“The goal is to connect people based on shared interests.”
Is news literacy trending?
Washington, D.C., residents are about to find out.
This Thursday, InPress—a unique blend of a news aggregator and dating app—is launching for Washington, D.C., residents. The app’s mission is to help users build meaningful connections—whether romantic or friendly—through their shared interest in journalism, says co-founder and CEO Adam Harder.
Like other dating apps, InPress users begin by creating a profile, uploading a few photos, and answering some questions. But here’s where it gets interesting: instead of swiping on photos, users browse a feed of news stories. They can react to these stories with emojis and rank them based on how interesting or important they find them. From there, the app’s AI kicks in to start the matchmaking process.
Among the stories featured in Thursday’s InPress feed are articles like “Kamala Harris’ election would defy history, only 1 sitting vice president has been elected president in 188 years” from PBS, “Zelenskyy to present Ukraine’s ‘victory plan’ to the U.S. in September” from Euronews, and “Here are the legal hurdles still standing between Trump and Election Day” from Politico. Other stories include local interest pieces such as “Your 2024 End-of-Summer DC-Area Bucket List” from Washingtonian and broader cultural topics like “Going solo: Are bands falling out of fashion?” from BBC News.
Harder, who has a background that includes several media roles and time spent as a broadcast journalist for the United States Air Force, conceived the idea for InPress just last year. The project is currently self-funded, supported by a team of seven part-time staffers who, for now, are volunteering their time. Harder hopes to secure venture capital in the fall, building on the $3,660 raised through an earlier IndieGogo campaign. Future revenue streams could include subscriptions, in-app advertising, content partnerships, and the sale of anonymized user data.
According to Harder, journalism serves as “the conduit to inform how any demographic feels emotionally toward any number of topics.” InPress sources its news feed from Opoint, a third-party global news service. The curated feed features 72 stories daily from a pool of 279 approved outlets. Excluded from the feed are stories from sources with strict paywalls like Bloomberg and The Wall Street Journal, non-participating outlets like The New York Times, and sites with intrusive ads and pop-ups. Harder aims to eventually partner with some of these excluded outlets to broaden InPress’s news offerings.
Washington, D.C., was chosen as the launch city for InPress partly because of its high concentration of avid news consumers, especially during an election year. The city also presents a unique dating landscape, making it an ideal test market for the app.
A significant challenge, Harder notes, is ensuring the AI doesn’t create matches based on shared interest in troubling news topics. “We don’t want people matching on things like school shootings,” he explains. “Imagine how off-putting and awful that would be. We want people to connect over tangible interests like rollerblading or indie music. Those shared interests are what open the door. Even if you have different philosophical views, these commonalities might lead you to connect with someone you wouldn’t typically notice on another dating app.”
