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At the recent Web Summit conference in Rio de Janeiro, Grindr announced its new mission: ‘to be the global Gayborhood in your pocket’. As the first step in this new directive, the LGBTQ+ platform will be launching the Roam™ travel feature.
A new mission
In time for the presentation in Rio, Grindr is celebrated its 15 year anniversary. Looking ahead to the next 15 years, Grindr wants to be “global Gayborhood in your pocket” and “ make a world where the lives of its users and the global LGBTQ+ community are free, equal, and just”.
The company highlighted that IRL spaces in cities around the world have played important roles as a safe haven for LGBTQ+ communities to connect and express themselves. However, not everyone is close to one of these “physical Gayborhoods”.
Therefore, the Grindr app looks to become a virtual Gayborhood, supplying new connections but also sharing recommendations, information, and resources. To make this a reality, Grindr is planning product expansions and new features.
Roam – the new feature
The first step in creating a virtual Gayborhood is the new feature Roam™, which allows users to temporarily place their profile in a new location around the world. For example, a user may set their location to an upcoming holiday destination to create new contacts before travelling there.
This temporary change of location will only last one hour, the platform explained. It is set to be an enhancement of the existing Explore feature, with Roam enabling users to ‘visit’ a new location and be seen by its locals.
Set to launch in Q3 of this year, Roam will be tested in several markets initially. Grindr shared that it will continue to innovate and develop new features, catering to varying relationship goals and intentions.
“Grindr is the connective tissue for the gay community around the world, and as we set out to fulfill our new mission, I’m excited to provide digital access to the important relationships, resources, and information that exist in so many physical Gayborhoods,” said Grindr CEO George Arison.
“With new features like Roam, we look forward to continuing to innovate the Grindr platform in order to meet the diverse needs of our users and drive a lasting impact for people everywhere”, he added.
Upcoming plans
In this discussion with Axios at the Web Summit event, George Arison highlighted that the platform will look to connect users with services (restaurants, gyms, health providers) that have a Grindr seal of approval.
As the platform diversifies its products, it is set to provide more options for users to differentiate their profiles and establish their intentions, i.e. friendship-seeking users won’t be engaging with those seeking romance.
When it comes to AI, Arison explained that the technology “will fundamentally change how dating will be done, creating better ways of making connections — and our users will decide exactly how”.
As part of this process of AI integration, “we need to lead them there, through the opportunity to participate in piloting features, and giving users a clear choice of whether they want to use this technology”.
Read a blog post from Grindr’s CEO about these new developments here.
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