QuizUp’s Answer to Trivia Crack: Beefing Up Its Social Network

QuizUp is, ostensibly, a game.

Specifically, it’s a trivia game, pitting two players head-to-head in questions about topics they’re interested in. These days, though, another competitive trivia game is ruling the charts, so QuizUp creator Plain Vanilla Games has to differentiate itself. The end result: Amped up social features that suggest using the game as a way to meet new people.

“Something like 10 marriages have happened because of QuizUp,” Plain Vanilla CEO Thor Fridriksson said in an interview with Re/code. “We want to emphasize those connections between people, and create a platform that always revolves around your interests.”

The new version of the app, launching today, features a Tumblr-style news feed within each trivia category, which is then aggregated into an overall news feed for each user. Each category now looks like an app store app, with a stylized icon to boot. And in addition to being matched with existing friends or random strangers, players can now search for quizzing partners using filters that would not look out of place in a dating app (pictured above).

“The whole mission here is to break some barriers,” Fridriksson said.

Gone completely, not that many will miss them, are the in-app purchases that had let players pay to gain experience points in trivia categories more quickly. Instead, Plain Vanilla is continuing to partner with companies to make sponsored trivia categories, as it did with HBO for “Game of Thrones.” After each week’s episode of the TV show, Fridriksson noted, the “Game of Thrones” trivia category is updated with new screencaps of what happened.

The QuizUp update is set to roll out to iOS and Android today, and a Web version of the game/social network will also be launching soon.

This article originally appeared on Recode.net.