ImaginativePRO Blog

AVOID ANNOUNCING YOUR BREAKUP ON TWITTER, BREAKUPTEXT TO THE RESCUE: AN IPHONE APP THAT DOES IT FOR YOU VIA TEXT

BREAKUPTEXT IS AN IPHONE APP THAT POKES FUN AT OUR CONNECTED CULTURE. BUT THE SCARY PART IS THAT SOME PEOPLE HAVE (PROBABLY) USED IT.

Nobody wants to be dumped by text message, and not just because it’s impersonal. A text is inherently casual--a quick smattering of pseudo-thought cranked out on a whim--and to couple that with severing intimate emotions can be cutting to the core.

Which is why BreakupText is so hilarious.

BreakupText app screenshot (Click Image To Enlarge)

With just a few quick icon taps--select guy or girl, serious or casual, and whether you lost interest, found someone else, or were eaten by a bear--this iPhone/web app can send an extremely long-winded explanation as to why you won’t be seeing someone anymore.  

Don't let the world know you are breakup with someone by Tweeting about it on Twitter like Russell Brand and Katy Perry did in January 2012:

In pre-digital times estranged couples might return their wedding rings; these days they unfollow one another on Twitter. That's what Katy Perry did in January, telling her fans that "you guys have made my heart happy again" and warning that "NO ONE speaks for me. Not a blog, magazine, 'close sources' or my family."  (Click Image To Enlarge)

Instead, your breakup text could look like this one (and it spanned five whole messages, to show how much you cared):

"My dear Johnny, I know you’ve been wondering where I’ve been. I don’t know how to tell you this, but you know how Sara always acts like an idiot when wasted?  Well, on our camping trip we saw a bear and she antagonized it.  I know you hate when Sara acts like that. Well, I do as well. Because that bear unhinged his jaw and shoved me into his stomach. So yeah, I’m stuck in a bear. Somewhere upstate, it doesn’t feel like this guy moves a lot, I’d ask you to come find me and cut me out but maybe this is for the best, you know? We were fighting all the time, I hated my job, my parents are still upset I didn’t become a lawyer…as I sit in this dark acid hole, I can’t think of enough reasons to punch my way out. So remember me fondly, make it sound like I died a hero. Love you. - Mark"

The app was created by Jake Levine and Lauren Leto, and it was originally inspired when a co-worker told Levine about his friends’ adventures in Hong Kong. They’d meet women at bars, exchange numbers, then see the impulsive relationships fizzle out when the sun came up.

Click Image To Enlarge

Levine explains.  

“There was at least one time when the girl didn’t respond--which obviously happens when you pick up people at the bar.  So they thought it’d be hilarious to send really long, emotional, dramatic breakup texts.”

Indeed, the app’s genius is its input-to-output ratio. It takes all of five seconds to send a 162-word breakup epic, which is an extreme ease-of-use scenario that doubles down on the vapidness of sending a breakup text in the first place. (And that’s entirely the point.)

Levin explains.  

“As much as we did it as a joke, it has sort of captured a moment in time when tech is becoming more pervasive in our lives and relationships.  Somebody wrote a post saying, ‘This app isn’t very good, my breakup texts are always a lot better.' Which I found sort of funny.”

Indeed, the only thing better than giggling at the hyperbole of BreakupText is knowing that there’s someone else out there who doesn’t see it as absurd at all. Or as Levine puts it:

“Here’s the scary thing. If five to ten thousand people used BreakupText on the web, and even half a percent used it seriously, that’s like a couple people who may have actually used it.”

Though to be fair, some contingent of the dating population does suffer from the occasional bear attack.

Try it here, or download it here.

COMMENTARY:   Sooner or later someone was going to solve the problem of breaking up via text message, and BreakupText has come to the forefront with memorable breakup text messages that you can be proud of.  No more breakup guilt or post-traumatic breakup syndrome. This app really takes the anguish and pain out of breaking up.   The human element and emotion of breaking up has finally been eliminated once and for all.   Just tap that button on the app, and your worries are over.  I don't now how many iPhone users have downloaded this app, but I can clearly see new business opportunities for app developers -- firing by text, marriage proposals by text, birth announcements by text, and you name it.  Hell, I bet there's a VC firm just itching to use an app that sends out text messages telling you that you didn't make the cut.  

Courtesy of an article dated July 31, 2013 appering in Fast Company Design  

BANG WITH FRIENDS: A MATCHMAKING APP THAT COULD SPARK THE NEXT SEXUAL REVOLUTION ON FACEBOOK?

IN THE ERA OF THE OVERSHARE, BANG WITH FRIENDS ALLOWS DISCREET CONVERSATION (AND SEX) WITH YOUR ENTIRE SOCIAL NETWORK.

Its three creators are anonymous college students. They claim to have built the app in just two hours. Yet Bang With Friends is the simplest, most disruptive app Facebook has seen in a long time.

The premise is so obvious, you’ll kick yourself for not thinking of it first. You install the app, then the app lists your Facebook friends of the opposite sex. You click if you’d like to “bang” them, and no one ever knows . . . that is, unless one of those friends installed the app and elected to bang you, too. Bang With Friends makes finding a mate as easy as window shopping on Pinterest.

Bang With Friends homepage (Click Image To Enlarge)

One of the creators tells Co.Design.

“We wanted to keep it simple. See your friends, choose your potential bangs, and then get notified privately via email when you have a match. Wham, bam, thank you new friend with benefits!”

