262 - Making a Polyamorous Dating App
Dating online while poly
More and more dating apps are opening up their settings to cater more to polyamorous people, but they’re still in the early stages. Enter #open, an app developed by Amanda Wilson and David Epstein to be a sex positive and polyamory positive platform for people to connect on.
Amanda and David wanted to prioritize communication on #open, so they designed their app to focus heavily on negotiation, consent, and boundaries. Users sign a code of conduct to ensure that they understand that consent and inclusion are important and need to be respected.
Data privacy
Additionally, one of the biggest concerns while creating #open was the idea of data privacy. Most other dating apps trade data with third parties or use third-party authentication, or something of the sort. It was important to Amanda and David that all of the data for #open was secure, so they made sure their privacy policy covered all bases.
“People want to be themselves. We just really wanted to build a platform that was for the users and always had their privacy and their security in mind from the very beginning.”
Amanda
#open’s biggest challenge
The biggest challenge when creating #open and continually developing and updating it is funding. Attracting investment is difficult for dating apps, especially when choosing not to share any data. Amanda and David have self-funded #open, and if they could advertise on Facebook or other large platforms, it would help with revenue. Reddit, and by turn, Facebook, denied their application by the logic that #open was placed in the category of mail order brides and that community sentiment was that content like that is unwanted. Being sex positive and relationship positive in a world where corporations are moralizing is difficult, and hypocritical in Facebook’s case, since millions of their users practice consensual non-monogamy.
To combat the hypocrisy, Amanda and David have started a petition to call Facebook out on their censorship. It can be viewed and signed on their website, www.hashtagopen.com, along with more information about #open and its creation.
Listen to the full episode to learn about Amanda and David’s full experience creating their app!
Transcript
This document may contain small transcription errors. If you find one please let us know at info@multiamory.com and we will fix it ASAP.
Jase: On this episode of the Multiamory podcast, we're speaking with Amanda Wilson and David Epstein, the co-founders of the sex positive and non-monogamy friendly dating app, #open. As our listeners know, online dating is hard. It's a hard world. It's something that we talk about occasionally on this show. Creating an app for online dating, I would say is even harder.
Today, we're excited to talk to both Amanda and David about some of the challenges in creating an app like this, what they're doing to try to make online dating better, as well as some of the challenges that have come up with that and and also some real world talk about the world of online dating and what's going on there. Amanda, and David, thank you so much for joining us.
Amanda: Thank you for having us. We're really excited to be here as well.
David: It's a pleasure to be here.
Dedeker: I wanted to start out just with the elevator pitch for what #open is. What I'm curious about is, what's the pitch that you use when you're describing the app to people who are already, let's say bought in, already part of a non-traditional relationship or community or sexuality or identity or something like that versus how do you pitch or describe the app to someone who is totally new to any of this and had no idea non-monogamy was even a thing?
Amanda: That's a great question. For the people that are already bought in, the elevator pitch is really letting them know that the tools have been built for them. Setting your boundaries and talking about your interests and your preferences, that's so important. Those people that have bought in, they've also bought into the communication aspect side of relationships, and that can be hard. I know words are not always my best friend.
We built in tools inside of the app to make having those communications as easy as possible. We have a section right there where you can state what your hard limits are. Again, your words are your friend, being able to state that right there and not ever have to really have a conversation further, is useful for a lot of people. I think that is the pitch for those that are bought in.
David: I think that what we've tried to do certainly, really, for folks who do understand consensual, non monogamy and the framework around and the ethics around those choices or people who maybe are curious about and looking to explore it, we've tried to create a process where coming into the app and coming into the app community gets, as Amanda said, people to think about their preferences, think about what their boundaries are and start to understand that communicating them is a must.
Everybody who comes through the app process agrees to really a code of conduct within the community, and that's all based around negotiation, inclusion, consent, and making sure that your experiences are something that you're doing with open eye and open to communicating. These are things that are good in any relationship but especially good in a non-monogamous relationship.
