Millennials are bringing astrology back into the mainstream with this popular iPhone app — here's how to use Co-Star to see who you're compatible with
- Astrology has become an increasingly popular fascination among millennials, even generating memes.
- One such app that's benefited from the craze is Co-Star, which provides hyper-personalized horoscopes to its millions of users.
- Here's how the app works, and how you can use it to check your so-called compatibility with friends and love interests.
- Visit BusinessInsider.com for more stories.
Millennials have been accused of killing everything from beer to Applebee's to fabric softener, but astrology is one industry that's benefited greatly from our changing interests.
Even Silicon Valley has taken notice, and venture capitalists are starting to put money into astrology — an estimated $2.1 billion "mystical services market," as one investor recently put it. One of the companies that has capitalized on the craze is Co-Star, an increasingly popular astrology app that recently announced it had raised over $5 million in funding from prominent VC firms such as Maveron and Aspect Ventures.
The concept of Co-Star is simple: providing users with real-time horoscopes and birth charts they can compare with others to see their compatibility. It might sound simple, but people are loving Co-Star: The app has been downloaded more than three million times since it launched in late 2017.
"Then there's something that's happened in the last five years that's given it an edginess, a relevance for this time and place, that it hasn't had for a good 35 years," astrologer Chani Nicholas told The Atlantic in 2018, discussing the recent rise in interest around astrology. "Millennials have taken it and run with it."
It doesn't matter if users are true believers in astrology or not — it's the accessibility of the pseudo-science and its personality predictions that have made it a hit with millennials.
Here's how to use the Co-Star app and find out your personalized horoscope:
If you're not an avid follower of astrology (I'm not), it gets to be incredibly confusing having your personality characteristics be explained away by the complex relationships between the zodiac symbols, the planets, the moon and the sun. Whether you're an expert or a first-timer, you're in luck — Co-Star does all the work for you.
Co-Star prides itself on generating "hyper-personalized" horoscopes called natal charts, instead of the vague predictions with many interpretations that are often found in magazines. Because of that, the app requires a "complete map of the sky" when you were born — your birth date, the time you were born, and the location — to get your complete horoscope.
Source: Co-Star
Using your birth information, Co-Star provides a snapshot of your horoscope for the day. You can click on various parts of it to get additional insights on specific parts of your horoscope, or "view all" to get a more detailed explainer.
See the rest of the story at INSIDER