Tag: Dating Apps

All the latest breaking news on dating apps. Browse The THEGAYUK’s complete collection of features and commentary on dating apps and the LGBT+ community.

10 things gay men love to hate about dating apps

Dating apps like Grindr are basically an integral part of the gay dating world. It’s the source we love to hate when looking for a hookup or love online.

Hello hello hello… hi hi hi.

Dear god man, take the hint stop message me I don’t want to talk.

Torso is the window to your stomach

(C) BIGSTOCK

Look if you can’t show your face, I have to question whether I can be seen with you. Come on, it’s 2020 come out and show your face.

Otter looking for love

I’m an Otter looking for a bear… I’m a Chicken looking for a pug… On some dating apps you might feel like you’re in Animal Farm, or being put in a tiny box defined by the amount of body hair you have.

3 ft away.

This man is currently behind you, wearing a mask and asking whether you like scary movies. Honestly though I love seeing how far away I can run away from you…

Call Me Maybe Not

Those pesky pesky men who say they’re up for a relationship and then refuse to call… Those shady shady rag stains.

Fancy a shag?

Apps are an amazing way to get your end away and quickly…

Trades Descriptions.

That photo you’ve been using for the last 50 years is not fooling anyone.

Time Goes By So Slowly…

Often gay dating apps go on photo browsing alone and it can be so time-consuming as you scroll through 100s of men. A bit like the Tupperware catalogue, but with more plastic. Wouldn’t it be better for the app to work out who is going to be a good fit before showing you a bunch of people?

Better Leave Right Now.

Whatever happened to being able to just chat with someone and get to know him? Bring back the days of getting to know someone over hours of chats where you find out people are more like onions with layers rather than just bananas.

Premium.

Nobody is impressed with the fact that you have a premium account; in fact we’re actually thinking “you tosser”.

This article was originally published in Nov 2015

10th September 2020
This gay dating app is using its platform to highlight suicide prevention

Daddyhunt, which boasts around 4 million members, is using its platform and social media channels to focus on suicide awareness and prevention and domestic violence.

Since the creation of the Daddyhunt website over 15 years ago, “Daddyhunt has focused on educating its members about sexual health issues as well as creating a stigma-free environment for those living with HIV/AIDS. While connecting people is a vital part of our mission, we also want to use our platform to educate our members and fans about important issues affecting the gay community”, says Casey Crawford, Daddyhunt’s General Manager.

Through stories and posts on Instagram and Facebook as well as its weekly newsletter to 4+ million global members, Daddyhunt now shares national suicide awareness and domestic violence abuse hotlines for the US and other countries as well as articles related to how to assist friends or family who are dealing with depression and suicidal thoughts.

The app’s social media manager Nebojsa Cirok told THEGAYUK, “Due to the COVID-19 lockdowns and the increase in suicide rates within the LGBTQ+ community and increases in domestic violence, it is important for us to focus on the issue even more and to educate as many people as we can reach about awareness and prevention programs and hotlines,”

“While we recognize that a lot of people view and follow our social media to see Daddies, we felt that it was incredibly important to highlight these issues. The feedback that we have received from our members and followers has been positive”

6th August 2020

Top 10 gay dating apps ranked by customers on Android

Going online to find love is probably one of the easiest ways to find and meet new people, there are so many choices of dating apps, so which one do you choose?

Where do you start when looking for a dating app. There are so many options, especially at the Google Play store. The best way to find the best app is to see what the app’s users are actually saying about it, but it’s a faff to search out the top 10, so we’ve dug around to find out what people about gay dating apps.

Don’t always assume that the biggest brands in gay hookups are the best. Probably the most famous, Grindr, isn’t rated highly by its users – in fact, it ends at number 15 on our list. It does, however, have over 400,000 ratings, it dwarfs all the other apps.

The next most rated app is Hornet with 183,000 reviews. The best-rated on our list, Surge, has sub 60,771 ratings.

So it’s best to do a bit reading between the lines and decide how much weight you want to give the number of ratings compared to the average star rating.

We’ve compiled this rank list of the best-rated apps on the Google store for the Android operating system.