Dedeker: That definitely makes sense. I'm curious to know a little bit more about the origin story of how this whole journey started for both of you?
Amanda: We can start with me. I moved to North East about six years ago and met David five years ago, and had a couple years of dating, call it platform experiences, because I did them all.
Dedeker: That's the best euphemism I've heard going for going onto the online dating app kind ever. "Had multiple platform experiences."
Amanda: I remember when eHarmony was a bubble sheet that you used to fill out and actually mail back in and then they would mail you your 10 preferences or your 10 matches for that month. I've been around a while.
Emily: Did they give you little cards with faces of the people and they're like, "Hello."
Dedeker: Like baseball cards?
Emily: Yes. That's awesome.
Amanda: I had all of this experience and as David said, we're kind of early adopters, so we would get in on those Tinder, Feeld and stuff in the very beginning and would see how people would come into the community and then how it would change with people trying to do different workarounds with different things because all these platforms are really trying to push you into one of two binary boxes. If that doesn't fit you, because there's so many people that that doesn't fit for, having options to meet that.
David: Amanda had come, as she said, from the south, a single mother who had built a career in Republican politics, and came to the Harvard Extension School to study democratization. In getting there, you felt like it was like just rapid fire learning a new culture and new ways of people interacting. I remember we met, was it a year into that experience for you that happened?
Amanda: Yes.
David: We started to communicate, we met on an app that was definitely catering to people that were outside of the more norm and started communicating, just started communicating very clearly with each other and really honestly with each other and that was really refreshing for both of us. It was that process that gave birth to the app, I think in many ways.
Dedeker: Were some of your initial messages to each other like, "Hey, you're cute. This app sucks. Let's make a better one." Here we are five years later.
Emily: Were you non-monogamous at this point or are you or interested in it?
Amanda: I would say that I came from a very traditional background and monogamy was always just the the style that I was in because I didn't know anything else. This is a default option. Then as I started really meeting people outside of where I came from and just talking to him just realizing that there are other ways to do this and better ways. Monogamy, I think is great for anybody that consciously chooses it. That's the difference.
David: Really what had happened, you had created a profile in this app with another person that you hadn't met but you had done that to create some--
Amanda: Was it the differences for females inside of these apps and those are quite different. For me, saying no, is not something that I like to do. Constantly having to say no to so many people was just becoming challenging. I did create a fictitious partner in order to--
David: It was a virtual partnership, they weren't fictitious, but it created a virtual partnership and was looking to meet other individuals to explore but you're really a sole agent as everybody is.
Amanda: Yes. They're all individuals coming into these partnerships.
David: But the answer to the question, that app, it exists today, and it is popular in the space. We felt for a lot of reasons that we wanted to do things a bit differently. It's definitely a tremendous amount of work, and we've had a lot of fun and have built something really incredible, but it's hard.
Jase: Just because I'm curious, this app you're talking about, are you talking about FetLife or Tinder or what is this app?
Amanda: Well, so we met on what is now known as Feeld and it was known as 3nder back then, but has been renamed.
Jase: Amanda, you were like a single female profile on 3nder and, yes. Okay. I see. Just getting like a lot of messages and things like that. That makes sense. Now I have more context, I'm like okay.
Dedeker: Hence the need for a virtual partnership.
Emily: You alluded to this a little bit, but I'm interested in what your research process was behind building the app because there have been like I guess between 2009 and 2014, OkCupid published a big study done on their demographic preferences of some of the people who are using their app. It talked about race and attraction and also demographics and attraction and various things. They did say after their initial findings that they made major changes to improve their product for everyone who was using it. I'm just curious, did that influence the way in which you made your app? What other things potentially influenced the findings that you had and your app in general?
David: Hugely right. You've talked about Dataclysm all the time. Are you referring to the Dataclysm work and study.
Dedeker: Hold one second. Data closings is probably probably the best word second to what multiple platform experience. Now it's Dataclysm got explained that.
