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On July 25, the company behind the app Tea Dating Advice admitted it had been hit with a major data breachwhich sounds like a disaster for an app trying to make a name for itself as a safe digital space for women to privately discuss, or red-flag, potential dates. And indeed, an app many had never heard of abruptly became a hot topic, not only criticized for the breach but also questioned over whether its whole Yelp for men approach was a good idea in the first place. On the other hand, a week later the app is still hovering near the top of app download chartsin the third slot on Apples App Store as of July 31. Good idea or not, Tea has in some sense never been more popular than it is now, in the immediate aftermath of a brand catastrophe. Notoriety attracting attention is hardly new, and pretty much every social media app has contended with a hack or breach or other bad publicity. One memorable example: Snapchat, whose brand promise is wrapped up in privacy, saw thousands of users accounts hacked and private photos leaked in an early-2010s incident dubbed the Snappeningand active users on iOS actually rose. Snap was still relatively young at the time, and the high-profile incident no doubt alerted people to the existence of a clever new communication tool. It may not be strictly true that all publicity is good publicity, but theres been some research exploring the idea. A 2011 study from the Stanford Graduate School of Business found that in some cases negative publicity can increase sales when a product or company is relatively unknown, simply because it stimulates product awareness. As a comparison point, the researchers documented how previously obscure books hit with high-profile negative reviews actually enjoyed better sales. The effect with brands can be similar, one of the researchers explained: This suggests that whereas the negative impression fades over time, increased awareness may remain, which can actually boost the chances that a product will be purchased. THE RIGHT PROBLEM This may apply to Tea, because up until a week ago it wasnt particularly well known. The news of the breach disaster didnt undercut a highly popular brandit introduced a brand to a much bigger audience. And some of that audience was (and is) looking for solutions to exactly the problems Tea is trying to address. That doesnt mean Tea will get it right in the long run, but whatever you make of Teas approach, there seems to be real demand for a dating-safety tool of some kind. Tea launched in 2023 as a kind of app version of private Are we dating the same guy? groups on Facebook and elsewhere online, where women share information to vet potential dates. The ostensible motive is to root out abusive men, cheaters, and other red flags. More than a few men have found this practice unfair and invasive, even libelous. Some are enraged. Naturally that stark divide applied to Tea, which had been the subject of online chatter and social media pro-and-con buzz in the days leading up to the breach, posting on its Instagram account that it had 900,000 names on its waiting list. The controversy (and enraged male backlash) seems to have fueled the breach, which was strikingly malicious in form. Tens of thousands of leaked Tea user images and even IDs shared on forums like 4chan were used by various bad actors to publicly mock, harass, or otherwise attack Tea users. The site 404 Media, which broke the news, reported that a second breach involved thousands of direct messages within the app, including intensely personal and sensitive information. A class-action suit has already been filed against Tea Dating Advice. The basic idea of providing women with a tool for communicating about problematic potential dates sounds straightforward enoughparticularly given that many women feel dating sites arent necessarily a safe way to meet men. But the potential pitfalls are just as obvious: False accusations are easy and potentially quite damaging, and theres little sense of due process or accountability. Some critics argue that the approach fosters an incurious, and even potentially combative, dating dynamic, and that the whole concept of anonymously rating other people in secret is just a bad idea. That said, responding to women who are trying to steer clear of abusive men by launching corrosive personal attacks on them isnt a very persuasive rejoinder. In fact, if you need an explanation for the continuing demand for tools to avoid being harassed by toxic men, look no further than this breach. Tea may not prove capable of solving these problems, but for the momentpartly because of the breachno other brand is better known for trying.
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E-Commerce
A new 3D-printed model takes advantage of the design of the Nintendo Switch 2’s snap-on magnetic controllers by turning the video game console into a french fry holder.The GamiFries rig has magnetic connectors that allow the Switch 2’s controllers and screen to snap on in two modes, handheld and controller.It’s built to hold a medium-size order of fries, with a circular carve-out thats perfectly positioned to show the McDonald’s golden arches logo. An anonymous user with no other post history uploaded the model as a free download with fair-use promotional images in McDonald’s red and yellow.[Image: user7R135/MakerWorld]“We’re fans of 3D-printed models and how we can use them to bring ideas to life, especially for small-scale fabrication,” the creator behind the model told Fast Company in an email. “You can have an idea and suddenly it becomes a product. Then you have to hope that people find it funny or useful.”The Switch 2 has inspired a host of 3D-printed accessories on sites like MakerWorld since Nintendo released the console in June. The Switch 2 sold 1.6 million units in the U.S. in one month, making it the fastest-selling gaming hardware in U.S. history, and it’s become the fastest-selling Nintendo console of all time globally. [Image: user7R135/MakerWorld]GamiFries joins gaming chopsticks holders, a Pizza Hut video game pizza warmer, and Nintendo Switch soda cups as the latest innovation in gaming-snack accessories, a novelty category well suited for fast food like french fries. It’s also especially well suited for streamers.A 2023 U.K. report by the entertainment wiki hosting site Fandom found “gamers are 50% more likely than the average person to value taste over nutrition,” while gamers’ top snack purchases trend toward salty (41%) over sweet (33%).Seems like gamers might just be natural spokespeople for fast-food and snack brands that want to get their products in front of consumers.
