LAWRENCE, Kan. – When Adrienne Strobel found out about Lulu, she thought it might help her friends find the right person.
“You could go in knowing if he got a 10 out of 10 on Lulu, he must be a pretty good guy,” Strobel said.
Lulu is an app that works through Facebook and allows women to rate their male Facebook friends based on six main criteria: humor, manners, ambition, sex, commitment, and appearance.
“Lulu really grew from the personal experience of our founder,” said Lulu spokesperson, Deborah Singer.
The app was invented after a Valentine`s Day girls only brunch, and founder Alexandra Chong wanted an easier way to give honest feedback about guys, either to warn girls or encourage them to give someone a try.
“They’re great guys in a girl’s life, usually friends, that she just really wants to get that out there for other women to discover,” Singer explained.
The idea took off, first on college campuses, now in bigger cities. It’s been downloaded more than five million times.
Adrienne says she loves feeling like a semi-matchmaker.
“If they’re your friend, then you obviously want to give them a good review, if they’re a good guy because you want other girls to see that,” Strobel said.
If they have some problem areas, though, girls are encouraged not to hold back.
“Not necessarily mean, but just more truthful and honest because it’s 100% anonymous,” she explained.
So what do guys think of Lulu?
“We find that guys really like to be on Lulu, they see the value of Lulu, they get discovered by millions of girls,” Singer said.
The app gives limited access to guys, who can build their own mini-profile or remove themselves entirely.
“We’ve made it really easy for any guy who doesn’t want to be on Lulu to get off immediately,” Singer said.
Adrienne said she found herself a little surprised by her boyfriend’s reviews.
“It’s like kind of funny to see what other girls have rated him because like maybe some girls did not think he’s funny, because he has a dry sense of humor, which I think is hilarious,” Strobel explained.
But she says most reviews have been pretty right-on, and that`s the goal of Lulu to get honest feedback and real-life references for potential boyfriends.
“We get references for jobs, for houses, for babysitters, it makes perfect sense that we’d want references for something as important as dating,” said Singer.