Amanda: OkCupid was started by four mathematicians and one of them wrote a book just on all of the data that they have collected and trends that they have seen throughout OkCupid over the years. It's absolutely fascinating. I recommend it for anybody.
Emily: Was that the name of the book?
Amanda: Yes.
David: I think that is the initial research that OkCupid published that you're referring to. Based on their observations of human behavior through their dating platform and really through the first year of our relationship, you're reading that material and looking-- at the time, I remember you were studying like cyber security on this fictitious hack of the Soviets might do on the Ukraines and talking about Facebook and like lo and behold, this is exactly what was happening.
You take the observations and Dataclysms about OkCupid and dating and now you apply it to Facebook and you look at the fact that whether it's feel the app that we met on that uses Facebook for login or it's Tinder or every other match product, that 99 out of a hundred dating platforms out of there are directly meshed with the Facebook data engine and then look at a book like Dataclysms and imagine. That's really a big part of why we did this.
Jase: What were some of those then design places that you made based on that for your app to try to make it different from those?
David: Based on Amanda's concerns around the data privacy issues and in particular concerns around the potential for people who weaponize that data, we knew that we had to write a privacy policy that kept our database sacrosanct. We don't share with any third parties. We don't use any third party login or authentication. We don't have any data exchange that we get inbound or outbound other than checking the telephone number database to assure that that we're using cellular phone number and that's really for fraud purposes. Unlike any of our sizable competitors, we don't share anything with Facebook. We don't share anything with atch. We don't share anything with Proctor and Gamble.
Emily: Wow. It's very unique and lovely. Very refreshing.
Dedeker: That leads into my next question. You really intentionally wanted to avoid that crossover and that sharing of data and things like that. I do feel that like when we're talking about the non-monogamy dating scene specifically this arguably niche, maybe arguably not niche dating scene. I think that over the years, we've seen a very noticeable shift in how non-monogamy has entered mainstream conversations about dating.
There's definitely been a few other attempts at making dating apps or sites or meetups or things like that aimed at nontraditional relationships. We've seen at least I've personally seen an explosion of people online identifying as polyamorous or non-monogamous on more mainstream dating apps like Tinder. There's an Op ed in the New York times about the explosion of couple of profiles on Tinder specifically.
We've seen things like a couple of years ago, OkCupid expanding their filtering and profile systems. People are friendly to non-monogamy and a variety of different gender identities. Despite that, there's definitely still a lot of people in the community frustrated by a lack of options and I think combined with-- I think a lot of people are also starting to feel fatigued by dating apps. I wanted to know from the two of you, like when you were starting out to make this app, what were the things that you felt were like really, really missing, maybe still missing right now and that you felt that #open could offer that was different from everything that was available at the time?
Amanda: I think, yes, at the very basic level, the biggest difference #open was built up by users for users. It did take the experience that David and I had. It now incorporates the experience of all of the other women that are on our team. When you're building it with those things in mind rather than trying to build it to collect data or for some other reason, then you're not really truly allowing people to be as authentic as they really want to be.
People want to be themselves. They want to show themselves that is a process for them, but we just really wanted to build a platform that, again was for the users and always had their privacy and their security in mind from the very beginning. Rather than it being an afterthought, we put those resources that we could into making sure that we were as secure as we could be from the beginning.
David: Amanda put forward some challenges as we were trying to design the initial offering. The first one was, I don't want people to have to choose labels. We get that people also, they like labels and so, how do we mesh this? We decided we just made it a decision across the boards that in every area where the app might ask a user a question, they had the option not to answer that question. They also had the option to customize that answer.
Using that as a design approach across the boards has enabled us to realize close to 10% of our users identify outside the gender binary. We've got about, I think it's about 54% of our users are currently identifying as male or cis male. About 35% of women are core or cis female and the balance is outside that spectrum and that I don't know if that would've happened if we didn't give people the flexibility of labels and we're seeing that in a bunch of places.
