Add Fling to the list of verbs you can use to share information online!

So one of the latest Apps to hit our screens is Fling – Message the world – yep that’s the tagline. Quite appropriate we have to say, because this little app allows you to basically share your thoughts, ideas, pictures and videos, with 50 complete strangers in your near vicinity, who have downloaded the app. If they like what you fling their way, they can respond and a conversation starts.

For a change the app doesn’t focus on the fact that your content is destroyed after a specific time scale, you can come back to your Flings at any point. But it does focus on potentially Flinging your content to some strange people. Our founder in the UK Wayne has been testing the App and has decided that he most definitely won’t be replying to some of the flings he received. He’d only been testing it a couple of hours and the number of pictures of genitalia was worrying.

Backing this up is one of the reviews left on the iTunes store for Fling – seems that flinging pictures of one’s member is popular on the app as per Charlie88w’s review, he outlines two of the issues with the app. No age verification means that at 13 years old there are  no issues downloading the app and that means that as a 13 year old,  they could receive far too many images of inappropriate parts of the male anatomy.  The other reviews on the iTunes store don’t provide much impetus to download the app even just to test it. It doesn’t seem to work properly and is almost a BETA version, which it can’t be, as that is against the T’s&C’s of the iTunes store.

The idea behind this App seems to be a good one, it fosters potential conversation with people. Admittedly you have no idea what kind of people and unfortunately in this day and age, there is a high probability that those people on the app in your vicinity might not be the kind of person you would normally associate with. But if we try and give humanity the benefit of the doubt, you may just strike up a flinging conversation of some meaning. Or at the very least someone might see a picture of you in front of a famous tourist attraction and direct you to the great little coffee shop they unearthed when at the same attraction.

Regardless of the issues with the App actually working it has seen a over 375,000 downloads and purports to have 180,000 active users and that’s really only a month and a half after launching. With this in mind, the way we use or mis use the app is what could cause problems, rather than the app itself. Due to the fact that you are not sure who you are flinging too, there is the potential for anonymous cyberbullying and general abuse (albeit random) to happen.

We would advise, as we do with all the apps and tools we look at and review, to adopt our Take Time To Think policy. The random nature of the flinging could incite users to fling with careless abandon, but do take the time to think about what you are about to put out there in the public domain. Would you take that picture or video and show it to people offline?  Would you say what you are about to fling out loud in person? If not, don’t fling it!

STOP | THINK | POST (or fling)