Jakarta –
IRLan app social media from the United States suddenly went out of business. The reason is, this application was caught lying about the number of its users, which turned out to be 95% fake.
Before it closed, IRL was an app where young people could plan and search for real-world events. When the COVID-19 pandemic broke out, this application turned into a place to find online events such as online concerts, parties on Zoom, and others.
The pandemic hasn’t hindered IRL growth and the app has managed to rack up 20 million users. In June 2021, IRL also managed to raise USD 170 million in series C funding led by Softbank, with a total valuation of USD 1.17 billion.
But that success did not last long. According to a report by The Information, around last year IRL employees began to doubt the claims of IRL CEO and founder Abraham Shafi about the number of users of the application.
The suspicion pushed the board of directors IRL to conduct an internal investigation. They found 95% of the total 200 million IRL users were either automated accounts or from bots.
The United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is also investigating IRL to find out whether they misled investors and violated securities laws, as quoted from TechCrunch, Sunday (2/7/2023).
Internal problems at IRL have actually been detected since last year when they laid off 25% of their total employees. At that time Shafi tried to calm the remaining employees by saying the company still had enough money to survive until 2024.
An employee IRL said the company had more than USD 100 million in the bank. It is not known how much of the remaining money IRL has, but a company spokesperson said the funds would be returned to shareholders.
Now IRL has been officially shut down since last June 27. Users visiting the IRL.com site will be greeted with an announcement about the closing of the application’s services.
Watch Video “5 Antimainstream Applications Often Used for Cheating”
(vmp/vmp)
2023-07-02 03:00:08
#Critical #social #media #business #admitting #users #fake
