Inside Feeld's disaster of a rebrand
Weeks ago, Mashable reported that "dating app for the curious" Feeld partnered with users for a rebrand, with app updates coming in the following days. Not only did the relaunch take longer to roll out, but according to one employee, it's been a "complete shit show."
Problems with the app included Feeld sharing potential matches' exact locations instead of reporting how many miles away they were, which was the case in previous versions.
Mashable spoke with 10 Feeld users and two current Feeld employees about the hellish relaunch. The users said they wished to remain anonymous due to privacy concerns around their dating lives, while the employees wished to be anonymous so as to not jeopardize their jobs.
What went down on the Feeld
Users agree that Feeld was never perfect in terms of functionality. Prior to this debacle, the app was glitchy, but it was usable; examples users identified were crashing and forcing you to reopen the app or messages disappearing. Users said they were excited about the prospect of an app update to fix these snags. As it turns out, this update only created problems, with most users Mashable spoke to claiming the app is now unusable.
A Feeld spokesperson told Mashable that the entire company has been working "around the clock" to resolve the situation, echoing a statement by CEO Ana Kirova posted on December 3.
On November 30, Feeld posted on X (formerly Twitter) that the app is currently down for updates:
Tweet may have been deleted
This was apparently supposed to be a 12-hour shutdown (according to one user who spoke to Mashable and one on X) to get the app update running. But by December 1, users expressed that they still weren't able to access the app, evidenced by the replies to this post and other posts on X. The same day, Feeld announced the app rebuild in its online magazine, promising features like limitless gender changes and video messages.
Since then, however, people can't even seem to use basic functions of the app. Some can't log in at all or the app states that their accounts have been deleted — including members who pay for the app. (Majestic, the paid version of Feeld, costs $24.99 for 30 days, $42.99 for 90 days, or $124.99 for one year, the spokesperson told Mashable).
Feeld members have taken to social media — like official X and Instagram accounts, or the unaffiliated Feeld subreddit — to express their frustrations. The Feeld subreddit mod told Mashable that on a typical day, there's usually a handful of posts, but on the day of the update there were 300 — all about some issue or complaint. This resulted in a stickied Update Discussion thread, which currently has thousands of comments.
The problems range from minor to major. Perhaps the biggest safety concern is location-sharing. Prior to the rebuild, location was stated by miles away (i.e. "less than a mile away" or "5 miles away"), but when the app came back online, people's exact locations were listed instead.
"Finding out that people's exact locations were suddenly visible and not even being able to get into the app properly to try to fix this was really horrible and scary," said member Chloe Jones, a pseudonym, in an email.
To combat this in the short term, Feeld disabled location for everyone. According to the note from Kirova about the update issues, as of December 4, "The only time a name of a location will be included in your profile is if you are using our Locations feature to set a specific area to explore."
Feeld also said on Instagram that the distance users set to find matches is still respected, but commenters claimed some members showing up were not local to them due to lack of location-sharing.
Another privacy concern born out of the update is that people a member had previously disconnected from (Feeld's version of "unmatched") could now see that member's profile and photos. This was noticed by both an employee and an anonymous user who spoke to Mashable via email.
"There is some inherent safety [issue] around privacy here," the user wrote, "because someone jaded about being 'disconnected' certainly has available to them the means to screenshot profiles, falsely report the person who disconnected them, or the like."
Mashable also received a screenshot of a user's profile in which the age was listed as 17. The spokesperson confirmed it was a display error that has since been rectified.
Want more sex and dating stories in your inbox? Sign up for Mashable's new weekly After Dark newsletter.
Then there's the issue of Majestic members not being able to access paid features. The same anonymous user as above, who has been a Majestic member since 2018, said that paid users currently can't access Pings (Feeld's version of Super Likes) and they can't see who liked them, which are both paid features.
"These would be niceties anyways, even if being paid for, if not for the fact the app is borderline unusable on account of ridiculous lag/delay times while loading/navigating," that same user told Mashable.
A Feeld spokesperson told Mashable that the app has provided all Majestic members with complimentary Pings and is "exploring additional opportunities with more information to come." The app is governed by the Apple and Google app store rules for reimbursement and gifting.
The Apple App Store lists several Feeld updates in the last week, from version 7.0.0 (the initial update) to 7.0.2, which launched hours before publication:
When members reach out to the support email address (as the X account advises them to), they receive a canned response, sometimes more than once, they say. "I contacted the support email [five] times, they always give me the same recycled message from the CEO, irrelevant to my issue," another member said in an email. Mashable has reviewed the emails. Another user Mashable spoke to provided similar screenshots of the auto-response:
According to one Feeld employee who spoke with Mashable over the phone and WhatsApp, the customer service team was fired three months ago and outsourced to a third-party company. Feeld didn't respond to a direct question about this.
