By Harvy Almeida, Isabelle Brosas and Paolo Racelis
Overview
Grindr is known to be the world’s leading mobile social networking app exclusively for gay, bi and curious men. Grindr is a geosocial networking application that is first launched as an iPhone app, but has expanded to be compatible with Android phones. Like other adult dating sites and services, you can connect with singles in your area and browse through local matches, but what makes Grindr distinctive is its main feature to connect with the closest gay men in your area using the app – wherever you are. Proximity is priority, meaning your list of available members in your area keeps changing as you change locations.
The Great Mind Behind Grindr
Joel Simkhai, the founder and CEO of Grindr, believes he has an “opportunity to make a difference.” Gay men worldwide may be using Grindr to quickly track the locations of potential partners a few feet away.
Simkhai quickly became frustrated with how difficult it was to date online. The options were limited and the process is frustrating. It was far too time consuming to seek people out, he thought. There ought to be a better way. So then, he created Grindr, a location-aware mobile application for dating for gay men. The app revealed men with Grindr accounts by their proximity to the user—groundbreaking for an industry that mostly took place from a desktop computer.
That ability to connect gay men makes Grindr a powerful organizing tool, perhaps in the way gay bars have historically been meeting places where political action was spurred even if the main purpose for many was to find dates or hook up for sex. In that regard, Grindr hasn’t gone unnoticed by anti-gay governments.
Netnography 