Peeple App for Rating Humans Debuts With More Positive Approach
What's changed in the app that has been called a "Yelp for humans."
— -- Remember Peeple, the app that made waves for its plan to unleash a five-star reviewing system on humans?
It's finally here -- but in a kinder, gentler form that's almost unrecognizable from the beta version its founders first introduced last October.
The app that was initially called a "Yelp for people," allowing people to rate a person on a five-star scale and justify their comments, is now taking a more positive approach.
Users now must opt-in to the service and decide which reviews of themselves they'll allow to be shown. Essentially: What was an app celebrating raw honesty has now morphed into something people can use as a personal billboard promoting themselves.
The five-star system is also gone and has been replaced with a simple tally showing how many times a person has been reviewed. People can be recommended in three categories: personal, professional and dating.
"We are a concept that has never been done before in a digital space. We want character to be a new form of currency," Peeple's founders say on their website. "Peeple will provide you a safe place to manage your online reputation while protecting your greatest assets by making better decisions about the people around you."
While the app just launched this week, it's still receiving backlash. Out of 142 reviews, it has a 1.5 star rating in Apple's App Store.
While the concept sounds scary, Peeple's creators are billing it as a "positivity app" and advise future users to use it how they would any other social network. Peeple seems to be one of the first apps geared to the masses for rating people and having reviewers take ownership for their comments, while other apps have focused on anonymous reviews in more niche areas.
Knozen is a fun app letting users rate their co-worker's quirks, personality and work ethic by presenting users with photos of two colleagues and a question like, "Who is more likely to leave work early for a date?" or "Who is more likely to sing a song out loud?"
Another app called Lulu lets women research and review men, with reviews factoring into an average score of up to 10 points.