I’ve Got An App For That
Posted by Michelle Moquin on August 24th, 2013
Good morning!
Meet Lulu: An App That Lets Girls Rate Guys Anonymously
How would you like to rate your ex-boyfriend as a #TrustFundBaby or a male friend who #CanTalkToMyDad? Lulu lets girls do just that, using Facebook profiles—and it’s caught on like wildfire. But is it sexist? Isabel Wilkinson reports.
Last spring, Ellie Claxton, a 19-year-old freshman at Auburn University, entered a contest. The $200 winning pot was, as she put it, “easy money,” so she thought, “Why not?”
Lulu
But what she had to do was less than ordinary: she was asked to rate her male friends using a new iPhone app called Lulu. The first girl to rate 300 guys on the app won the prize money. Claxton quickly began rating her Facebook friends—guys she knew—and then broadened, reviewing guys that been selected for her at random. As part of the process, she assigned each guy hashtags pre-chosen for her by Lulu. They ranged from positive descriptors—such as “#WritesLoveSongs” and “#CanTalkToMyDad”—to the more negative: “#ManChild,” “#OwnsCrocs,” “#WanderingEye,” and “#NoGoals.”
Saying it took her “less than 30 seconds” to rate a guy, Claxton whipped through the required 300 ratings in less than a week—and took home the prize money.
Lulu, now seven months old, is rapidly gaining popularity. Using the app, girls can anonymously rate and review their male Facebook friends, as well as men they don’t know, completely anonymously. Reviews allow girls to note whether they were “together” with the guy, whether he was an ex-boyfriend, a “hookup,” a crush, or just a friend. Like an old-fashioned Cosmo quiz, the app asks girls to finish sentences about the guy they’re reviewing. “He really ought to return the call from… (a) his probation officer; (b) his dealer; (c) his boss; (d) his Ferrari dealer; or (E) Richard Branson.” Girls are directed through several pages of this until they are asked to assign the guy a series of pre-decided adjectives.
The app launched in February and now boasts 1 million users—all of whom are girls, and most of whom are between the ages of 18 and 24. Since Lulu began, it has seen 200 million profile views, and according to Appdata.com, the app now ranks 53rd out of 400 free iPhone apps in the social-networking category.
Lulu’s co-founder and CEO, Alexandra Chong, 32, says she came up with the idea for the app while having lunch with girlfriends on Valentine’s Day three years ago. “Here we were, a bunch of 20-something women. Not everyone knew each other, but it was a safe environment because it was just us girls,” she says. Her mission for Lulu, she says, is to “tap into the power of girl talk”—specifically “that moment when girls get together in a safe environment and help other girls make smarter decisions.” Chong and her co-founder, Allison Schwartz, 35, run Lulu out of New York and London.
“It’s more of a positive place than a negative place. Once guys understand it better, they see it as a secret weapon to engage and use to their advantage.”
Because of the nature of the app—and the teeny, twangy language it employs—Lulu unsurprisingly targets girls on college campuses. The creators have launched several contests similar to the one Claxton won last spring, offering money in exchange for reviews and also soliciting people to get others to download the app. The contest model, as well as appointing girls to serve as on-campus “agents,” has helped the app gain a stronghold with college users. It’s been so successful thatThe Wall Street Journal deemed it an ingenious “sorority strategy.”
Men are also starting to catch on to the fact that there now exists performance reviews of their behavior on an app—a sort of secretive, girls-only version of Consumer Reports. And apparently, some guys are liking the attention: according to the founders, half a million men have sent requests to have themselves reviewed by girls on Lulu. Talk about masochism.
“I’ve heard guys be like, ‘Will you log on and give me five stars?’” says Lucy Williams, 20, a rising junior at Bucknell, where she is one of Lulu’s on-campus “agents.” “Guys can be pissed when they have heard they haven’t gotten ratings. It’s anonymous, so guys are probably thinking, ‘I better think twice before I do certain things.’”