UPDATED MAY 2020

218Pos	Name	# ratings	Star	Number of Downloads
1	Surge	60,771	4.4	1+ Million
2	DISCO	64,658	4.3	1+ Million
3	Taimi	41,787	4.3	1+ Million
4	Gay guys chat & dating app – GayFriendly.dating	1,597	4.3	100K
5	Blued	154,309	4.2	10+ Million
6	Grizzly	18,750	4.1	1+ Million
7	Adam4Adam	9,160	4.1	5+ Million
8	BoyAhoy	48,824	4.1	1+ Million
9	Scruff	91,705	4.0	5+ Million
10	Wapo: Gay Dating	12,284	4.0	500K
11	GDaddy	2,724	4.0	100K
12	Romeo	118,388	3.9	5+ Million
13	Hornet	183,827	3.6	10+ Million
14	banana	2,450	3.5	500K
15	Grindr	428,857	3.4	10+ Million
16	Growrl	38,219	3.1	1+ Million
17	GuySpy	3,766	3.0	1+Million
18	Jack’d	112,896	3.0	5+ Million
19	Gaydar	11,880	2.6	1+ Million
20	DaddyHunt	8,215	2.5	1+ Million

Want to see what THEGAYUK.com thinks are some of the best gay dating apps? Columnist Scott Sammons downloaded 10 to find out which was the best.

16th May 2020

Doctor warns: Stop hooking up during Covid-19 lockdown
The medical director at the UK’s leading HIV charity, Terrence Higgins Trust has said people need to stop hooking up during the COVID-19 lockdown.

Doctor Michael Brady, the medical director at THT has warned that people need to stop meeting for sex and look for other ways to “find sexual pleasure in other ways”.

In a post published on the THT website, the Doctor said,

“I’ve never been an advocate of promoting abstinence, but this message is not about protecting your sexual health: it’s about protecting your general health and those around you from a virus that can be deadly. This is extraordinary and unprecedented advice for us to be giving out, but these are extraordinary and unprecedented times.”

Lockdown and Hooking Up

(C) BIGSTOCK

Earlier this week, Prime Minister Boris Johnson outlined new, stricter rules about leaving our homes during the Covid-19 outbreak. These were:
- Only go outside for food, health reasons or work (where this absolutely cannot be done from home)
- Stay 2 metres (6ft) away from other people
- Wash your hands as soon as you get home
With the country under stricter rules surrounding lockdown, Dr Brady says we shouldn’t be having sex with anyone outside our current households.

He added,

“This advice means that, unless you have sex with someone within your household, it’s important to find sexual pleasure in other ways. Despite the situation with COVID-19, we need to remember that sex is an important part of life, but right now we have to find other ways to achieve sexual pleasure and satisfaction.

He continued,

“It’s only natural that we look to sex for pleasure, to relieve stress and anxiety or simply to pass the time – whether that’s with a regular partner or using hook-up apps. But our ‘new normal’ is that we have to find ways to do this while sticking to the advice to stay at home. This isn’t just to protect ourselves against the coronavirus but also to protect the most vulnerable in our society.

“You are your safest sexual partner”

Dr Brady finished up by adding that during this time, that instead of seeking sexual contact with other people, take we take matters in our own hands.

He said,

“I never thought I’d say this but the reality is that, for the time being, you are your safest sexual partner. It’s time to stay at home, stop close contact with people outside our household and to be creative about how we manage our sex lives”.
26th March 2020
Wondering why your phone battery keeps dying? Maybe you need to chill with Grindr

The thirst from Grindr is real…

A new report has shown that dating apps are thirsty… and not just in a Chris Pine thirst kinda way.

The online comparison site, Uswitch analysed 50 of the most popular apps of all major app stores, taking into account the permissions they allow and how many each app has access to, constantly draining the energy from your phone.

The results revealed that gay favourite Grindr is the most draining dating app, using 28 permissions in total including location, photos and identity.

Now that social distancing has been encouraged to delay Coronavirus, this has resulted in a spike in online dating app activity. As more find themselves caught indoors, many are relying on digital to ignite romantic and social conversations, here’s a guide to the apps to use to limit your usage (and the ones you will need your charger for) as you look for love.

