BBC – May 9 – Dating app Flirtar is the first to use augmented reality (AR), but there are several more on the way. Feed, a platform for singles and couples, is launching a platform called Signal, while mainstream apps like Tinder could also expand with AR. Flirtar is only a few months old, but its international user base already stands at ~5K, 10% of whom are in London. The apps is like Pokemon Go, but instead of pokemons, the app shows singles who are using the same augmented reality app. Their faces are circled on a screen as users pass them physically in the street. It feels like a game. When a bubble pops up, it shows a picture of the user in question, along with their name and age. To chat to someone, users have to 'like' them. Flirtar's CEO, Anderson Gobbi, says it "bypasses the disappointment and frustration created by fake profiles" as profiles are only tagged to physically present users.
