If you'd like to learn more about PrEP in Canada & its latest advancements (like Descovy), take a look at our Health Hub. Grindr ultimately went a step further and added an optional field for HIV status disclosure and the user’s last test date. For some, this might be the only way they connect with potential partners on the subject, and for others, it could spark a longer conversation.” “What stood out the most from these discussions is just how often we heard about the intense anxieties users had about bringing up sexual health when they were chatting on the app,” he said, “Professionals and users alike asked us for more ways to exchange information about things like HIV status, viral load, and PrEP use. They broadened their categories for gender expression to be more inclusive, opening options to “trans man,” “woman,” “cis man,” “non-binary,” “non-conforming,” and “queer,” and started prioritizing sexual health.Īccording to Landen Zumwault, Grindr’s director of corporate communications, this came from a year of intense Research & Development with users and experts. Grindr took stock of its near-decade in the business to make a few changes. This marked the end of an era and drove plenty of late adopters to Grindr. Craigslist had been the place to troll for strange in the interest of love or, well, some strange, since 1995. The Grindr yearsīy 2017, Craigslist personals were gone, kissing goodbye the m4m, casual encounters, and misc romance categories of our youth. It was also malleable- you could look for a hookup on Saturday, a more traditional romantic date Sunday, and a spicy chat by Monday without having to re-download the app or make significant changes to your profile. In this, it didn’t fight toward its obsolescence, but it also didn’t really have any parameters for a fail rate either. It simply existed in laissez-faire agnosticism: there for the hookups, the socializing, the romance, or the bored insomniac middle of the night chats with the stranger you never plan to meet. Since the beginning, Grindr has always positioned itself as a “mobile social network.” It’s not promising wedding bells and meeting your forever match… but it’s also not NOT promising that either.
The Fry effect was ten thousand downloads in a day and 40k new signups by the end of the week. Get this, when you load it, all kinds of faces and pictures appear… and it tells you how close they are - it says 20 yards away.” Man, 2009 was a simpler time!
This was catnip to relatively early iPhone adopters, but the big ol’ boost came when British actor Stephen Fry dropped his Grindr knowledge on Top Gear: “It’s basically a gay cruising application. Meaning that now, not only could you know who’s on the market in your city, but you could know who’s looking at the other end of the bar.Įvery bar is a gay bar with this brand new Grindr in your pocket! Grindr was the first gay dating app and the first dating app to use Apple’s geolocation technology. The new dawn of 3rd party appsĬut to 2009, Steve Jobs had announced that the second-generation iPhone would accommodate third-party apps. Just a smidge too late to really cash in on the dot com boom, Gaydar was moderately successful until its 2013 closing. Anyway!įrom there, LGBTQA+ populations hung out in the periphery of straight-focused online dating sites until 1999 with the launch of Gaydar. This was sadly a required tactic to avoid additional discrimination & reduce the amount of f-slurs thrown their way. If we go in the wayback machine all the way to the early 1980s in France, (the French, always fashionable!) Minitel, the French closed videotex network prototype, was championed by lesbian activists who used the network to organize their communities, especially among lesbians in rural France.Īs Minitel’s reach spread, gay men developed a system of “ pseudos,” a coded language to talk freely in early chatrooms. While the first dating website for the masses,, launched in 1994, the origins of gay dating actually go further back. Gather round the fire, child, and let’s go back to the days of dial-up. But as time goes on and Grindr embarks into its second decade, there have been some huge changes for the app that could give clues to its possible future. With over 27 million users, Grindr is the world’s largest gay dating app.