[ad_1]
Los Angeles – If you have felt a persistent disruption in the social order of the Internet – a vague and disturbing feeling that there is a party going on just out of sight, that all People are cooler, richer and more beautiful than you romp in a VIP shelter while you waste your life on Twitter and Instagram – I have bad news.
This place exists. It's called Raya. Maybe you are one of more than 100,000 people on the waiting list?
Raya appeared many years ago as a dating app for people in the creative industries. It's grown into an invitation-only social network populated by movie stars, fashion designers, pro athletes, tech executives and too many Instagram models to count [19659002"It'stheSohoHousedatingapps"saidHayleyGreenbergasocialmediamanagerinLosAngeleswhojoinedRayain2016andhasuseditforseveralmonths"Theyhaveveryniceguysathletesactorsguyswhohave500followersonInstagrambuthavebeenacceptedbecausetheyareDJs"
On Raya, Greenberg said: "Everyone is someone."
The app costs $ 7.99 (about R110) a month, but joining is not a small ordeal. Potential members are evaluated by an algorithm and human guardians, which take into account factors such as the size of a candidate's Instagram, the number of Raya members he knows and other attributes less quantifiable.
About eight percent of the candidates are accepted. Raya is a little harder than Harvard Business School
Inside, the rules are simple: do not be a creep, and maintain strict confidentiality. Users who take screenshots receive a severe pop-up message, and disclosure of information about other members is strongly discouraged. Stbadi Schroeder, a star of Vanderpump Rules stated that she had been excluded from the application for publicly discussing her match with Olympic swimmer Ryan Lochte
Snooty? Well yeah. But Raya fills a market niche. At a time when open technology platforms like Facebook and Twitter are struggling to restore users' trust after a series of scandals, Raya stands out as an example of a successful social network with a focus on Exclusivity rather than on the scale.
Last month, after pushing Raya for answers, I received a text message from a man who said he wanted to meet in Los Angeles and become a founder himself
The man said that telling the story of Raya would be cathartic and that it was time to put things clear on what the l & # 3939; application was really – what kind of people it was meant to gather
– Someone who can change a life & # 39;
Daniel Gendelman, 34, is handsome and slightly bearded. He wore a white T-shirt and ordered ordinary oatmeal when I met him recently in a Venice Beach restaurant
In 2014, he was staying in Israel, recovering from the failure of his previous startup, a social discovery app called Yello. And he was hitting Tinder.
"I was looking for coffee in a new neighborhood, and a little human relationship with someone nice," he said. "It was just a lack."
Gendelman had been hanging around the creative crust and he knew that online dating did not work for everyone. Celebrities have avoided it by embarrbadment. Artists and musicians did not necessarily want to be on a platform that brought them together with bankers and lawyers.
Instead, Gendelman thought, and if there was an app that looked more like a dinner – an intimate and carefully controlled collection of interesting people having candid conversations? He started a small team and started building. He called the application Raya, after the Hebrew word for friend, and sowed it with a group of his friends in Los Angeles.
"I tried to solve a big problem for a small number of people," Gendelman said. ] The application – which is only available on Apple devices, of course – has attracted the attention of Hollywood actors and media, who called it "Illuminati Tinder and asked to be invited. A desperate candidate offered $ 10,000 in cash for a Raya account. Others prepare elaborate resumes, along with press clips and glowing testimonials.
Among Raya's current members, critics are mixed. A friend confessed that she loved him and had used it to mark several dates, including one with a Grammy-winning musician.
"It's nice to be accepted," said Terence Telle, a model in New York who joined Raya last year. On other dating apps, says Such, women often accused her of being an imposter using fake pictures to get dates.
Their suspicion may come from his eight-pack abs and his jolly line of jaws. He did not have that problem on Raya, where everyone has eight-pack abs and ridiculous jaw lines. "It's much better," says Telle, who is now dating someone and has stopped using it actively. "I corresponded with a lot of models and even a celebrity."
The New York Times
[ad_2]
Source link
