Grindr Puts Itself Up For Sale – What It Means For The Rest Of Us

In an interview with Bloomberg Television last month, Joel Simkhai revealed he started Grindr in 2009 because “We don’t always know who else is gay.” Six years, 192 countries, 12 million downloads, and two million daily users later, on late Friday afternoon, Bloomberg also revealed something else about Grindr: it’s up for sale and that could have real implications for us all.

To be sure, for everything from increased STI risk to promoting racism within our community, criticism that Grindr can be counter-productive to facilitating the connections it was designed for is nothing new. “We get criticism that Grindr is a very visual experience and I’m not apologetic about that,” Simkhai said to the British Independent.

At the same time, Simkhai told thebacklot “From our perspective we have a responsibility,” and “Grindr for Equality” was born in 2010. While originally it was to encourage domestic political activism, like everything Grindr, its reach has gone global with Dutch, Australian and British candidates using Grindr as an additional way to spread their political platform as well.

Still privately held, the passions of Simhkai both political and libidinous should prevent a sale to a less sympathetic concern that would further censor profile pics or throttle activist outreach. To the NYTimes “I’m not saying inner beauty is not important,” Simkhai said. “But the visual leads to the drive to desire and to be desired.”

Despite the appearance of having it all, Simhkai remains single himself. If Grindr is ultimately sold, perhaps we’ll next find him on Scruff.

 
 

First, Grindr founder Joel Simkhai in a profile done by Bloomberg TV on April 17, 2015

 
 

Then shortly before this past Mother’s Day weekend, British vlogger Riyadh K posted this hilarious video of him reading Grindr messages with his mum

 
 
And even though there isn’t an upcoming “Brother’s Day,” Dion had his straight brother do the “read the Grindr” schtick too:

Previously: Closted GOP North Dakota Rep. Randy Boehning Caught Sharing Dick Pics on Grindr

 

14 thoughts on “Grindr Puts Itself Up For Sale – What It Means For The Rest Of Us”

  1. Grindr is the MySpace of hookup apps. Popular because it was the first of its kind but it has failed to update its feature set such that it now lags horribly behind. The app has been notoriously buggy with chats often getting lost. Chats sync to your device, not your account so nothing carries over from one device to another. Still can only have just one pic in your profile. And forget the loading times. The only reason to be using this app is market share and I suspect that is slowly decaying. I think the guy is smart to sell now.

    1. Not to mention, unless you pay the ridiculous sum of money ($14/month) they want for Grindr Xtra, or premium, you only know of receiving messages if you keep the app running in the foreground. The Jack’d and Scruff free versions, at least, generate notifications to your phone when you receive a message. I don’t have the patience or time to just sit there on Grindr and wait for people to message me!

      It might be worth a dollar or two a month, but not 14.

  2. Grindr up for sale, possibly no porn on twitter man its a bad porn/media week lol.
    There are a ton of free apps already besides grindr and you don’t need to download them all like so many do because usually depending where you live the same people are all on every app anyway. Different screen name, different app.
    And for those who know grindr it is for the most part a crappy app anyway…usually crashes, deletes messages or you cannot receive them and trying to reach customer service is insane. And if you do just like the cable company or the phone company or anything most of the days your not talking to someone here it is someone from far far away who has no clue what your talking about.

  3. Never used the site and don’t plan too..so no cares,,too many awful stories i’ve heard from that site.

  4. All this talk about Grindr and, in the whole wide word, it only has 2 million users? That doesn’t seem like a lot of people.

  5. If grindr goes away there is too much money out there to be made for someone not to make another app…With everyone having a smartphone and not everyone living in a gay friendly place

    1. Make another app? What’s wrong with the dozen other apps already on the market, like scruff, jack’d, hornet, wapo, guyspy, okcupid, badoo, etc?

        1. No, it’s actually too much. Because of so many apps, you kind of feel like you have to download and check them all It’s a bit of a pain.

    2. Grindr wouldn’t go away, it would just had different ownership. Why would someone buy it and then shut it down? It’s profitable.

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