Dedeker: Yes. Do you also apply the same approach to like, how people define their relationship status? I know that that was also a big thing. When OkCupid made their big shift to suddenly become more non-monogamy friendly, that I know that a lot of people felt that it also fell short because it was the same thing of like I'm still a little bit trapped by a box of essentially like the two or three or maybe even four max options of how I can label my relationship.
David: We actually have four categories of statistics that we publish live on our website each night at midnight. Those are the gender breakdown of the user community and the choices that they're making from the pre-selected options and then other we have orientation relationship style and relationship preference. Again, all of those have the ability to take custom labels and with time, we'll update those lists absolutely.
Jase: Yes. I'm curious about how were those lists generated in the first place and is there a process in place?
Jase: I know that like you said, with everything, there's some set options, but you can also choose your own. I'm curious, is there any kind of a process in place for a choice entering the main list or perhaps being removed from the main list based on choices or ethical concerns?
Emily: And choices?
Jase: Yes.
David: The short answer is yes, in that we're continually developing and we always have the ability to update things. The longer answer is everything is more challenging than we ever would have imagined. We can get almost anything done, but it's a matter of time and money. One of the reasons that we don't see a lot of options in this space is it's a challenging space to attract investment. It's a challenging space to promote that which you have. What we have today has oodles of room for improvement, but we have to also get what we have today out there into the marketplace. We agree and believe that there's tremendous demand, but you got to be able to reach those folks. There's some chicken and egg. I guess
Dedeker: Yes. Since you brought it up, I am curious about that and we don't necessarily have to go here, so stop me, but I am curious. Is this something where-- have you been seeking investment because I imagined that must be just such, that was why I was curious about the elevator pitch, is because I imagine that on the one hand, when I think about like Silicon Valley venture capitalism, they're all non-monogamous. Just making may be an assumption, but then on the other hand also when you're trying to get investment for a product like this from the mainstream, "Mainstream sources" there's an inherent challenge in that. What's been your experience with that?
Amanda: It's been exceptionally difficult to-- we're being also sex-positive and relationship positive. It means that for Facebook that is just too outside of the box for them, and Facebook really seems to be the leader for all the other companies because we have been denied by Facebook, which is also Instagram and Reddit, Snapchat-
David: Twitter.
Amanda: -Twitter.
Emily: Well, really.
David: What Reddit did initially is we submitted an application and they said that they wouldn't take it on the basis of they tend to put us in the mail order bride category for the Ashley Madison paid cheating sites that they wouldn't take our promotion. We went back and said, this is really quite odd, why are you taking promotions from Feeld? It's really the same thing, and sadly because this was not our intent, but literally 15 minutes later, Feeld was no longer there. It's all related to foster ancestor really. There's every part of it.
Emily: We've heard of an ongoing petition happening surrounding this. Can you talk a little bit more about that?
Amanda: Yes. I filed a petition and it has been signed by over 2000 people currently, but basically, calling Facebook out on their censorship and also their hypocrisy.
David: Basically what Facebook's done is they're moralizing. Community sentiment is such that this isn't something that they want to take ads for. This is incredible when you look at Zuckerberg out in Silicon Valley talking about the importance of clarity and free speech or running Superbowl ads here in the US talking about how important Facebook groups are. One of the things that Amanda points out in her petition is that there are hundreds of thousands of people on Facebook who explore various forms of consensual non-monogamy. It's just crap.
Emily: Yes. I wonder where he gets that from or where whomever gets that idea that the user doesn't want this or that that's the consensus from the user. I have no idea where they're getting that from.
Amanda: Neither do we.
Dedeker: Just to rope our listeners in, recently you have been getting some news coverage about this like a Business Insider. I know a couple of other outlets did a write up about this. That it really has been this mind-boggling thing that the response that you've gotten for Facebook being something along the lines of, well, this is not what the community wants, and also that the community is not ready for any kind of casual dating, which is like just a statement that I can't even wrap my brain around. I really can't wrap my brain around this idea that the community is not ready for casual dating, first of all.
