Couple, formerly known as Pair, the couples mobile app, has reached the 1 million user milestone. A year after it was started, the service appears to have flourished as a means to allow two people in a relationship to keep in touch.
Originally known as Pair, this iOS and Android app centers around letting you interact with your significant other in a way you probably wouldn’t on other services like Facebook or even Path. As we described it last year, it’s “Facebook for lovers” or “Path for couples”. Within the first few days, it saw more than a million messages sent through its platform. Today, the service is known as Couple, having rebranded after it acquired a UK-based rival service called Cupple earlier this year.
Y Combinator company Tenthbit created the service enabling couples to stay connected by allowing them to schedule dates, reminders, set up unlimited lists to post memos and to-do notices, create sketches, and messaging. Interestingly enough, a lot of users who are engaged in long-distance relationships are finding the service to be more useful than simply sending text messaging to one another.
As TNW’s Matthew Panzarino said earlier:
But there is something to be said for a mobile repository that is accessed only by two people who are intimate. I find myself sharing pictures, video, text, location and other items in separate apps with my wife. Having a single location with which to do so, and keep her more abreast of what I’m doing without the impersonality of a public network is appealing.
Couple tells us that most of its users are based in the United States. However, the app has also been featured in the UK by Apple and in approximately 80 other countries, increasing its usage in places like Europe and Asia.
The service is not focused on monetizing its product quite yet, but one of the things that it plans on doing is selling virtual gifts — something co-founder Oleg Kostour alluded to during our call, where he said that while people are used to getting gifts in real life when they’re in a relationship, Couple could pick up on that trend from a virtual perspective. Kostour says that any update to the service will be done to help close the tie and the bond between two people and allow them to reminisce.
But while today might be a great day for Couple, it still faces a flurry of competitors in the relationship social network space, including from companies like Duet and Between, or Avocado.
The company to date has raised $4.2 million in seed funding from investors like CrunchFund, SV Angel, Lerer Ventures, Founder Collective, Path founder Dave Morin, FriendFeed co-founder Paul Buchheit, and others.
Photo credit: Dan Kitwood/Getty Images
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