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E-Commerce
After two decades as an industrial designer working on products like augmented reality glasses Lauryn Morris was ready for a change. I was really becoming jaded with the status quo of the linear economy, she says. Most products still take a one-way journey from raw materials to a landfill. Sustainabilityincluding what happens at a products end of lifeis usually an afterthought. Morris had seen the impact of climate change firsthand, when a wildfire in 2020 burned through a property that she and her husband own near Los Angeles. And she wanted to rethink her role as a designer. I wanted to not be part of the problem anymore, she says. I wanted to counter all of the waste that I was a part of over the last 20 years, and then show other people in the hardware world how we could challenge it and think differently. Lauryn Morris In 2023, she took a sabbatical to explore what she wanted to work on next. She took time to rechargeworking with her hands and spending time outsidewhile reading as much as she could about climate solutions. She went through the Climatebase fellowship, a 12-week accelerator program that helps professionals pivot to careers focused on climate. She could have taken several different paths. But she ended up taking inspiration from her own life: She loves driving vintage cars, and she wanted to find a way to help convert more existing cars on the road to EVs. Right now, EV conversions are typically custom projects. Morris had looked into converting her own car, a gas-guzzling 1975 Datsun, to electric. I started calling shops in Southern California and found two-year-long wait lists and really high price tags, she says. Auto shops do long, complicated, bespoke conversions and full restorations. Alternatively, there are companies that sell DIY kits for consumers to convert some models, like VW Beetles. But those hobbyist projects can also take months or years in a garage. [Photo: Dan Coronado/courtesy Nice] Its never really been interesting to me to do small projects, Morris says. Thats where the industry has been with gas-to-electric conversion. I wanted to take my experience working in mass production and apply principles of scale to reuse. How can we remanufacture things at scale? She saw the opportunity to make the idea of EV conversions mainstream. “I think that designers and product strategists are the missing key to make circularity more desirable and more normal for the way that we all consume products,” she says. While it’s not realistic to convert every car on the road to electric, Morris argues that conversions can make a “significant dent” in the adoption of EVs. She launched a startup called Nice (a reference to what people would say when they pulled up next to her vintage Datsun at traffic lights in L.A.: Nice car.) In 2024, the startup joined the Los Angeles Cleantech Incubator to pilot the idea, starting with a 1987 Suzuki Samurai. The car is a cult favorite. Its really unique looking compared to modern vehicles, Morris says. Its a cute little boxy SUV. And its not rare. The idea is finding identical vehicles to convert in batches. [Photo: Dan Coronado/courtesy Nice] The company’s process involves doing R&D oncefiguring out where a battery and electric motor can fit, and the exact configuration neededand then repeating the process, making it both faster and more affordable. As the company moves forward, it will focus on cars that are newer and even more plentiful on the road, making it easier to scale. Currently the team is working on the first challenge: building the infrastructure to easily source used parts from retired Teslas or other electric cars. Our pilots with Suzuki Samurais proved the demand. People loved them,” Morris says. “I cant tell you how many people have reached out to have their Samurais converted. But the real bottleneck wasnt interest. It was infrastructure. When Nice converted its first two Samurais using the same process and parts, the cars performed differently because the second-life batteries they were using were different. “We found that the information we were able to get from the suppliers who were selling those second-life parts was very minimal,” Morris says. “There’s not a lot of transparency.” [Photo: Sarah Lyon/courtesy Nice] If you buy a used battery from a Tesla Model S, for example, you won’t know what year it was made or how it was used, from the climate it was driven in to how it was charged. More detailed diagnostics are possible but aren’t commonly used by resellers. So Morris is building a platform that can reclaim parts and certify their performance. Beyond cars, the second-life batteries can be used for energy storage. Some used EV batteries have enough life left to be a good fit for use in another car, while others are too drained but could still be used for years to store energy. [Photo: Sarah Lyon/courtesy Nice] “We’re seeing these two massive trends converge,” Morris says. “Hundreds of thousands of EVs are starting to age out of their warranty. The first wave of EVs is now retiring, and so there’s just this big wave of end-of-life EVs. Then we’re also seeing this exponential growth and demand for energy storage.” While others, like Redwood Materials, are beginning to use second-life batteries for large data centers, Nice plans to serve the thousands of commercial and industrial applications that need the same batteries but can’t easily source them. For most customers today, sourcing parts is still a game of guesswork and finger-crossing,” Morris says. “Thats the gap Im focused on closing as a founder: building the connective layer between salvage supply and second-life demand, and ensuring these assets are accessible, safe, and reliable far beyond EV conversions. The challenge, she says, is not so different than other projects she’s worked on in the past. “I just find it so fun and invigorating and energizing to learn about something really complex,” she says. “I didn’t get into augmented reality or head-worn computing knowing everything there is to know about computer vision and display technology, but you learn it along the way. It’s the same principle, where you study and understand the subject matter and think about what the goals are, what the value propositions are.” But Morris is more focused now on the bigger picture. “I realized that my role going forward in my career needs to be less about designing a new beautiful object and more about designing a system and looking at the value chain across all of these objects that we need in our lives,” she says. “There’s nothing wrong with these products being in our lives. But the people responsible for making themindustrial designers, engineersare uniquely positioned to advocate for challenging that status quo of linear thinking.”
Category:
E-Commerce
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