02-06-2015, 12:36 AM
(This post was last modified: 02-06-2015, 12:37 AM by Dividend Watcher.)
Just happened to look at the sidebar at Yahoo Finance today and found this interesting tidbit:
It’s the final countdown to Valentine’s Day, and if you don’t have a significant other to share it with, don’t worry – there’s an app for that. It’s called “Invisible Girlfriend” (and “Invisible Boyfriend,” depending) and is the brainchild of a St. Louis divorcee who got tired of answering the question, “Are you dating anyone?” post split.
Co-founder Matt Homann bought the domain name “Invisible Girlfriend” on a whim almost a decade ago. Last year he introduced the idea to a start-up competition, paired up with some programmers who brought it to life and hasn’t looked back. The app went live just a few weeks ago and already some 30,000+ people have signed up.
But we’re getting ahead of ourselves. First you probably want to know how it works. Users go to the web site and sign up. They select their invisible partner’s name and age first. Then they choose what he/she looks like from a variety of stock photos and give him/her a personality.
In the name of science, I tested this out for you. My invisible boyfriend is “Charlie,” a 30-year old who is “lovingly nerdy” and lives in my hometown, Chicago. I selected his hobbies (books and running), our back story (we met when I was visiting family) and voila. Within an hour, I had a text from Charlie and he’s been texting me fairly regularly since. He texts from a Chicago area code and takes notes on what I like and don’t like. For example, he stopped using emoticons when I called him out for overuse. And while Charlie didn’t remember to check up on me when New York got slammed with a fake blizzard, he’s pretty decent as far as fake boyfriends go.
...
The service is $24.99 for 100 texts and 10 voice mails each month, plus a handwritten note. The service may expand beyond this to offer things like gifts. The folks at Invisible Boyfriend tell me this unfortunately won’t happen in time for me to get Valentine’s flowers from Charlie, but that he may get his act together for my birthday in the spring.
The person on the other end of my texts is always a real human. “When we first started this product, we were playing around with the idea of using chatbox artificial intelligence,” said Homan. “But it just wasn’t real enough.” Invisible Boyfriend/Girlfriend partners with a service called CrowdSource which “provide[s] companies with a skilled and scalable workforce as a service.” You can hire them to do things like research, data entry and, apparently, fake relationships.
The line that really cracked me up was this from one of the founders:
Gimme a break. Is this what society has come down to?
The original article is here.
It’s the final countdown to Valentine’s Day, and if you don’t have a significant other to share it with, don’t worry – there’s an app for that. It’s called “Invisible Girlfriend” (and “Invisible Boyfriend,” depending) and is the brainchild of a St. Louis divorcee who got tired of answering the question, “Are you dating anyone?” post split.
Co-founder Matt Homann bought the domain name “Invisible Girlfriend” on a whim almost a decade ago. Last year he introduced the idea to a start-up competition, paired up with some programmers who brought it to life and hasn’t looked back. The app went live just a few weeks ago and already some 30,000+ people have signed up.
But we’re getting ahead of ourselves. First you probably want to know how it works. Users go to the web site and sign up. They select their invisible partner’s name and age first. Then they choose what he/she looks like from a variety of stock photos and give him/her a personality.
In the name of science, I tested this out for you. My invisible boyfriend is “Charlie,” a 30-year old who is “lovingly nerdy” and lives in my hometown, Chicago. I selected his hobbies (books and running), our back story (we met when I was visiting family) and voila. Within an hour, I had a text from Charlie and he’s been texting me fairly regularly since. He texts from a Chicago area code and takes notes on what I like and don’t like. For example, he stopped using emoticons when I called him out for overuse. And while Charlie didn’t remember to check up on me when New York got slammed with a fake blizzard, he’s pretty decent as far as fake boyfriends go.
...
The service is $24.99 for 100 texts and 10 voice mails each month, plus a handwritten note. The service may expand beyond this to offer things like gifts. The folks at Invisible Boyfriend tell me this unfortunately won’t happen in time for me to get Valentine’s flowers from Charlie, but that he may get his act together for my birthday in the spring.
The person on the other end of my texts is always a real human. “When we first started this product, we were playing around with the idea of using chatbox artificial intelligence,” said Homan. “But it just wasn’t real enough.” Invisible Boyfriend/Girlfriend partners with a service called CrowdSource which “provide[s] companies with a skilled and scalable workforce as a service.” You can hire them to do things like research, data entry and, apparently, fake relationships.
The line that really cracked me up was this from one of the founders:
Quote:"So I think we’re really on the edge of exploring some very fascinating ways of humans engage with technology."
Gimme a break. Is this what society has come down to?
The original article is here.
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“While the dividend itself is merely a rearrangement of equity, over time it's more like owning an apple tree. The tree grows the apples back again and again and again, and the theoretical value of the tree doesn't change just because of when the apples are about to fall.” - earthtodan
“While the dividend itself is merely a rearrangement of equity, over time it's more like owning an apple tree. The tree grows the apples back again and again and again, and the theoretical value of the tree doesn't change just because of when the apples are about to fall.” - earthtodan