Jase: The Facebook dating is not casual.
Dedeker: Yes, exactly. Combined with the fact that as you also have pointed out in your campaign around this, that more mainstream apps like OkCupid have posted ads that are sexually suggestive in nature. Obviously, nothing explicit but that they have suggested, "Hey, you might use this app to have sex with somebody," That's a good thing. Why not try it out combined with, Facebook, of course, also authenticating like logins for Tinder and stuff like that, which is-- the last time I checked, Tinder did not have the reputation of being only for long-term soulmate relationships.
It really is this really interesting, really, really fascinating thing that I think especially for what the two of you are trying to do, which is like a sex-positive app that's not just about hookups, it's also open to non-monogamy, polyamory, stuff like that, that the knee jerk reaction would be so strong in that direction.
David: Well, and it is interesting, you posed the question earlier about investment and we have self-funded this. We've put everything that we have into it and been fortunate that we've been able to borrow, but we don't have traditional corporate backing and frankly, we'd like to avoid that. We have a privacy policy that's not attracted to Venture capital. Venture capital wants to invest in building a database and selling it. If you read our privacy policy, you'll see that we can never really sell #open in that way.
Our interest is in building a set of tools and we'd like to see others do the same. We think some are doing this, but building a set of tools that will serve a community that's underserved and then being rewarded for doing that. That's a really good long-term business model. 10%, 15%, 20%, 25% of our users might be happy to contribute a latte a month or a chai a month or whatever their thing is, for a set of tools that are built with efficacy and transparency, but if we can't get to them, we can't do that. That's why the petition. We were really excited at that article and frankly, some mentions within Facebook drove over 5,000 new profiles this weekend. Which for us is huge. It's massive.
Emily: Wow. Great.
Dedeker: It's a silver lining, for sure. I think that that approach that you're taking of we're not just trying to build a database and then sell it and get VC money and stuff like that. I do think that's the correct approach. It does make me think that I do think there is an irony though, that like once you're able to prove that a community is a market and that you can sell to them, that's sometimes another domino in the chain of acceptance. Which is awful. It's late-stage capitalism at its finest and stuff like that.
That is I think the weird struggle and weird irony and it's definitely brought up some weird feelings for me as I've seen other more mainstream apps or other people trying to launch a more traditional VC funded dating app for non-monogamy is this idea of, well this seems like a cash grab, but then at the same time in our capitalist society, is an indicator of this is a legitimate group of people because you can sell to them.
David: It's such a huge opportunity, and we're capitalists.
Emily: Exactly. Yes.
David: We also have a long-term view and we would love to provide a set of tools and have a team that builds those tools for years and years to come. It's a community that looks for those kinds of solutions, but definitely, the big players in the year that we've been doing this, we've seen their pivot around LGBTQIA+ our gender and orientation diversity is not as unique as it was a year ago, and that's great. It's a good thing and that's because of what's going on in the culture. It's got nothing to do with us.
Jase: Right. Totally, yes. I want to talk a little bit more about the monetization stuff as well as more about the security stuff that I think is really interesting. Then we want to get into talking about some of the ethics and politics of online dating and some of the choices and things like that. Before we get to all of that, we want to take a quick moment to talk to our listeners about ways you can support this show to help it keep going if we're providing something that gives you value, and if not, then feel free to skip ahead and listen to the rest of it. To go back to this question of money, right? I know that hosting a database and hosting like the infrastructure for an app as well as the marketing and all of those things costs money, and they can cost quite a bit of money. They cost money every month. It's not just like you spend once to make it and then it's done, right? It's something that is an ongoing expense. I'm curious about-- you alluded to it a little bit, that your eventual monetization model for this, would be what? Like a premium features kind of thing like OkCupid or the whole thing would become paid?
