Swipe on Instagram profiles, instead of Tinder profiles
Download link to Verve Beta https://testflight.apple.com/join/sEwR2G9J
Your Instagram profile is actually your most authentic dating profile
Before you baulk at the works ‘authentic’ and ‘Instagram’ in the same sentence, hear me out.
Your Instagram shows who you are better than any dating profile. It show’s what you’re interested in, who you hang out with and where you’ve been. It’s also constantly up to date.
It’s not curated to attract someone, it’s curated for your friends, and that, arguably, paints a much closer picture of what a long term relationship is really about.
We’ve found that 86% of people (USA 18 to 30-year-olds) will try and view someone’s Instagram profile before they go on a date with someone for the first time. With Verve we cut out the middleman of the current crop of dating apps, and give users what they are really looking for.
The easiest dating profile you’ve ever created
Creating your profile on Verve was as simple as linking your Instagram account (private or public) during sign up. Just add where you live, your age and your gender.
For privacy, we remove your last name, username, comments and only show your most recent 48 images.
Most people get lost as to who’s who in busy Instagram profiles, so we allow you to select 3 photos from your profile that get bumped to the top of the photo grid so people know exactly who they were swiping on.
Filtering by Instagram count
We added this feature as we knew it would generate some controversy, similarly, there is an exclusivity aspect, with a 500 follower count minimum to get on the app.
A 50 media post requirement also meant that we had complete profiles as well as users that were invested in their own Instagram profile.
Only get their Instagram handle when you match
While we hide usernames to people viewing your profile, you can get the other user’s Instagram handle if you have both liked and matched with each other. You can then choose to chat with them in-app or jump straight into their DM’s on Instagram.
Apple’s reasoning for banning our app?
The app was initially approved for the app store under the name Amber and we pushed it out to just friends and family to play with. After some months of user testing it was very clear that we needed a rebrand (google ‘amber alert’), and we ended up resubmitting the app with our new name, Verve.
Apple’s approval process usually takes 24–48 hours, rejections aren’t uncommon, some of the hurdles we had overcome with Amber included the reviewer not being able to log in (we needed to provide an Instagram account), the reviewer couldn’t see any profiles (we were testing in San Francisco, they were reviewing from Atlanta), we had insufficient blocking/reporting features for users etc etc.
So when we came to submit our rebranded app we assumed it would sail through in time for our official launch. But Apple had other plans and hit us with a rejection we’d never seen before.
Not sure what to make of this somewhat cryptic response, we asked for a clarification, but just got the same message copied and pasted back to us.
So we did the following:
- Asked for clarification and pointed out that Instagram reviewed and approved our app so we could use their data, we weren’t violating their rights — Same response from Apple
- Resubmitted a dumbed-down version of the app to have no features and no styling, just 9 Instagram images, with the hope we could figure out what the issue was by introducing features incrementally — App rejected again with the same response from Apple
- Submitted an appeal asking for clarification of how Verve was different to Hinge, Tinder and Bumble’s Instagram integrations — Same response from Apple (although, interestingly, this time they added that we could report any apps we thought were violating Apple’s terms and conditions, they wouldn't, however, be able to let us know about the outcome of this)
- Pointed out that Amber had already been approved and was currently in the app store live, and that we hadn’t changed any features but the name — Same response from Apple (they promptly banned Amber as well)
- Pointed out that the full wording of their guidelines ‘3.2.2 (vii) Artificially manipulating a user’s visibility, status, or rank on other services unless permitted by that service’s Terms and Conditions.’ And that again, the app had been approved by Instagram, and therefore was permitted by the service's Terms and Conditions — Same response from Apple
Double standards for established apps
It’s hard to see the difference between the established dating apps Instagram integration and Verve’s, even with a revised submission of Verve featuring just 9 images and the matching/chat feature, Apple still chose to reject it.
Tinder — Instagram data used: Most recent 30 images, date of photo taken
Bumble — Instagram data used: Most recent 23 images, date of photo taken
Hinge — Instagram data used: Most recent 27 images, date of photo taken, location, caption
Verve (in it’s most basic featureless form submitted to the app store) — Instagram data used: Most recent 9 images
Note: All the apps have been approved separately by Instagram in order to use Instagram’s live data.
While Verve is unique in its UX, which puts the Instagram integration front and centre, how it uses the Instagram data is really no different to any other dating app, which makes it very confusing why Apple decided to ban it.
We’re using Instagram data with Instagram’s approval. If Apple are saying an approved Instagram developer can’t use Instagram’s users data to build a dating app, does that mean Instagram themselves can’t use their users’ data either? In other words, if Instagram, instead of us, were to develop a dating app like Verve, would it be rejected by Apple for the same reasons? I have no idea.
Apple’s app review process is vague, inconsistent and flawed
Apple has an incredible amount of power to make or break businesses that use their app store, and their decisions have next to no repercussions.
In our case, they’ve undone months of hard work and at no point have they taken even a few minutes out of their day to clarify why they abruptly removed us from the app store. Instead, they’ve chosen to be relentlessly vague in every request for clarification we’ve made.
If Apple are going to charge $99/year developer fee, then the least they could do is explain to their developers why they’ve changed their mind in wording we actually understand.
If anyone could tell us how they interpret ‘“Artificially manipulating the visibility of a third-party social media profile”, let us know in the comments, we still have no idea!
Future features: Self-tagging, private commenting and liking
If Apple ever decides that Verve is really no different from the other players and their Instagram integrations, then we had lined up a bunch more awesome features for Verve.
We were planning to introduce a self-tagging option to make it clear who’s who in the photos as well as the ability to comment and like each other photos, similar to Instagrams own UX, but all done privately within the Verve app.
We also wanted to move away from the dismissiveness of swiping. The swiping of profiles was great for introducing the concept of Verve and easy to sell people on the idea, but as Hinge has shown, a more purposeful press-to-like is probably the way to go for future dating apps.
