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Facebook acquires teen-favourite polling app tbh

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By John Glenday | Reporter

October 17, 2017 | 2 min read

Facebook has been quick off the draw by acquiring an anonymous polling app which has proven to be a viral hit with teenagers, just two months after its release.

Facebook, tbh

Facebook muscles in on teen-favourite polling app tbh

Tbh allows members to send positive feedback to friends by way of short anonymous surveys created by themselves, racking up over 5 million downloads and 1 billion messages over the course of its short life despite its deceptive simplicity and limited availability in the US.

Users can also set up their own polls but to curtail foul play these must be approved by the app team prior to publication, with an inherent emphasis on positivity in stark contrast to the often negative tone of content posted on Facebook itself.

For all this Facebook is believed to have paid less than $100m while relocating co-founders Nikita Bier, Erik Hazzard, Kyle Zaragoza, and Nicolas Ducdodon to its own headquarters to further develop the system.

Lauding the takeover tbh wrote in a statement: “While the last decade of the Internet has been focused on open communication, the next milestone will be around meeting people’s emotional needs…. When we met with Facebook, we realized that we shared many of the same core values about connecting people through positive interactions. Most of all, we were compelled by the ways they could help us realize tbh’s vision and bring it to more people.”

These words are clearly music to the ears of Facebook which has agreed to train 4,500 ‘digital ambassadors’ to weed out trolling, bullying and abuse on its platform.

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