What Uswitch found was that Grindr asked for way more permissions (28) that other dating apps including, Bumble (20), Tinder (18) and Hinge (13).

But if you’re looking for the most permission seeking apps – and therefore most battery-intensive, look no further than Google (72), Facebook (50) and Facebook Messenger (46).

Based on the permissions they require, Google, Facebook and WhatsApp are the biggest drains on our batteries.

Facebook amongst others in the top 10, runs constantly on our mobile phones in the background and is accessing over 50 permissions including; contacts, location and media.

It might appear that Amazon’s Alexa is listening more than we realise. The Alexa app requests 39 permissions on our mobile phones ranging from location, camera and photos/media even when it’s not running.

Uber also makes the top 10 with 35 battery-draining permissions constantly accessing our location causing your battery to die faster than others. Waze is one of the most raved about map applications but is found to be more draining than Google maps.

Other apps such as Tik Tok, Mcdonalds, Grindr and Snapchat all make the top 20 list which can be found here.

Ernest Doku, mobiles expert at Uswitch.com advises on how to preserve your mobile phone battery, “It’s estimated that over 5 billion people in the world now own a mobile phone, it’s our main form of communication and for some people even a method of payment.

It can cause issues when you’re caught out with a drained battery. There are a few simple ways to preserve your mobile phone’s battery life, such as turning off WiFi/Bluetooth and making the most of low power modes.

If all else fails, remember to put a portable charger in your bag on long journeys”.

22nd March 2020
There’s now a way to chat on Grindr via your computer

CREDIT: Ryazan / BIGSTOCK

Behold! you can now pretend to be in 1997 and check your hook up messages on your computer.

Those of us who were around in the glory days of Gaydar – that was the website which basically kickstarted the online gay hook up revolution, way before Grindr, you would log on to the service, on your computer and check your profile, messages and chat online.

Well, now you can do that with Grindr. Instead of using your phone and zapping up all that valuable battery power, you can log onto Grindr’s chat website using your computer – all you need to do is log on to web.grindr.com/mail.

How do you log into Grindr’s Website?

You’ll need to open the app on your phone and open up Grindr on your desktop computer. On your phone, go to settings (by clicking on your profile and clicking on to the settings options) You’ll see an option saying, “Log in to Grindr web”.

You’ll then have to scan the QR code, with your phone, shown on your desktop screen and voila, Grindr will link your phone and your computer.

Once linked, you’ll be able to see all your previous messages, respond to them, check profiles and basically use Grindr as you normally would.

It will require access to your location in order to use the GPS function.

In-office view, no one will be able to tell that you’re using Grindr to check for messages as it looks just like a normal webmail service.

There’s also a work/ office view – which means that no one can see that you’re actually on Grindr.

2nd March 2020
Is there a gay dating site which isn’t just for hookups?

(C) BIGSTOCK

If you’re looking for a quickie or even some picture swapping there are plenty of apps out there where gay and bi guys can hook up, but what if you want something deeper (get your mind out of the gutter).

This was a question recently posed on Reddit and it got people questioning where they could get a good date rather than a quick session of “fun”.

Back in 2015 our columnist Scott Sammons tested out all the major dating apps to find out which offered the best services and dating opportunities.

For dating opportunities he recommended Tinder, saying that the app was “designed to “match” people based on their personalities and likes/dislikes”. The app asks users to fill out a survey and then based on those results shows you profiles of guys you’re likely to want to date.

Sammons also added, “there are very little opportunities to declare your sexual preferences or put on your profile that you’re horny”. So if you’re after dates than quick hookups this might be a solution.

He also suggested Gaydar and Plenty Of Fish as alternatives to the likes of Grindr, Hornet and Jack’d.

Otherwise, users on Reddit suggested OKCupid, with one user admitting that he had had a lot of “success on the platform”.

So what’s the best way of meeting someone new?

Readers on our Facebook page, however, were less hopefully when we asked the question about the best dating app – not for hookups.

One user wrote, “All of them are hook up sites” while another added, “It would be nice if there WAS one you could actually connect & chat rather than just sex…..but I don’t see it happening lol”

Finding love or just sex?

