THE SPY WHO TAGGED ME
Social-media app lets users film their neighbors and earn a bit of cash
If you’ve got a smartphone, you’ve got a PI in your pocket.
Slammed with apartment showings and paperwork, real estate broker Kyle Haas had no time to head to the Lower East Side and check on a building’s construction progress for a client looking to move. So, he hired someone to beam live video of the building from the street directly to his phone using a new app called Mole.
“This is a timesaver for me . . . a money saver as well,” said the Compass broker, who added that at just $4, “[it’s] certainly less than a cab.”
Debuted in July and billed as the “Uber for eyeballs,” Mole allows users (called “moles”) to connect in the app with “agents,” who stream live locations from their phones with the purpose of giving “people the ability just to see something simple through someone else’s smartphone,” the app’s founder, Avery Pack, told The Post.
The uses of the app run the gamut. Moles might want to take in a favorite city landmark virtually, for instance, or check to see if the nanny is really at the park with their kid. For Pack, 42, it was key that the connection between moles and agents remains anonymous.
“That peek of something has some value to someone else, and who are we to judge?” said Pack, who added that the app now boasts more than 5,000 users.
One is Sam Puckowitz, a 19-year-old Manhattan native home for the summer from the University of Chicago. He received a request from a mole to check and see if the statue of Christopher Columbus still stood following the height of the Black Lives Matter protests in June.
“That was pretty interesting,” said Puckowitz, adding that, given the app’s anonymous mole-toagent relationship, he didn’t know why the user specifically requested to see that statue. “[I took] a little video and stayed there for a bit.”
Puckowitz has found that users request views for certain conveniences. While out on the Upper East Side, a mole tapped Puckowitz to see if there was a long line at an Insomnia Cookies. “Time is money in New York,” he said. The app charges a minimum of $1.50 for the connection between mole and agent, then an additional 50 cents per minute for streaming.
“You do it casually throughout the day,” said Puckowitz. “You can make some cash.”
Nyle Hutchinson, a George Washington University sophomore who’s taking classes from home in Mount Vernon, NY, also tested out the app over the summer. He fires up the app during his frequent walks through Central Park.
He had at least one request related to the pandemic, he said — to see if people in Sheep Meadow were wearing masks. On another occasion, a mole asked Hutchinson, 19, to jog around the park’s reservoir for several minutes.
“I rarely get the reasoning for why,” he said of these requests, which also included visiting the Grand Central Apple Store to see if it had closed.
Another feature on the app is called a “tunnel,” where agents can broadcast a live feed to everyone on the app. Puckowitz took one of his own recently at Bloomingdale’s.
“It was super empty, the store just feels different,” he said.
Realizing that what you see is interesting to strangers is “really satisfying,” Puckowitz said. “It’s like I’m in my own little movie.”