Last October, two women set the Internet on fire with their in-the-works app, Peeple. Branded as “Yelp for humans” by the Washington Post, the concept offended virtually everyone. It was so outrageous, journalists publicly mused about whether it was all a hoax.
Peeple Wasn’t a Prank: ‘Yelp for Humans’ Now Available on iOS
It’s heeere!
Peeple
Well, it’s no prank. Now, iPhone users can download Peeple from the App Store. The app launched earlier today, and the company announced the news in an email late Sunday night that alluded to disputes with Apple and the previous fall’s mega-controversy.
In October 2015 Peeple announced itself to the world. The reputation app promised to connect people with each other through honest reviews. The world talked back,” the release said. “Wow, what a journey we have been on. It has been almost 2 years in the making, a few bumps in the road, global media storm, 4 app changes based on viral feedback, Beta Testing, and a couple of fights with Apple and now we are finally launching.
Last fall, the feature that most made the app controversial was that users on the service could create profiles for people who were not on the service. Co-founder Julia Cordray initially said that this wasn’t so people on Peeple could write nasty things and assign ratings to people arbitrarily, but rather so that users could determine if someone was sufficiently trustworthy. She later said that the service would be opt-in only, and that appears to be the case with the app released today.
I signed up for Peeple last night, and it’s kind of a ghost town; only one of my Facebook friends is on the service, even though I evangelized for Peeple on Twitter last night. You can write professional, personal or dating recommendations for other users. So basically it’s LinkedIn but for people you work with, people you hang out with and people you sleep with. The recommendations can be marked positive, neutral or negative, which is interesting because a negative recommendation doesn’t really sound like a recommendation at all.
This article originally appeared on Recode.net.
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