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Hinge, a Transparent Dating App, Raises $4.5 Million

Full name and all your profile pictures, please.

by Nellie Bowles

Hinge, a transparent, totally not anonymous dating app (you use your full name, and it pulls photos from Facebook), just received $4.5 million in venture funding from Founders Fund, Lowercase Capital and others. The service, similar to Tinder, uses a hot-or-not model of favoriting or tossing out matches.

This investment and rise of Hinge is the latest in an interesting trend — the embarrassment involved with online dating has faded almost entirely. People aren’t worried about their friends (and strangers) knowing that they’re single and using GPS-enabled apps to find a mate.

Also interesting: Once you spot a target on the Hinge service (it’s status-y — college and workplace are listed automatically), you can ask mutual friends about him or her. Depending on your friends, this could be either good or bad.

This article originally appeared on Recode.net.

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