There’s an app for everything it seems…including telling you how you rank on the ugly-ometer.

Ugly Meter isn’t a new app, but it has been rising to prominence in recent times in the wake of coverage on shows such as Howard Stern and Jay Leno, and it now claims to have more than 5m users. But interestingly, as a paid app, it says it has now raked in more than $500,000 based on the $0.99 and $4.99 (pro) asking price, as reported in today’s Daily Mail.

The premise behind the app is pretty simple – it snaps your picture, scans it and then tells you how ugly you are on a scale of 1 to 10:

To add insult (literally) to emotional injury, it also qualifies the grade by telling you how ugly you are. For example ‘the doctors went on strike when your mother went into labor’, is one of the witty remarks.

Interesting, too, is that Ugly Meter is currently sitting at No. 26 in China’s App Store, and No. 25 in the US…but it isn’t even in the UK’s top 200. Does this mean that folk in the UK don’t care how ugly they are…or simply that the recent wave of publicity has yet to extend fully to British airwaves? We’ll likely find out soon…we’ll keep our eyes on the UK App Store.

At any rate, this is an interesting story for one reason. It has tapped into a fundamental human curiosity – namely, ‘how attractive am I?’, and relied on the fact that people will be happy to pay $0.99 (£0.69 GBP) to discover how ugly or not they are. And perhaps even pay for the pro version to get a full explanation of the results based on their facial structure.

Apparently, the app made $80,000 in just one day following a mention on Howard Stern’s US radio show. So, PR+ego+app=$$$$.

➤ Ugly Meter

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