Blind (app)

Blind

Founded	2013; 12 years ago (2013)
Headquarters	San Francisco, California, U.S.
Owner	Teamblind, Inc.
Founder(s)	Sunguk Moon Kyum Kim
Industry	Professional Networking
URL	www.teamblind.com

Blind is an app that provides an anonymous forum and community for verified employees to discuss issues. Users on Blind are grouped by topics, company and their broader industry. The app verifies that the registered users actually work in the company through their work email and claims to keep user identities untraceable. However, this claim remains disputable[1][2] on the basis of Blind being a closed source and with ties to South Korea, a country which enacts controversial defamation laws^[citation needed], which include defamation by factual information under article 307(1).

Blind was founded in 2013 by Sunguk Moon and Kyum Kim. In 2014, it initially launched in South Korea,[3][4] followed by the U.S. in 2015.[5] The company is based in San Francisco, California.[6]

The app has been in the news in multiple cases, noticeably when its anonymous surveys reveal the frank opinions of employees across industries. However, it is also used for more discussions about everyday topics such as salaries.[5]

According to its app pages on the iOS App Store and Google Play, it has registered employees from over 83,000 companies.[7] According to Forbes,[8] the app is being used worldwide and is influencing corporate decisions by giving executives information about employees' concerns.[9]

Employees from various companies have provided their input on situations at their workplace through the app's surveys and chats, including the Korean Air VP rage 7 sacking incident,[8][10][11] Uber sexual harassment claims,[12][13] Google memo,[14] and Amazon employment conditions and problems.[15]

References

1. "FAQ". Blind.
2. US patent 9439072B2, Moon, Seong Uk & Jeong, Yeong Jun, "System and method for authentication", issued 2016-09-06, assigned to Teamblind Inc 
3. Ashley O'Brien, Sara (February 12, 2018). "'Blind' App Lets Workers Talk About Their Companies Anonymously". CBS News.
4. Wong, Queenie (January 25, 2018). "Meet the CEO behind Blind, an anonymous chat app that has tech workers talking". Bay Area News Group.
5. Perry, Tekla S. (July 27, 2017). "Tech Workplace Gossip App Blind Opens to the Masses". IEEE Spectrum.
6. Hyun-su, Yim (October 11, 2022). "Blind: App that has everyone in the workplace talking". The Korea Herald.
7. "Your Anonymous Workplace Community - Blind". App Store. Apple Inc. Retrieved October 27, 2017.
8. Trieu, Rosa (June 2, 2016). "How Businesses Are Using Anonymous Blind App To Change Work Culture". Forbes. Retrieved October 27, 2017.
9. Kwaak, Jeyup S. (May 18, 2015). "Employees Vent Via 'Blind,' an Anonymous App". WSJ.
10. Loizos, Connie (October 30, 2015). "Talk With Your Colleagues Anonymously, With Blind". TechCrunch.
11. Flynn, Kerry (March 1, 2017). "Blind: The hot app where all the best Silicon Valley gossip is read right now". Mashable.
12. Bort, Julie (May 16, 2017). "Blind, the anonymous chat app once banned by Uber, is expanding". Business Insider.
13. Young-won, Kim (June 9, 2017). "Blind: The anonymous app that serves as Silicon Valley's gossip outlet". The Investor.
14. Bort, Julie (August 9, 2017). "Over half of Google employees polled say the web giant shouldn't have fired the engineer behind the controversial memo". Business Insider.
15. Kim, Eugene (December 11, 2016). "Hundreds of Amazon employees used an anonymous app to vent about how the recent suicide attempt was handled". Business Insider.

Further reading

• Kim, Heewon; Scott, Craig R. (2018). "Going Anonymous: Uses and Perceptions of Anonymous Social Media in an IT Organization". Proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Social Media and Society. pp. 335–339. doi:10.1145/3217804.3217940. ISBN 978-1-4503-6334-1. S2CID 169665693.
• Kim, Heewon; Leach, Rebecca (October 2020). "The role of digitally-enabled employee voice in fostering positive change and affective commitment in centralized organizations". Communication Monographs. 87 (4): 425–444. doi:10.1080/03637751.2020.1745859. S2CID 216537001.
• Kim, Heewon; Scott, Craig (July 31, 2019). "Change communication and the use of anonymous social media at work: Implications for employee engagement". Corporate Communications. 24 (3): 410–424. doi:10.1108/CCIJ-07-2018-0076. S2CID 199348833.
• Kuhs, Marcus D. (2021). "Blind Leading the Blind: A Case for a Legally Conscious, Anonymous Employment App" (PDF). The Journal of High Technology Law. 21 (2): 519–557.

External links

• Official website