Because I do think that, the thing that made OkCupid unique in the beginning was the fact that it was free, and that you could use almost all of it for free. That's still true, right? I do think that's really interesting when at the time it was competing against Match.com, where you had to pay to do basically anything at all, right? Besides create the profile, if you want to do anything, you had to pay, and same with eHarmony, and all those other big mainstream apps. That was what made them different. So far, #open feels similar in that it's free. I'm just curious, what are your plans moving forward in terms of costs, and things like that?
David: Scale is ultimately the challenge. We've always believed that the basics have to be free to everybody in order for it to be a viable community. Frankly, we feel like pretty much everything we're doing now is the basics. We obviously want to do them better. We've got, I think, 900 tickets in our system of ongoing bugs, and that number just continues to roll. The basics always need to be available for the community, especially in this community. Because we know that a lot of people don't have the kind of resources to be open about the choices they've made in their life, and not necessarily able to do that everywhere. We are a Delaware B-- It's not called a B Corp, what's it a BLLC?
Emily: Is it not an LLC? Yes, Delaware is the way to go. You don't have to pay taxes, or something.
David: Especially if you have no revenue. If you have no revenue, you get an extra double tax credit. We're, what is it? It's called a B Corp. We have to go through the entire process of certification. Our mission includes reinvesting back in to the community that we serve. That's really something that you've taken the lead on.
Jase: Yes. What is that look like?
Emily: Exactly. That was one of the things in your mission statement, and I found that to be very interesting. The idea of community, I don't think is very large in Feeld or in OkCupid, or any of that, and you really care about giving back to the community in various ways. I'm very interested in what that looks like to you.
Amanda: Becoming a B Corp, and just really having the ability to remember that our mission is the most important thing. As David said, we are also capitalist, and we have to have money to make this thing go forward. Being marginalized, and that includes women, right? It's already a hurdle just in your life, so anything that we can do to potentially put money back into research. As David was saying earlier, as far as money, and big money, people are putting money into kink research. Maybe BDSM can cure the common cold, we don't know because nobody's really out there putting the money in there, and researching that specifically, right?
David: Basically, what the B Corp structure does for us is, enables us to create, to your question about revenue models, incentives for more and more people to participate in supporting the project. Let's say we approach the community at a point later this year and say, "Listen, it takes following to support this effort. We're going to keep investing, but we would like those that can, to support and give back. If you can participate at this level per month, you will receive this all in digital badging. You can receive these additional enhanced features."
Some right now that are under consideration would be potentially things like last active or potentially knowing who's already liked your profile. Although again, we've talked about those, their pluses and minuses, but a set of enhanced features at a very modest monthly recurring rate. When we reach 10% of our user community doing that, we want to make the following donation to the Whittle Institute, as an example. To really just use things that will drive growth back within the community and resonate for the community.
Emily: That's great.
Dedeker: That makes sense. Yes.
Jase: Yes.
David: The question is, when can we do that? Our feeling has been that we need to grow a bit more to do that. The interactivity needs to increase a little bit.
Jase: Yes, definitely. I think that, at least for me, in terms of looking at the dating apps out there, and of everything I've seen so far that's actually got off the ground, #open is the first one that has options besides just being overly sexualized or just about couples looking for women to have sex with, which Feeld fell into that trap. I know people who have met partners, and have had good relationships through 3nder or Feeld, and you two are an example of that.
However, I know that most people's experience with it is like, "Oh, I like the idea, but all it is, is couples looking to hook up with someone." When OpenMinded.com did their bid for trying to make an app that was very much like, "We're going to sell your information, and also put it on Trump Lovers Who Date, and also on John McCain Lovers Who Date. We're just going to sell it to every dating niche out there."
Dedeker: Oh my god, Jase.
Jase: No, I'm serious. This is a real thing. There's this whole network of dating sites for certain niches where all the data is shared between them.
Dedeker: Yes. I get that, it's all shared. Is John McCain For Lovers--
Jase: I don't know if John McCain Lovers is--
Jase: For some reason that was the first thing that popped into my head.
Emily: I'm going to make that URL of just johnmccainisforlovers.com, and I'll tap into that.
