Masquerade – An App for Weak Ties
If Tinder and Yik Yak had a baby, it would be Masquerade.
Masquerade is a new social networking app that combines features of anonymity, proximity, and mutual selection to allow people to chat anonymously with people in their area and potentially reveal their true identities by “removing their mask” to make new connections. The app was developed by a former co-worker of mine, and though it is still in its infancy, it provides an innovative perspective on how we could establish or strengthen relationships and expand our social network in the future.
Masquerade operates by using the user’s location and basic information from their Facebook account (i.e. name, birthday, gender, education, likes, etc.) to construct a profile that will help the app filter potential matches for them to chat with. Results can be further filtered by widening the “Discoverability” range or only allowing matches of a certain gender. After preferences have been set up, Masquerade will return to the user a list of anonymous potential matches that they can begin chatting with, all under cheeky pseudonyms such as “Bashful Beyonce Kardashian” or “Cranky Andy Killa”. The app will usually initiate a conversation with an ice-breaker-esque question, and from there the user is free to talk about anything they want.
After a certain amount of time has passed, each user is given the option of reveal their true identity. If both parties mutually agree, then Masquerade will reveal more information about them, such has their real names, how many mutual friends they have, and how close they are to each other. If at least one party declines, however, both participants will remain anonymous.
Masquerade is an interesting app that expedites and simplifies the process of establishing a foundation of weak ties upon which people can either expand their social network, quickly develop stronger ties, or both. The fact that the app harnesses a user’s location to determine matches also increases the possibility that these weak ties could be strengthened offline.
Unlike other social networks, such as Facebook, Masquerade doesn’t really facilitate the formation of triadic closures. The anonymity of each user allows independent relationships to be quickly formed, but finding how these separate relationships relate to each other in more complex and expansive components isn’t guaranteed to be more likely. In a sense, I think Masquerade is more about creating bridges between different components in a network than really strengthening preexisting connections because it introduces you to people who share some of your similarities, but removes the awkward/nerve-racking social conventions of having to talk to a stranger.