![People Really Are Finding Love On Dating Apps Like Grindr And Tinder]()
*Apps such as Grindr and Tinder have a seedy reputation - but a growing number of people are using apps built for one-night stands to find true love, reports Olivia Goldhill.*
Grindr is not the most romantic place to meet your soulmate. Wildly popular, the dating app for gay men arranges profile photos in order of proximity and is often used for short term, sexual relationships arranged at the last minute.
But the app, which has 4.5m users in 192 countries, allows people to say if they’re interested in a relationship and despite the unlikely setting, more couples are now finding love. Cohen Simpson, 23, is about to move in with his boyfriend of two and half years, who he met through Grindr.
Cohen, who is currently studying for a PhD in new media at LSE, met his boyfriend while a student at Oxford. Originally from a rural area where he says homosexuality wasn’t easily accepted, Cohen argues technology has shaped his love life.
“Having something, a piece of technology that really made that network explicit, it really took the guess work out of looking for a potential mate, so that was really powerful.”
Although most people on Grindr are looking for “a more transient sort of exchange”, Cohen says there are people interested in a relationship, though it takes perseverance to find them.
He met up with several people for coffee dates before he met his boyfriend, but aside from a few meetings where the reality didn’t quite match with a profile photo, Cohen says he enjoyed the dates he found through Grindr.
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Dr Bernie Hogan, Research Fellow at the Oxford Internet Institute, says dating apps are particularly well suited for gay people or other “hidden” communities, such as religious groups, because the apps make you more findable.
He says: “Now you have to ask yourself—who needs to be found and how do they want to be found?
“Remember, while there are some flamboyant or camp gay men out there, there’s a lot of men who are not obviously gay and want a way to regulate their findability.”
Dr Hogan also says the immediacy of apps can help sustain a relationship.
“Proximity has always been a very strong determinate of relationship success.
“Mobile apps, because they can come with you and because they’re sensitive to location and proximity, really do help to augment space, make space much more digital.
“So instead of me staying in one place, going on my computer, checking if I have any messages and co-ordinating far off in the future, these apps can co-ordinate much more ad-hoc, much more rapid meetings.”
And despite Mr Hogan’s doubts that a dating app could ever be successful among a heterosexual population, Tinder is proving him wrong.
The hot-or-not app, which allows users to decide whether they want to talk to someone based on one photo, is growing at 5 per cent a day in the UK and is responsible for more than 50 engagements since its launch in October.
Each profile has just a photo, first name and age, and only users who approve of each other are able to start a conversation. Like Grindr, Tinder shows the distance between users but doesn't reveal the exact location to protect privacy. So far, the app has served more than 75m matches and 6bn profile ratings.
Tinder co-founder and CMO Justin Mateen says the app replicates real life.
He says: “When you first meet someone in a coffee shop, the first thing you notice about them is their physical appearance but as you start speaking to them and dig deeper you look for commonalities.”
Users sign in to the app through Facebook, which deters a lot of false profiles and allows Tinder to extract data for appropriate matches.
Mr Manteen says: “You don’t feel desperate using Tinder because you’re not really selling yourself, you didn’t have to fill out a long form trying to represent yourself."
The start-up founder says Tinder constantly tweaks the algorithm for finding matches, and has a heavy emphasis on mutual friends, mutual interests, and total number of friends.
The algorithm seems to be working, and Hannah Steelman, 23, met her boyfriend through Tinder in March.
The couple first met when their two groups of friends went to the same bar, and she says the focus on location made dating simple.
She says: “We knew we were in a close vicinity and so it made it really easy for us. We knew of all the same landmarks, we’d go out in the same places.”
And despite meeting through the app, Hannah says she has a lot in common with her boyfriend, who works in the same industry and is two years older than her.
She says: “It is faster than most relationships that I’ve been in and I don’t know if that’s through the app or it’s just because we hit it off, we have a lot in common.”
Julia Rosinus, 24, from Chicago, also met her boyfriend through the app, which she started using just for fun with friends.
When she met her boyfriend, she says: “It was very unexpected.”
The pair talked for around ten days before they met in person, and after only a few dates they became an official couple.
She says: “It’s 21st century, everyone’s meeting online, everyone’s meeting on app. I think it’s the norm now.”
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