Uh oh! If you posted your #2015bestnine on Instagram last year, you could be part of a new dating app.
Remember when, over the last few weeks of 2015, your friends (or perhaps you including) were flooding Instagram with a grid of 9 most-like Instagram pictures? You know, the one with the 3-image-by-3-image collages via 2015bestnine.com?
Whatever happened over this past year, be thankful 4 where it brought you.Where you are is where you're meant to be pic.twitter.com/YhZeH74BoD
— Kourtney Kardashian (@kourtneykardash) December 28, 2015
Well, it seems that it could be a trojan horse. What’s a “trojan horse”, you ask?
A trojan horse (or simply, trojan) in computing is any malicious computer program which misrepresents itself to appear useful, routine, or interesting in order to persuade a victim to install it. In not so many words, you’ve been duped.
All 15 million of you on Instagram. Including Kourtney Kardashian.
First reported by BuzzFeed News, the same service that provided the #2015bestnine Instagram collage now thinks that Instagram users can use those 9 photos to find a hot date. This is because the company behind it depended on #2015bestnine to go viral to drive the number of early sign-ups to a new dating app called Nine.
The 3-image-by-3-image collages that people posted on Instagram turned out to be Nine’s profile pictures. And the Tinder-style dating app proudly identifies itself as a way to help people meet other “interesting Instagrammers”.
Co-founder Yusuke Matsumura told BuzzFeed that the power of those grids is how they show off more of a person’s character and personality than the usual headshots we swipe left and right on. Which is great, but Nine’s method of getting people’s information might be a major turn-off for some users.
Still interested in this whole “best nine” thing? Get the Nine app via the App Store.
Sources: engadget, Macworld, BuzzFeed News.