Jase: I see, John McCain Is For Lovers, that's good.
Emily: John McCain. He was like, "Arizona, represent Arizona."
Dedeker: Sorry Jase, please continue.
Jase: Anyway, what I'm trying to get at is, I appreciate what you're doing and I think that #open is sort of the closest toward that, that I've seen. I agree that having a user base is always the problem with any startup dating app, you've just got to have the users, so that it's useful to people, so there's people to meet. I do know, however, that I've found, in looking through it, it does seem there is also a lot of this looking-for-hookup thing.
As someone who is maybe less, at least I feel less than average, motivated by sex compared to some people, or motivated by kink, I have experienced a little bit of frustration being like, okay, is there any way for me to make this search better for that? For people who are looking for something else besides hookups. I think there's value to both, and just--
Emily: Or who are even asexual, it's something along those lines.
Jase: Yes.
Amanda: Well, again, we feel like we built the tools to allow our users to truly state what their endgame is. State what you're looking for, that should be allowed, right? If you are just looking for somebody to hook up with this weekend, and that's the only reason why you're on the dating app, you should be able to say that. Because there's probably somebody else who just wants to hook up for this weekend, and never talk to you again too, right?
David and I have always said that, "If we could just get the exhibitionists up with the voyeurs, then everybody is happy." This is part of what #open, I think, will really do. If it really work well, it's going to make all of the other dating platforms work even better, too, right? Because by allowing our users to say what it is that they're looking for, other people are going to find them, and they're going to do that based upon what their interests are or what kind of experience it is that they want to have.
You know, if they are swingers and they just want to have one-night, they should be able to say that, and then there will be somebody else that will meet that. Taking some of the importance off of the labels and again, I know people if you like them you like them if you don't you don't. Taking some of the importance off of that and really bringing it back down to what type of person is it do you look to me? What type of relationship do you want to have? I call it a relationship choice approach.
If you know going into this that you want to have an X, Y, Z relationship and you put that out there, then you're only looking for other people that want to have an X, Y, Z relationship too. It allows you to find each other hopefully, in a more authentic way. Because dating is also changing. We're no longer in a courting system. Dating is changing and dating is different for everybody. We should be able to just say what that is for us and then find someone.
David: One of the things that we notice as we look at those daily statistics is how quickly various things will change. As an example, over the last few days, the percentage of people within the database that identified as polyamorous went from 21 to 26 percent. That's huge. I think that particular profile surge came largely from the poly community. You will see more profiles that are going to reflect those values. At the same time, there is a lot of space and a lot of overlap with the kink community or thankfully, at this point with the general population.
Jase: Okay. Something I'm curious about. Say that our listeners are listening to this episode now, and they're going, "This is interesting. I'm going to try it out". If they're like me, it works pretty different from other dating apps and there's a little bit of a learning curve. I'm wondering if-- You don't need to go over the basics now because I think they'll figure that out. Some things about like you put down different hashtags of other things you're looking for or that you're open to or what are your hard limits things like that. How does that affect the results you see or do you have to search intentionally for those? Can you give me the tips of how do you actually use the platform the best?
David: As you come into the app, you decide whether you want to create a solo profile or a partner profile or both. At the moment, partner profiles are limited to two individuals, but we're very much committed to expanding that as resources are available. That's our current designed limitation. As you create your profile, it's got some elements of a traditional dating app where you're adding photographs and some demographic information, if you will, all of which is optional and you control at a very high level what's seen and not seen.
Really through the research, numerous books and discussions that Amanda had and others on the team had with people around the right ways to set up an expression of wants, needs and desires, if you will. We take you through an interview process asking you to think about your preferences, things that you're open to and there's a hashtag list that you can pick from. That list has been growing and that's a very imperfect system and one that needs editing but it's there and it does serve to help people think about what they're open to, what they're interested in and, in fact, all of those lists you can sort of custom name them. Those are just suggestions.