With my wife’s permission, I took Bang With Friends for a spin. After installing the app, I was greeted by a Pinterest-y wall of potential hook-ups: An old co-worker. A friend from high school. A cousin. A minor. A dude. My wife. Lots of my friends’ wives. My mother-in-law, but, thank god, at least not my mom (apparently, there’s at least one filter at work here). With the touch of a button, my vote was cast. I opted just for my wife--really! Part of me hopes she accepts. Part of me hopes she never experiences the oddity of seeing her friends and relatives as a list of potential DTFs.

A few smarter filters would no doubt, make the app less inherently awkward (it’s hard to believe that family members should make the list). But then again, filters imply a certain level of judgement. And if Bang With Friends is anything, it’s a nonjudgmental corner of your social, digital life in which you can let your basest impulses run wild. For however frat-boy-centric the app may be marketed, it’s solving one of the biggest problems in social networking: How do you have an intimate conversation in a room full of your relatives? And how do you leverage all this amazing connectivity to take a leap of faith, without leaving a permanent, devastating trail of evidence?

Click Image To Enlarge

Since launching about a week ago, the team claims to have matched 10,000 couples, and due to overwhelming user demand, they’re working on an update that will bring LGBT matching. A mobile app is in the works, too, but they wouldn’t comment as to their current state of funding.

Bang With Friends

COMMENTARY:   Although many people have laughed at Bang With Friends idea and its shameless, frat-boy marketing, its premise of one-button interaction has struck a chord.   Since launching a few weeks ago with no marketing budget to speak of, half a million users have clicked their “down to bang” button 9 million times (or about 15 times apiece). The app has facilitated as many as 100,000 hookups.

A developer who goes simply by the name of C told Fast Company Design. 

“As much of a joke and an unabashed, risque approach as we’d taken, there’s a larger vision.  We really think this is a much more realistic way of how the younger generation is working.”

Even still, in an interview earlier this week, C was quick to point out his platform’s big shortcoming. Once users have created their bang list, most people have no more use for the app. There’s nothing else to do but refresh Gmail for the notification of a match. So the team is rolling out a series of new updates focused on the product’s long tail. And its pièce de résistance is every bit as intriguing as the app’s original premise.   C says  

“It’s like a Klout score for your weekly sexiness.”

As part of the update, Bang With Friends is adding richer profiles, pulling several images from your Facebook feed. Along with all these clicks comes the opportunity for analytics. While viewing data will remain anonymous, Bang With Friends will be providing a weekly score for each user, generated from the sorts of pageviews they’re drawing.   C says.  

“If nothing else, it gives you an idea that people were at least curious about you, that they didn’t get over the hump--no pun intended--or that maybe they’re viewing a certain photo of yours more than others.”

Bang With Friends now features a Klout-like bangability score. Colbert and Stewart are apparently the app’s flagship users. (Click Image To Enlarge)

Scores are sharable, but going public with your number is an opt-in scenario. (Or it was supposed to be. Stephen Colbert and Jon Stewart both have staggeringly large public numbers at the moment that they probably didn’t authorize. Also, see your invite, Jon. Thx.) The idea is to add a feature that you can boast about, but if you strike out, no one is any the wiser. In this regard, your bangability score is actually a lot more humane than Klout. But checking your score is just the hook of a larger vision for the platform, C tells me, that morphs the hook-up service into a more legitimate dating site.  C says.

“We see it as being more than Bang With Friends. We want to redefine ‘bang’ so it can be something like, ‘I want to meet up, I’m down to hang rather than just down to bang.’”

So moving forward, the app will actually have a “down to hang” button alongside the “down the bang” button. A skeptic might say that Bang With Friends is selling out before landing their first major investor, trading in their social media key to become another Match.com. But C disagrees.

He maintains. 

“We’re not trying to form it into something that’s more socially acceptable, we’re trying to expand the use case.  We’re definitely not getting rid of the bang part. We’re not at all ashamed of that.”

The more I consider the potential of Bang With Friends as a quasi-legitimate dating site, the more the idea actually makes a perverse amount of sense. It’s going to attract a certain cohort--just like a ChristianMingle or eHarmony does--and even when that cohort generally wants to hang, you’ll know that they’re like-minded in being open to bang. But whether or not their users will still be so likely to click that “down to bang” option with another, more conservative choice in sight? That’s the question. And if that’s lost, so is the strangely alluring id-scratcher that is Bang With Friends. 

Courtesy of an article dated February 4, 2013 appearing in Fast Company Design and an article dated  February 15, 2013 appearing in Fast Company Design

THE 2012 GUIDE TO DATING, EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO KNOW, AND CONDUCTING A DATING PARTNER BACKGROUND CHECK

There are a lot of statistics and online discussions centered around dating.  For many of the dating services, this time of year represents a part of their peak season so a lot of attention is paid to online dating.   Below are some wonderful infographics about the State of Dating in 2012 and Online Dating. The two infographics provide some very interesting statistics and tips that you might find very valuable. We've all been there, done that, so it helps to understand what the dating environment looks like to improve our odds of finding the right person for dating and perhaps developing a longterm relationship leading to a live-in relationship or marriage.    

Courtesy of CheapSally (Click Image To Enlarge)

We've all utilized online dating services from time-to-time, and very often the information provided by individuals listing themselves in these online dating services is out-of-date, incorrect or complete fabrication.   So in order to avoid the "date from hell," it's a good idea to conduct an online search for that individual to obtain as much information about that person order to separate fact from fiction.  This infographic provides some valuable information and tips in how to do this.

Courtesy of BackgroundCheck.com (Click Image To Enlarge)