This compounds communication issues surrounding the release. Users are not just frustrated about the update itself, but also with how Feeld is publicly handling it.
According to one Feeld employee, the customer service team was fired three months ago and outsourced to a third-party company.
Since the app has been back online, there have been at least two X threads about the problems: one about hiding your profile from others (before location was disabled) on December 2, and another note from Kirova about the location update and how Feeld's team is working "around the clock to remedy all issues" on December 3. The same statement was posted to Instagram.
Kirova's December 3 note about the updates (which was updated December 4) identified specific problems in addition to location privacy: accessing one's account; login and registration issues (which Feeld said has been fixed); accessing connections (matches) and messages; slow message functionality; and arbitrary account deletions.
"The CEO's canned responses to this mess aren't helping anything," said Chris, a Feeld user since 2019, who said via X direct message that this situation is one of the biggest app blunders he's seen in a while.
As of publication, Feeld hasn't made any more public statements about the rollout. The spokesperson told Mashable that as Feeld's team continues to make adjustments, they will make their community aware of the updates.
"Users feel like they're being gaslit; the levels of anger in the community are huge, and in my view, entirely justified," Jones wrote. "Feeld likes to talk the talk about supporting marginalized identities and communities, but when the chips are down those are the exact people it has put most at risk — and nobody at Feeld seems to care."
"Users feel like they're being gaslit; the levels of anger in the community are huge, and in my view, entirely justified."
Lead up to the launch
Feeld launched in 2014 as 3nder, an app focused on couples finding their "unicorns" (thirds) for threesomes. After Tinder sued the company, the app rebranded as Feeld. In 2021, chief product officer Ana Kirova took over as CEO from her partner and founder of Feeld, Dimo Trifonov.
In 2022, the company hired CTO Andrew Santus and VP of Growth Jim Hustead. New leadership cared more about making money than the community Feeld fostered, two current employees told Mashable.
The employees told Mashable that Santus brought in Metalab as third-party interface contractors in mid-2022. One employee recalled over Reddit chat that at first Santus said the contractors were there to support internal engineers. The employees said it was then decided that the contractors would help Feeld staff rewrite the app's front and backend from scratch using different programming languages. Metalab hasn't responded to Mashable's questions or request for comment, and Feeld didn't respond to direct questions about Metalab.
The employees said late last year that Feeld developers using the old technology stack (tools to develop an app, like coding languages) were either fired or given new roles, and the quality assurance (QA) team was fired as well. Feeld didn't respond to direct questions about the firings.
A Feeld employee told Mashable that Metalab estimated an alpha version (internal test of a new product) would be ready in January 2023, but that never materialized. Neither did a beta release estimated for March. Meanwhile, the internal Feeld team — which faced more firings, workers quitting, or contracts running out — kept the old code of the app working. Slowly, according to one employee, more of the internal Feeld team worked on the rewrite as well.
Want more sex and dating stories in your inbox? Sign up for Mashable's new weekly After Dark newsletter.
According to employees, the launch of the rewrite faced delay after delay. The idea was to release on "Feeld's birthday," but that date kept being pushed back, too. Employees describe working long, exhausting hours for months to get the new version of the app completed.
Due to the lack of a QA team, the app rewrite didn't have extensive testing. Neither of the Feeld employees were surprised at the bugs present at relaunch, nor about the backlash. One of them has mixed feelings, because they want the app to work for its members and that's what they're pushing for, but they believe management is only pushing to fix the bugs because of potential loss of revenue.
In mid-November, Mashable reported on the app rebrand, which featured different fonts and visuals, with app updates coming "in the following days." That same day, Feeld hosted parties in cities like New York and Los Angeles to celebrate the rebrand. One employee told Mashable over WhatsApp that more money was pumped into these public events and in marketing than in fixing technical issues. Feeld's LinkedIn lists 23 employees associated with marketing and 16 in engineering as of this publication.
Days after the party, Feeld wrote in its magazine, "Everything is changing," describing the rebrand in terms of visuals and animations, but with no mention of the backend changes.
It seems that everything has changed — for the worse, some employees and users say. "This is beyond terrible. It is outrageous," one member told Mashable in an email after describing how a chat with a promising match disappeared. "And there goes another connection. I am heartbroken."
https://helios-i.mashable.com/imagery/articles/03icrhNHFeVwF67aNzUukRQ/hero-image.png
Comments
Post a Comment