New Social App Curius Offers “Mindful Swiping”

The launch of new social app Curius offers “mindful swiping” – letting users choose what kind of relationship they are looking for up front, instead of the traditional yes or no swipe options most dating apps offer.

Curius is a dating and social connection app all in one, offering a range of relationship choices for users. The app offers six swiping options, so potential matches can let that user know what they are looking for in a relationship: serious romance, casual romance, serious commitment or marriage, quick fling, friendship, or starting a casual chat. Each choice represents a “unique social intention” as the company says – because people want more flexibility in how they connect with others over an app. The swipe choices surround each profile in the form of emojis – including toasting wine glasses, a rose, an engagement ring, and fire emojis. 

Users are also able to choose multiple intentions – for instance, they can choose friendship and casual romance with another user if they are up for either one.

Curius users are matched based on both their shared interests and matching intentions, a process meant to ease the frustration that has been a pervasive issue with dating apps (and dating in general). Most dating app users begin relationships with little idea of what their matches expect and end up being ghosted or wasting a lot of time because they avoided conversations about each other’s expectations.

Users can also see how many people swiped on them for each type of relationship, which can provide some insight so they can change their profiles accordingly. 

The app was founded by Harrit Dewan and his wife Brittany Spencer, who were both frustrated with dating apps because of the time they wasted chatting and dating people who didn’t share their relationship goals. They thought binary swiping didn’t really capture the nature of how most people navigate relationships. They also found that people were having to use different apps for different purposes, instead of having different relationship choices all from the same app.

“Curius recognizes that relationships are non-binaries, and it makes it easier to find and develop social connections based mutual intentions & user preferences,” said Brittney Spencer, Co-Founder and Content Lead in a statement. “On one hand, it introduces an approach to dating apps which gives people more options in how they essentially want to tailor their relationships and, on the other hand, it helps the user simplify the process to a single screen.”

The app is completely free and launched on June 10th for iOS. The android version is expected later this year.