first, a person\u2019s gender and second, access to a Facebook friend list. The app used Facebook\u2019s friend graph to add male Facebook friends to the Lulu platform, giving a user plenty of guys to rate and review via a multiple choice quiz (with questions on manners, ambitions, and appearance[3]<\/a>) and quirky hashtags like #WillWatchRomComs or #HatesBrunch. Similar to a star-rating in a Yelp review, each guy received an aggregate Lulu \u201cscore\u201d from 1 (worst) to 10 (best); Chong stated that \u201cmore than 70 percent of reviews on Lulu [were] an 8.0 or above.\u201d By 2013, Lulu had raised 2.5 million dollars<\/a> from Passion Capital, PROfounders Capital, and super angels including Yuri Milner and Alexander Asseily (founder of Jawbone).<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The app first launched under the name \u201cLuluvise\u201d to two colleges in the U.S. Within just three weeks, 60 percent of women at those colleges were using the app and 40 percent of men attending the colleges were available for rating. Early users did some heavy lifting for Lulu, effectively on-boarding male Facebook friends whose ratings became available to the entire Lulu community[4]<\/a>. After its U.S. rollout, Lulu went international \u2013 and within five days of its Brazil launch, hit #1 in the App Store[5]<\/a>. In 2015, after a flurry of demand, Chong and team built an experience for men that GQ called \u201cGoogle Analytics for guys\u201d[6]<\/a>.<\/p>\n

At the peak of its popularity, Lulu had six million active users, one million of whom were men. Despite its passionate founders, a flurry of press attention, and access to capital (with 15 million dollars raised in total[7]<\/a>), Lulu\u2019s \u201clittle black book\u201d of crowdsourced romantic reviews never quite took hold. Last year, Badoo (a UK-based dating company) acquired Lulu<\/a> for an undisclosed amount and immediately shut down its rating service. While the act of rating other humans likely feels too polarizing and invasive for Lulu to have ever gone mainstream, two early decisions significantly contributed to the app\u2019s ultimate demise.<\/p>\n

The company\u2019s efforts to combat bad actors should have scaled along with its user base, becoming smart enough to detect when a user had set up a fake account for the purpose of breaking into Lulu (for example, a Facebook profile of a \u201cwoman\u201d with no photos created two days ago). Identity verification and trust were among Lulu\u2019s core attributes \u2013 the app was meant to be a private community for women, so women needed to know that reviews were real but also needed to trust that their reviews would remain completely anonymous. Lulu could not proactively manage the proliferation of fake accounts signing up for its service and, because of this, was eventually banned from the Brazilian App Store. Chong also recalled that because the product was built on top of Facebook it was able to grow quickly, but was also vulnerable to significant platform dependence[8]<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Lulu\u2019s overall growth was also inhibited by its aggressive women-only (and \u201crigidly heteronormative<\/a>\u201d) policies. When a man tried to log onto Lulu, he was greeted by a message that said \u201cHey dude, you\u2019re a dude. \u2013 Lulu\u201d and subsequently blocked from the app. Years later, Chong acknowledged that even if \u201cyou build an experience for women, you don\u2019t have to block [men] from coming in.\u201d Lulu pivoted the product to allow men to opt-out<\/em> from being featured on the app; eventually, it required men to opt-in<\/em> to being featured on Lulu at all. After moving to the opt-in policy, Chong observed that most men consented to have a profile created on their behalf and that while five percent did deactivate their profiles at some point, one-third of those men came back within a week. Allowing men from the start would have increased the app\u2019s stickiness and early user adoption.<\/p>\n

[1]<\/a> LA Times<\/a><\/p>\n

[2]<\/a> Jesse Draper \/ “The Valley Girl”<\/a><\/p>\n

[3]<\/a> New York Magazine<\/a><\/p>\n

[4]<\/a> Jesse Draper \/ “The Valley Girl”<\/a><\/p>\n

[5]<\/a> Jesse Draper \/ “The Valley Girl”<\/a><\/p>\n

[6]<\/a> GQ Magazine<\/a><\/p>\n

[7]<\/a> TechCrunch<\/a><\/p>\n

[8]<\/a> TechCrunch Disrupt<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Lulu created a community where five million women were willing to \u201crate\u201d their dates. In a world where online reviews guide everything from hiring a handyman to picking our pizza, where does the wisdom of crowds cross the line?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1196,"featured_media":4293,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","categories":[664,1003,682,424,807,670],"class_list":["post-4292","hck-submission","type-hck-submission","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-crowds","category-dating-apps","category-failed-crowdsourcing","category-online-dating","category-reviews","category-yelp"],"connected_submission_link":"https:\/\/d3.harvard.edu\/platform-digit\/assignment\/managing-digital-crowds\/","yoast_head":"\n#KissandTell: Lulu\u2019s Failed Attempt to Crowdsource \u201cDating Intelligence\u201d - Digital Innovation and Transformation<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/d3.harvard.edu\/platform-digit\/submission\/kissandtell-lulus-failed-attempt-to-crowdsource-dating-intelligence\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"#KissandTell: Lulu\u2019s Failed Attempt to Crowdsource \u201cDating Intelligence\u201d - Digital Innovation and Transformation\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Lulu created a community where five million women were willing to \u201crate\u201d their dates. 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