OPW INTERVIEW - May 5 - RealMe is a new and significant offering specifically designed for improving user safety by allowing users to gage reputation and background. BONUS: This is a profit center for dating apps, rather than a cost center! Here's my interview with Jeff Tinsley.
What is RealMe's founding story?
We founded RealMe in response to the increase in criminal behavior found across all online dating platforms. Last year, the FTC reported romance scam losses of $201MM, up +40% from 2018. This accounts for more than any other fraud reported to the FTC.
RealMe's mission is to protect and make people safer while dating online by giving members access to additional information with Reputation Profiles, creating the first ever truly transparent dating experience. With more information about those they engage with, daters are able to make smarter decisions about these interactions and take back the power to protect themselves.
What does RealMe do best?
RealMe is the most comprehensive composite profile of US adults including machine learning analysis of potentially harmful behavior on social media.
While similar to a Google search, RealMe is a centralized profile of public data creating an easily understood Reputation Score for people to identify bad actors and putting the focus back on finding love.
How does RealMe work with dating partners?
RealMe is a simple API, SDK or custom integration. We can be live with a partner within days through our available widget. Many dating partners work with RealMe as part of their user verification, to match in-app and off-app toxic or harmful behavior, and updating criminal or legal background issues in real-time to ensure ongoing safety of their members.
Some partners have also chosen to include RealMe Reputation Profiles access as part of their paid membership benefits.
What insights are you finding with your initial clients?
It's scary out there. 30% of profiles on dating apps are fake, and of those that are real, we've found dating app users with 20+ criminal flags, one actively dating person had 58 criminal flags.
Increasingly, people are using social media as part of their research of potential dates. RealMe is helping to make this process easier by combining reputation and background information with personal social media content all on one platform.
How are you building on the RealMe product?
RealMe is partnering with innovative tech leaders to create first-to-market industry opportunities. For example, we've partnered with Spectrum Labs, a contextual AI platform that looks beyond keywords to identify larger patterns of abuse, to create the first composite profile of dating app users to bridge in-app and off-app toxic behavior.
Our hope is that the easily applied Reputation Profile and Score data will help dating apps quickly identify potentially damaging accounts before they are able to hurt innocent and vulnerable people looking for love.
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FULL DISCLOSURE: RealMe is sponsor of OPW.news and a client of Courtland Brooks. Please support our sponsor by having a look-in on their offering. Contact me at mark@courtlandbrooks.com and I can personally introduce you, or you can check them out and request a demo at www.RealMeHQ.com/dating.
