By Peter Berton
LOS ANGELES – Now that you have all those Facebook friends, wouldn’t it be nice to see which ones might want to be “friends with benefits?”
That’s the question Bang with Friends aims to address. The Facebook app, available for iOS and Android devices, allows users to learn, discreetly, which of their friends wants to get frisky. Then, the friends can “seal the deal” virtually and meet in person later.
Chief Executive Officer Colin Hodge, one of the three 20-somethings who founded the company that developed and markets the app, called Bang with Friends “the most honest way to strengthen relationships offline.”
Setting aside, for the moment, what that says about how 20-year-old males in California define both “honesty” and “relationships,” YNOT spoke with Hodge to learn more.
YNOT: How does Bang with Friends work?
Colin Hodge: It’s pretty simple. You login (discreetly) with Facebook. No one sees that you joined Bang with Friends. Then you’ll see a Pinterest-like wall of your Facebook friends, filtered by gender.
You can anonymously mark your friends who you would like to bang — it’s secret until they mark you — using the “Down to Bang” button. If that friend marks you as well, the app will connect you for private messaging to set up your first rendezvous.
When did you roll out the app, and what kind of response have you had?
We launched Jan. 23, 2013. We’ve signed up over one million users since then.
Impressive. So where did the idea for Bang with Friends come from?
We were frustrated with the dishonesty and complicated nature of online dating. We wanted something that fit into how our generation dates.
Is there anything a Bang with Friends subscriber can do to improve his or her odds of … well, banging?
In order to increase your chances, you can invite your friends anonymously through email by using the “Share the Love” link in the upper right on the website. You just login with your email address and select the friends you want to invite. We’ll send an email to them that cannot be traced to you.
How do you make money from this product?
We’re not focused on that. We are focused on enabling as many connections as we can.
