For women only: An iPhone app that lets you review and rate men

Lulu, an iPhone app available for free download, allows women to read and write reviews about men they are interested in, according to The Telegraph.

 

“Enter Lulu—the first database of men, built by women, for women,” write Lulu creators Alison Schwartz and Alexandra Chong on the app’s website (www.OnLulu.com). “Through Lulu, you can read and write reviews of guys, which are pulled from a variety of tools, questionnaires, and fun features. The reviews show numerical scores across a number of categories, putting the emphasis on collective wisdom.

 

“Lulu takes its cues from the real world: we meet a guy and think he’s cute, but want to know if he’s the charmer he appears or really a wolf in sheep’s clothing. So we ask our girlfriends, and look him up on Facebook and Google.  It’s a private, fun ritual we all indulge in, often complicated by the fact that we don't want the guy to know we're checking out his creds.”

 

Using the app, women in the UK can cyber-stalk any man they are considering dating. They can upload men’s pictures, write reviews about them, enumerate the good and bad things about their character and even the way they dress. Women can also rate men with a score on several characteristics, such as their sense of humor, appearance, and style.

 

To prevent users from just using the site to poke fun at men, the creators have not included the option for women to write anything they like.

 

“The vast majority of reviews are positive – ex-girlfriends, sisters, and friends helping other girls discover the guys they believe are keepers. To be clear, Lulu isn’t a place to trash-talk: Lulu’s review system makes it impossible for a vindictive ex to reveal the size of a guy’s itty bitty friend or claim he gave the Herp to 1,000 women,” explains the website.

 

The business has raised over $3.5 million so far from investors. It employs a surprisingly small team of only 14 people.

 

“We definitely feel this is about female empowerment and collective wisdom,” Schwartz said. “We also feel boys are just the beginning. We’ll win the trust of our girls here and then take them into other verticals.”

 

The service, which was created in London, is not exactly new. It was made available for personal computers in December 2011, but was then re-released as a mobile app the previous summer. It was only in mid-January, however, that it grew immensely in popularity. There are now over 80 million profiles on Lulu, and 12 million searches have been conducted. — TJD, GMA News