Contributed by: kellyseal on Wednesday, October 30 2024 @ 12:31 pm
Last modified on Wednesday, October 30 2024 @ 12:37 pm
New gay dating apps like Scruff and Archer are positioning themselves to capture a bigger portion of the LGBTQ+ online dating market as Grindr complaints and technical issues rise.
Grindr has long been the most popular dating app for gay daters, but recently people have posted complaints on social media and online forums, saying that they are experiencing technical issues, not getting access to the features they paid for, and other problems, according to Mashable.
This year, Grindr has experienced significant bugs and periods of downed service. At the same time, it has asked its users to pay more to access certain popular features, including limiting both “taps” and “explore” features and requiring them to buy subscriptions.
While Grindr further monetizes its platform to please investors since it went public in 2022, other companies are seeing an opportunity to step in and provide something Grindr users aren’t getting: a more reliable service that isn’t looking for new ways to make money off of them.
Scruff and Jack’d are two popular LGBTQ+ dating apps vying for those unhappy Grindr users. The apps have a combined 30 million registered profiles according to Mashable[*1] (though it’s unclear how many of these are monthly active users).
Eric Silverberg who developed Scruff and Jack’d said that going public has affected some dating apps like Tinder and Grindr, where the main goal is driving revenue rather than enhancing customer experience.
As he said to Mashable: "The publicly-held competitors in the dating landscape are publicly-held stock companies. They have intense pressure to monetise…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."
Still, Scruff charges for premium services on its app in a tiered system similar to Grindr.
Alex Pasykov, founder and CEO of inclusive LGBTQ dating app Taimi, acknowledges all gay dating apps compete with Grindr on some level, so they are hoping to capture a larger part of that audience since many people use multiple apps at the same time.
According to a recent study of Tinder app users from the LGBTQ+ community in the UK, US, Australia and Canada, 72 percent of 4,000 respondents said that online dating plays “a significant role in making connections and forming relationships with others in the LGBTQ+ community,” according to Mashable.
Dating apps’ push for more revenue seems to have turned off daters in general, not just those in the LGBTQ+ community. More features are being put behind paywalls so that companies can meet quarterly revenue goals, so there seems to be opportunity for smaller, non-public app companies to make a dent in the market.
For more about the most popular gay dating app, read our Grindr review.