German mobile app Ohlala is one of the most controversial products that operates under the term of “online dating”.
The app works by men offering to pay for dates and female users accepting offers they are interested in, a model that has unsurprisingly led to it being called an “Uber for escorts” app.
Journalist Emily Yoshida recently spent some time with the founders of Ohlala in Berlin, meeting CEO Pia Poppenreiter in the aftermath of an episode at a NOAH tech conference after party, when an Ohlala marketing stunt turned into an “escort scandal”.
In the excellent longform article published on The Verge, Yoshida spends time getting to know Poppenreiter – who also launched the controversial Peppr app – looking into Ohlala’s methods and some of the moral issues surrounding the service, as well as speaking to a matchmaker & Ohlala member who has been using the app for a few months.
To read the full article, please click here.