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The gay dating apps are realizing and the reason why may surprise you

Posted on by darion

A cell phone holding up the App Store screen or the Grindr app, with the option to download.A cell phone holding up the App Store screen or the Grindr app, with the option to download.

Shh! Don’t tell Grindr, but a new supreme gay app may be on the rise.

While the orange demon has dominated gay culture since its 2009 launch, becoming the most well-known and utilized in the LGBTQ community, its “recent product issues and growing user frustration” have a mass of other apps ready to take the mantle, according to Mashable.

And it’s starting to sound like Grindr — home of the grid and “No Taps Plz” — is no longer the golden child.

So, where did the app that calls itself the “largest social networking app for gay, bi, trans, and queer people” start to lose us?

Spoiler alert: It has less to do with the hookup and dating selections and more with expanding paywalls and countless bugs and glitches.

Previous features — like a complete list of users who tapped you and the “explore” function, which lets you browse and chat beyond your typical location-based radius — have been limited and locked behind subscriptions.

As for the reports of glitches well-documented on Gay Twitter X, a Grindr spokesperson told Mashable they’re aware of the “technical challenges” users are encountering after “a major investment in modernizing our chat platform” and “appreciate” the “loyalty and support as we invest in upgrading and improving the Grindr experience “

Considering Grindr is “so embedded into the queer experience” — as Mashable explained — the removal of features and errors feels “like a betrayal at best, or a user being severed from the queer community at worst.”

That’s why a growing number of dating-ready and hookup-seeking gays are turning to apps like Taimi, Scruff, and Jack’d. (In fact, the latter of the two already boasts a combined 30 million registered profiles.)

Perhaps the biggest difference is that these other apps are still focused on courting queer users, as Eric Silverberg (founder of Perry Street Software who developed Scruff and Jack’d) explained.

“The publicly-held competitors in the dating landscape are publicly-held stock companies,” he told Mashable.

“They have intense pressure to monetize, and eventually, this day would have come, sooner or later, if you have that kind of investor pressure, and this is the consequence you’re seeing — a lot of pricing pressure across the board in the software industry broadly, and in (the) dating industry in particular.”

He added that dating apps have become “the area of ​​software” where consumers are most exposed to subscriptions, second only to video and music streaming services.

Still, the most popular alternative to Grindr seems to be Sniffies, whose extensive collection of filthy and stylish merch is well-documented across Queerty.

As Sniffies CMO and creative director Eli Martin told Mashablethe location-based hookup app (which allows X-rated photos) is “driven by a deep understanding of the unique challenges faced by the LGBTQ community” and aims to be “functional, but also empowering, risk-taking, and inclusive. “

This queer-centered focus shows in everything from how advertisements appear in the apps to the types of ads themselves.

Not that we don’t love Grindr’s constant barrage of cheap farming video game commercials pushing to the App Store, but Silverberg explained some of Jack’d and Scruff’s ads are geared to important messages for the gay community, like access to PrEP.

Still, the biggest reveal was that much of the software needed to run an online dating app has increased in price, and Mashable hypothesized that Grindr’s price hikes may be the LGBTQ+ dating giant pushing “these rising costs onto consumers.”

But let’s not forget the good that Grindr does via its Grindr For Equality initiative.

For nearly a decade, Grindr For Equality has advocated for safety, health, education, and human rights for millions of Grindr users and the global LGBTQ+ community in partnership with more than 100 community organizations.

Time will tell if Grindr’s continued upgrades can help win back its loyal followers and remain the queen bee of gay dating apps.

In the meantime, at least they figured out a fun way to let users change their notification sounds to… uh… tennis grunts!

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