iPhone hookups go straight with new meet market

He's credited with sparking a sexual revolution in the gay community and now Joel Simkhai thinks he can evolve the way heterosexual people meet each other as well.
Simkhai is the creator of Grindr, a homosexual pickup app for the mobile phone that connects people with others in their immediate vicinity. Launched in 2009, Grindr now has almost three million users around the world including almost 150,000 in Australia, of which 41,500 are in Sydney.

 

Blendr uses smartphone GPS to connect you with people in your immediate vicinity.

Today Simkhai and his now 100-strong team took the wraps off their latest creation, Blendr, which is designed to be used by both gay and straight people to meet others who are nearby and who have similar interests.

"What we're doing here is we're bringing the social to social networking - what we've found is that historically social networking hasn't been very social," he said in a phone interview.
"You tend to connect with the people you already know, you tend to connect with friends and family, you get badges, you share information, but it's not incredibly social in the sense that you're not meeting new people."

The Naughty Rude Show host James Findlay says many listeners had been calling for a straight version of Grindr. Photo: Rodger Cummins

A meet market, not a meat market
Grindr is universally regarded as a gay sex meat market but Simkhai said Blendr, which is a free ad-supported download, was not pitched in that way. It is focused on connecting people who have similar interests.
"Gindr is so so basic, it's essentially a list of the guys around you, very limited information about them, their photo and how far away thay are from you and that's about it. With Blendr we've added a lot to it," he said.

The Grindr app, left, and founder Joel Simkhai's profile.

New users to Blendr can import their information from Facebook - or include no profile information at all - and also select a host of specific interests that can be used to connect them with like-minded people. The various categories of interests include hobbies, entertainment, faith, gaming, language, music, politics, profession and sports.
"You might be a German expat in Sydney who's looking to meet other Germans ... [or] it could be a 50-year-old guy who wants to play backgammon," said Simkhai.
Straight Gindr in high demand

Users can check in to venues and see who else is there.

James Findlay, who hosts a Melbourne radio show about sexuality - The Naughty Rude Show on SYN - said for some time he has had many listeners ask him when a version of Grindr for straight people would be released.
"A lot of people have been wanting one for non-gay people for a long time," Findlay, 24, said in a phone interview.
Findlay, who has used Grindr for three years, described the service as "mostly just used for sex and hookups" but said it was important for the new Blendr app to be pitched as offering more than just sex.
"Straight people don't want to associate themselves with being sexually promiscuous especially women don't want to be seen as being very sexually active," he said.
"I think when you pitch these kinds of things as being more than just sex it opens it up to a lot more people ... we've had many [female] listeners on the program who have said that if this existed they would definitely check it out."
Patrick Gibbeson, 21, from Mattraville in Sydney, said he used Grindr for about six months but doesn't use it anymore. He was never there for random hookups but met his boyfriend using the app and the pair have been together for about four months.
"It was kind of by freak chance that I was bored and I talked to a nice person ... Grindr is not nice, a lot of it is really gross and there's a lot of people sending pictures of their genitals to you," he said.
"I don't know how that will translate to straight people."
Your new 'social compass'
On the Blendr app, users appear as a grid of thumbnails based on common interests and ranked according to how far away a user is from you.
Like with Facebook Places, users can also "check in" to restaurants, bars, cafes and other venues and then view a list of who's there. Even before you arrive at the venue you can use the app as a "social compass", in Simkhai's words, chatting to people who are already there to find out what the atmosphere is like, whether the DJ has started up yet, etc.
Of course, with any geo-location app, privacy and safety is critical. Simkhai conceded there were as yet unsolved issues with Grindr such as kids using the service and people misrepresenting themselves, such as old men pretending to be much younger.
"People misrepesenting themselves is something that you just can't control. We've thought about this a lot, trying to figure out ways to solve it, and it's virtually impossible," Simkhai said.
But he said the fact that users are all close to each other "increases the level of accountability" and people should always aim to meet in a public place.
Strict privacy controls
Yet while Simkhai concedes that he hasn't solved the problem with Blendr, he has implemented a number of features to minimise the risks.
There's an accuracy slider that allows users to make their location that's displayed to other users more or less accurate. Users can also block people and set strict controls on who can see their profile, filtering for age, gender, sexuality and other criteria.
Blendr is available on the iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch and as a Facebook app only but Simkhai said an Android version was coming soon.
"The power of GPS, the power of location, is so amazing and we're combining that with socialisation and the combo is just revolutionary," he said.


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