Do you remember Friend? The Friend that launched an AI pendant, spent $1.8 million of its $2.5 million in funding to acquire friend.com, and plastered the NYC subway with ads promoting artificial companionship?
Yeah well, if you didn’t remember, Friend is back. And now, it’s twice the price.
This morning, Friend launched a new ad showing two people talking to their Friend pendants about very personal life problems. It didn’t say it explicitly, but the ad showcased a new feature the pendant now includes: a speaker. Before, Friend would only message back to you, but now, it will talk to you, too. For some reason, the addition of that feature is apparently worth $120, as the originally $129 product now costs $249.
The re-launch comes about nine months after a large Friend protest took place in NYC, where protestors tried to bring attention to our growing dependance on technology. Friend was the obvious target, considering it had spent a boatload of money advertising throughout the city. Its founder, Avi Schiffmann, even posted an image promoting the protest, and showed up to it himself.
Shiffmann posted a tweet of the new ad, calling it “Friend 2.0,” even though the product is still just called “Friend” on its site. Presumably, this is because of the new speaker and the new $10 per month subscription, that lets the pendant remember conversations for longer than 30 days.
I’m sure things will go much better this time.