Amanda: One thing to note and point out, our sign up process does take a little bit longer because we don't use Facebook to-- Normally, Facebook would go ahead and pre-populate some of those things in there for you so it does take--
David: Yes. Away as we've talked about.
Amanda: It's worth the extra time not to share any data with Facebook, in my opinion.
David: And then at that point, your profile is available in the community based on a set of boundaries that you'll enter around what sorts of profiles you're interested in seeing and being seen by and distance and some age parameters. You can further filter those by the hashtags that we just talked about if you want.
Jase: searching by them?
David: Yes. In fact, if you were, let's say, you were looking at creative people in the New York metro area and you wanted to look at people who specifically had a #BSM or #polyamory or #rope, you apply that filter and now you're looking at folks with that hashtag. One of the things we do when you do a search is, we don't only show you people that you've matched or that you've liked, we also show you folks that you've passed on because when you're doing a search on a hashtag, it's worth seeing what you might have missed. More of a visual pass.
Jase: That's interesting. You get a second chance on those people if you're searching specifically for something that they've put. That's interesting. Okay. That's good to know.
Dedeker: We're about coming up on time here and what I want to ask is you're making a product for a community that is extremely diverse in variety. As in everyone, from people who are asexual and polyamorous versus maybe I'm just monogamous and kinky or I'm only BDSM and a romantic as well as the whole palette of gender identities and sexualities and things like that. You're making a product for a community that's both really diverse and I think also extremely picky at the same time.
Are you pulling your hair out all the time because I feel like I would be. I feel like even for us with our show or with the things that we write or produce that it is just this inherent challenge of a community that spans a lot of different identities and also they have, I think, very high standards for what it is that they want and expect.
Amanda: We have built upon that. We have a set of community guidelines that everybody has to agree to before coming into the app. Then we hold people accountable to those things. We have a moderation policy that has been built with the help of Jaclyn Friedman who is great-- just had a book that came out but really making sure that we have this human touch to our moderation. We actually, to this point, have had no problems really.
David: It's a really great question. What I've seen at pride parade after pride parade or various expos and events that we've gone to as people come up to Amanda and hug her and thank her for the ability to express themselves. Earlier, we were talking about why we did this and why we've been doing this and actually meeting on that app both of us, was a process of self exploration and discovery that dramatically changed our lives. We felt like and feel like that's what this technology can do for people in bringing them together. We used to talk about jokingly if you grew up and you were always interested in clown tipping, this fictitious whole thing where sleeping clowns get tipped over in the night.
Emily: Like cow tipping, but for clowns. Okay. Got it.
David: You had all the shame of growing up being into clown tipping and one day you go out there and you meet another person and you really don't care how they identify. They're into clown tipping. You, all of the sudden, just have this magical moment. That's one of the great things that the internet has been able to do for us and that these apps we think have done-- We're not suggesting we're doing it. We have one take on it we're all over the place. Clearly, we're trying to get too much done into too little time and resource. If they would go a little deeper, they could be so much more powerful than this crud that's out there and connecting clown tippers and that's cool.
Dedeker: I like that. I like that. I think that's a really wonderful note to end on for now. If people want to know more about your app and also if they want to sign this petition where should our listeners go?
Amanda: They could come to our website which is the hashtagopen.com, and we have links on there too to the petition.
David: As well as the app in the Apple App Store and on Google Play. There are about 45,000 users right now worldwide, mostly here in the US. On our site there's a whole lot of statistical breakdown information about those users which we're really proud of the diversity which has come from our team, from wonderful community ambassadors that we've worked with, and from great feedback that we got from our initial 5,000 beta users as well.
Dedeker: Excellent. Excellent. Thank you so much, David and Amanda for joining us today. We are actually going to stay on with David and Amanda to talk a little bit more deeply in our bonus episode for our Patreon subscribers. We're going to be talking a little bit more about some of the technical stuff, some security stuff, some of the inner tinkerings of the app itself, as well as maybe talking about online dating ethics in general.