Raya is the new online-dating app that you probably can’t join.
On their About page, Raya describes itself as “an exclusive platform for people in creative industries.” Bustle.com calls the dating platform “Tinder For Famous People.”
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Unlike Tinder, which connects to your Facebook account, Raya links to your Instagram account. The Raya team argues that they use Instagram because "it is by far the most creative and expressive network with wide adoption.”
Similar to scoring that dream job or internship, acceptance into Raya is all about who you know.
In order to become a part of this exclusive, online community, you must meet a certain number of qualifications. What matters in your application is your Instagram following, which current members referred you to Raya, and how many of your Instagram followers already belong to Raya. After they collect your stats, the secret Raya committee either declines or accepts your application based on your qualifications.
If you are one of the lucky few accepted into Raya—congrats! But there's a catch. In order to begin using the service, you are responsible for paying a monthly fee. Raya never wants to have to advertise in order to maintain the site—another feature that separates them from Tinder.
Raya is also much stricter on its rules of use in comparison to Tinder. If you screenshot a user’s profile, you get a notification threatening to kick you off of Raya. The app wants to protect its users' identities as much as possible, especially if you're swiping through such high-profile clientele.
There is logic to Raya's exclusivity, however. If you are one of these so-called “creative influcencers” that Raya looks for, then you don’t want to be wasting your time swiping through randos in your hometown that you would never date anyway. On Raya, you’ll be running into semi-famous celebrities (Hello Raven Symoné and Kelly Osbourne) and hopefully matching with them.
“We’ll never have as many members as most other apps," says Raya, "and we want to keep it that way.”
