Tangled Interwebs

Amino vs. Communities of Divine Design

When Jay Stockwell moved to a new city with his wife, he had trouble meeting new people. He worked from home, and only made new friends when random events brought him in contact with a potential friend—someone who listened to the same music, for example, or played the same sport or shared a common interest. It seemed odd to him that something as important to health and happiness as relationships would be left to chance, and so the veteran innovator and behavioral scientist teamed up with data scientist Cameron Slabosz, and in 2015 the two created Affinity, a social media app designed to automate what he had formerly left to happenstance: locating like-minded people based on affinities. Or, as the...