Get Ready for Peeple, the Controversial App That's "Yelp for People"

By Emilio Rodriguez

People can now rate each other.

Peeple, a new app, gives users the ability to rate other individuals based on a one to five star system. Its release is planned for late November.

The app is similar to popular social media. Anyone over the age of 21 with an established Facebook account and a real name can leave a review on the person they sat next to on the bus that day, their boss or any random person. Reviewing someone who isn’t in Peeple’s database only requires the phone number of the person.

If reviewers can prove they have some sort of relationship with a person not connected to the site they are allowed to leave comments about them.

Four days after the initial release announcement, CEO Julia Cordray described in a post published to LinkedIn that she, her family, the company and its investors were greeted with “extremely insulting comments” and death threats after an interview with The Washington Post where she nicknamed the app the “Yelp for people”. During the interview she emphasized that positive comments would post immediately in the app, and the negative ones would be queued for 48 hours.

The app will now focus on positive vibes and will be 100 percent opt-in. Users will be notified before a post is made about them, “there is no way to even make negative comments” Cordray added.

Last week, Peeple made it to the trending topics on Twitter, catching the eye of Trevor Browning who manages the “People vs. Peeple” Twitter page. He created the page to bring awareness to the app as he works on a way to shut it down.

“After reading through a few articles about the app, I was appalled. I’m all for progressing as a society, but an app to rate people? No, this is a big step backwards,” Browning said in an email.

Following the backlash, the company took down their Facebook and Twitter page. The Peeple website only shows the company logo with a message reading “Join the positive revolution #oct12”.