From the creators of what has become TikTok comes, starting from iOS, a new free application for dating, based on geographic location, called Spark. Here’s how it works.
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Alex Hofmann is a name that most people might not say much, despite having been the president of Musical.ly and one of the creators of what, later, acquired by ByteDance in 2018 for roughly $ 1 billion in 2018, became TikTok. Since then, the entrepreneur has built a company, 9count, which has made several apps, including a new and popular dating app, Spark.
According to Hofmann, rather than focusing on a single product, as Twitter does, we should follow the trend that is in force in China, and try to meet the different interests of various groups of people: this has led 9count to realize, over time, various apps, including the social app for friends Wink which, being intended for users with at least 13 years of age, has tried to avoid the problem of the safety of face-to-face meetings by favoring dialogues regardless of location, between people who shared the same language. However, the app is supervised by a team of 15 people who, 7 days a week, 24 hours a day, take care of content moderation.
However, many users aged 18 and over have asked his company to create a platform to search for people in their own city: Hofman, therefore, decided to discard the Tinder model, in which people swap left or right because, a party, you don’t spend time thinking yes or no about every person you look at. So, Spark was created, with the effigy of a spark, in which – in the manner of Grindr – the people next to your position are displayed all together in a grid.
From the famous rival, however, Spark (not to be confused with the email client of the same name) differs in that, for safety, it becomes possible to text (a bit like on Facebook Dating) only when both parties have appreciated each other with a spark. Always subject to a moderation team, Spark, which uses Hive’s AI-powered APIs to prevent unsafe or malicious content from being loaded, keeps the other person out of the way , since once a like has been sent, the other person will have a maximum of 24 hours to reply.
The Spark dating app, already first in the charts in some of the markets (e.g. the Netherlands and Ireland) in which it made its debut (thanks to the iOS store), also has a subscription level, which provides some additional benefits, such as more sparks to send, and being able to see the profiles you like: for now, Hofmann has specified that both the prices and the advantages of the subscriptions are still subject to updating, although the modus operandi is clear, that is, going beyond the monthly subscription (today from $ 19.99), perhaps to sign one quarterly or annually, you save.