The app may not be welcomed by all guys, but it’s clear that Lulu arms girls with some sort of new power by word-of-mouth. (After all, there’s a constant threat of a bad review.) But it’s hard not to wonder if, in some small way, Lulu isn’t just an evolved form of sexism. Girls can anonymously call a guy a “#TrustFundBaby” or “#MamasBoy.” Couldn’t those adjectives be hurtful? Not to mention that the reviews are expressed as a review out of 10. What if someone scores a 3? Consider, for a minute, how different it would be if the roles were reversed—and if only guys used the app to rate girls. The Huffington Post said the app “Lets Women Review Men Like Restaurants,”, and one writer for The Daily argued: “Lulu pretends to empower women, but instead it allows women to defame men and conform to stereotypes in the process. Undoubtedly, Lulu is a form of cyberbullying.”
But Chong says the founders have been careful to keep Lulu from being too mean about guys. “We are taking it into consideration what we as women want to know—but we want to be cautious and mindful that it might be slightly hurtful to someone else,” she says. “It’s more of a positive place than a negative place. Once guys understand it better, they see it as a secret weapon to engage and use to their advantage.” She adds: “People who don’t understand how Lulu works may say [it’s sexist]. But we are taking real-world experience and using the technology out there today to harness that.” (Guys are able to remove themselves from Lulu.)
Next, she says, Lulu will to expand into health and beauty. Though the founders haven’t disclosed details on how they’ll adapt their pre-existing product to either space, Chong says she’s interested in continuing the idea of Lulu “as a private place where women can share.”
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Isabel Wilkinson is the editor of Fashion Beast and its chief fashion correspondent. She covers fashion, style, art, and culture. Wilkinson holds a bachelor’s degree from Princeton University and a master’s degree in journalism from Columbia University. She resides primarily in New York.
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Readers: I don’t think this is sexist. I think it is a great way for girls to support each other and communicate information about the guys they have dated. Yes, you will get some unkind statements but isn’t that the point? Girls need to know the good and the bad. Yes, you may get some untrue statements but then they are just “words” and the guy can remove himself. (As we all know women need to endure a lot more than just hurtful “words” from men.)
It seems more of a positive thing than a negative one. And in my opinion, girls can use all the help and support they can get from each other when it comes to dating men, because besides their safety (the number one thing to consider) there is a lot of other things women might want to consider, before they go out on a date.
When I think of that site that I blogged about some time ago where men were posting naked pictures of their ex-girlfriends(!) along with their full names where there address could possibly be found(!) – talk about endangering the lives and privacy of women. This is something that is not harmful in that way and in my opinion can do good for women. I love that it is women supporting women thing. Whatever we need to do to sift through the pool of men to get to the good guys is a good thing in my opinion. And if an app can do that, I say go for it.
Your thoughts? Blog me.
Lastly, greed over a great story is surfacing from my “loyal”(?) readers. With all this back and forth about who owns what, that appears on my blog, let me reiterate that all material posted on my blog becomes the sole property of my blog. If you want to reserve any proprietary rights don’t post it to my blog. I will prominently display this caveat on my blog from now on to remind those who may have forgotten this notice.
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Aka BABE: We all know what this means by now :)
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August 24th, 2013 at 10:14 am
About time!
August 24th, 2013 at 1:44 pm
Sexist: no
Helpful: no
Funny: somewhat, tho if dudes are calling they’re peeps to get rated on purpose them it becomes fairly useless (see ‘helpful’)
It also creates some pretty goofy outcomes I would imagine bc #wanderingeye could be taken as #lyingcheater and while neither is complimentary they do differ. Whatevs, if college peeps have so much time on their hands why not rate each others brain power otherwise they might soon find their deepest desire is to only be a good wife and mother, lol…
Have a good weekend, luv, Zen Lill
August 25th, 2013 at 8:13 am
It’s totally sexist
August 25th, 2013 at 12:18 pm
Why is it totally sexist? Men do the most godawful things when it comes to them rating women. The sensitivity towards what is sexist is only highlighted when the male is involved, and let’s be clear here.
This is about the feelings of white males. They control the MSM and they are the ones screaming about this LuLu. Women need to feel a little of what the men have been getting. They can take it.
My husband is so proud to be white and male, why shouldn’t be proud to be white and female.