Raya is a dating app with around ten thousand subscribers and at least one hundred thousand people waiting to enter, many of whom are likely to be turned down. It has existed since 2015 and describes itself as “the app of an exclusive online community for organizing appointments, meeting people and making new friends”. In recent years it has often been referred to as the “Tinder of the Illuminati”, but Billboard wrote that “it looks more like a secret society than Tinder”.
To join Raya you have to be very beautiful, very famous, very popular on Instagram or very interesting for what you are or do in life. One of these things is often not enough, because to enter you have to go through a difficult selection. Among the members of Raya there are actors, sportsmen and musicians, but also models, influencers and executives of important Californian companies. Like on Tinder, for two people to interact, both need to agree.
There is little information on Raya. Subscribers are prevented from revealing things about the app – the punishment is the removal of the precious account – and it's in the owners' interest to leave an aura of mystery and elitism around the app. Just as it happened for the Fight Club – which had as its first and second rule the “never talk about the Fight Club”, and new people arrived at every meeting – also Raya started talking precisely because there was little talk of it. The New York Times and TechCrunch, one of the most important technology sites in the world, recently wrote about it. Both articles, by Kevin Roose and Josh Constine respectively, told how the app, available only for Apple devices, is made and who manages it.
There are other apps similar to Raya, which select users based on certain parameters of beauty, wealth or intelligence: Beautiful People, Sparkology, Mensa Match, The League (the largest, which is perhaps not a great record for an app that focuses on exclusivity) and Luxy, who describes herself as a “Tinder without the poor”. Raya, however, is not based on a single parameter: having a Lamborghini is not enough, being a model is not enough. Furthermore, according to the New York Times, “it could be the first app to have successfully created an atmosphere of intimacy and trust without revealing almost anything about itself.”
In February 2015 Raya was promoted as a dating app – straight or gay – for “people in the creative industry”. Since January 2017 it has added the “Work” section and talks about itself as a dating app of all kinds, including work. He started getting noticed by a larger audience than his potential members in late 2016 when he bought Chime, a video messaging app developed by Jared Morgenstern, a former Facebook employee. Since then Raya has added the ability to locate other subscribers who have agreed to be located on a map (it works better in Manhattan than Voghera) and the ability, a bit like on Tinder, to pay extra to send a direct request. to another member.
The name “Raya” comes from the Hebrew word meaning “friend”. The company is headquartered in Los Angeles, California and has 13 full-time employees. Raya has a very affordable cost, despite the exclusivity of the service: $ 7.99 per month and $ 2.99 for each direct contact request (the one that is the Super Like on Tinder). The company doesn't say how much money it spends or makes, but told the New York Times that it plans to go profitable by 2018 after its early investments. It added it could start making money by hosting private parties, meetings and events. to its members.
All those who are not in Raya but would like to enter can go to the site, download the app and enter the requested information. The site explains that requests are processed by an algorithm and by an analysis made by some already registered users, who can vote whether or not to accept a new member. There are 500 users who act as selectors and the New York Times wrote that they are part of a “secret committee”. Among the factors taken into account by the algorithm are the number of followers an applicant has on Instagram, the users of Raya they already know and other “qualities” rated by app members. The app recently introduced the friend pass: the possibility for those who are already registered to choose only one non-member to recommend. The friend pass, however, allows you to overcome the queue of people waiting and be evaluated immediately, but it is not certain that you will then be admitted.
Once on the site, the rules are simple: you must avoid annoying or upset other users and it is forbidden to take and disseminate screenshots of conversations or profiles of other subscribers. Stassi Schroeder, an American host with over a million followers on Instagram, said she was removed from the site after publicly saying she had a conversation in Raya alongside swimmer Ryan Lochte, winner of six Olympic gold medals. Raya says, however, that generally all users behave well and that only in one case out of 11 thousand are there people who call the app's attention to the incorrect behavior that someone has after a match (a meeting).
Kevin Roose, the New York Times reporter, wrote that he requested several times to speak to Raya's bosses. At one point he was contacted by Daniel Gendelman, 34, who told him he was the founder of the app and invited him for coffee in Venice Beach, Los Angeles. Gendelman told Roose that he had made up his mind to tell a few things about the company to correct false information circulated over the years about his project. He added that he had the idea for Raya in 2013, when he was in Israel for a pause for reflection after the failure of his previous startup, Yello. He said he thought about the fact that the more famous someone was, the more troublesome it was to go to Tinder. He therefore decided to “try to solve the big problem of a small group of people”.
Roose wrote that Gendelman sees Raya as “a kind of digital Davos”; Gendelman told him that he believes the app “can allow someone to make the encounter that changes their life.” Gendelman also specified that the app is not designed “to make people of the jet-set find an appointment”, which rejects “many people who have a yacht or a private plane” and that “having many followers on Instagram is not a pre -required and not even to be absurdly beautiful “.
Thanks to the meeting with Gendelman, Roose was able to have a free inscription to Raya, to understand how it works. However, he had to promise not to reveal the names of the members. Roose agreed, but in his article there is a link to an article on the Nylon site that mentions, among Raya members: Cara Delevingne, Sharon Stone, Ruby Rose, Alexander Wang, Moby, Elijah Wood and Zach Braff. Other sites say Lewis Hamilton, Demi Lovato, Amy Schumer, Skrillex, Chelsea footballers, NASA scientists, poets and poets, Sports Illustrated swimwear models, would also be in Raya.
Roose wrote that after creating his own profile – a gallery of his own images scrolling with a song of his choice in the background – he came across' a top-notch musician, several TV personalities, a well-known comedian, two football players and a important executive of a company in Silicon Valley ”. But he wrote that he also saw many non-famous people and that each was “either a very beautiful person or one of those people who attract very beautiful people.” He wrote that the introductory message from a well-known director is “I run things” and that a well-known TV actress wrote about herself: “I like carbohydrates.” He wrote that after a few weeks of use he had “a great desire to go to the gym and start using skin creams”.
Roose also spoke of an aspiring member who tried to pay up to 10,000 to get into Raya and some people who managed to get in. For example Terence Telle, “who has the perfect turtle and a wonderful jaw” and on Tinder said he had problems because people didn't believe he was really the one in the picture. He said he felt much better in Raya – “I've had matches with a lot of models and even a famous person” – but stopped using the app after starting a relationship with a girl. Céline Bossart, journalist-sommelier, said that “Raya keeps her reputation” and that “people are generally polite, classy”: “I've never found anyone who was really an asshole,” she said.
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Raya therefore seems to be able to deliver what she promises. The problem is that an elite app cannot grow too much, otherwise it loses its main attractive force. As Roose wrote, “Gendelman is in the rare position of leading a social network that, to be successful, does not have to grow.”