CREDIT: ©-Vadymvdrobot-Depositphotos

Back in 2018, we asked our readers whether they had found love on a dating up. Thirty-six per cent said that they had found love and were still together, while 39 per cent said that they used them only for short-term relationships or hookups.

22nd February 2020
Grindr users are being targeted with this scam

Have you received a message from a really cute guy – only to be asked to sign to a verification service?

Be warned – it could well be a scam.

Some guys on Grindr are being asked to visit a website called IPHSID.com in order to verify their identity. The site claims to be the only “website that links public state, territorial, and tribal sex offender registries from one national search site” however, there’s no evidence to back this up – what’s more if you want to join the register you have to pay – $1 for a month or $39 for a lifetime membership.

How does it happen

Well, out of nowhere a guy – with a super hot picture slides into your DMs – and says something like “Hey dude, how are you? Into kissing, cuddling, rimming, 69 – 8 inches open for anything, what are you looking for?” which is followed up by a topless picture and a dick pic.

After you reply – a seemingly standard reply is sent, “nice, that’s great, I’m down to hook ups. I can do travel or host. BTW do you have IPHSID – I will meet you if you already had it”

And then he sends another hot pic.

Then an explanation about IPHSID “Let me explain it to you. It is an IPHS identifying and preventing harassment system to protect, lesbian gay bi-discreet trans in meetup. This is the safe way to check you’re LGBT sex-offender. There’s nothing wrong if we talk about our safeiness [sic] right?

And then a picture of the same dude with a badly busied and cut face, to show that he’s been a victim of an attack.

“I’m not saying you’re one of a [sic] bad guy I just want you (to) get a IPHSID so we can know that we are both safe to meet up – can I sent [sic] you a link if it’s okay?”

The guy then sends a picture of his “profile” and tells you that the $1 will be donated automatically to an “LGBT harassment victim”

1% Trust rating

CREDIT: Ryazan / BIGSTOCK

According to ScamDoc, the site has a 1% trust score – which is very very bad.

But just taking a look around the site you’ll notice that there’s no evidence or links to any of the partnerships they say they work with.

It even uses a Gmail account for contact – not a branded one. Sounds kinda phishy right?

If you need any other reasons not to 100% trust this, its links to social media have nothing to do with the site – the Twitter one goes to an account that hasn’t been used since 2017, the Facebook link goes to Facebook’s own LGBT+ page, the Insta goes to news-brand LGBTQNation and the YouTube links to a SoulPancake video.

Dodgy? We’d say so.

THEGAYUK.com reached out to IPHSID for comment and guess what – the email bounced right back.

Our Advice

If someone asks you for money or links away from Grindr to another site which asks for personal details – don’t. Instead, use our safety guidelines on how to have safer dating hookups.

14th November 2019
Here’s how to nail the perfect dating app profile picture

Remember, first impressions count.

Your profile picture is the first thing that other members will see of you, so take some time to get it right. We’ve put together some tips on what works and what doesn’t work for the perfect profile picture.

It goes without saying that your profile picture should be of you. We’re not fond of catfishing, fraud or just pictures of cartoon characters. You’re a real person, so a real picture of you is best.

Remember what they say first impressions can last a lifetime so make sure, when you’re choosing yours, that it reflects exactly how you want to portray yourself.

So here are our top tips:

Recent photos

Make sure your profile picture is recent. We’ve all heard the stories of people turning up to dates only to discover that the person they meet is a good ten years older than their profile photo. It’s a bit like trades description. People want to know who they are meeting – a trustworthy and honest person will have an up-to-date, recent picture of themselves. It’ll also help identify you if you guys actually meet in real life.

Just you and only you

Don’t crowd the picture with other people. We can assume that you have friends. You don’t need to show us – after all, we’re interested in meeting just you, to begin with… not your friends. If you want to add pictures with family, friends, pets etc add them to your private galleries.

NEXT: THE LIGHT YOU SHOULD USE

16th October 2019
REVEALED: This is what to should do if you don’t find someone attractive on a dating app

In an exclusive poll by THEGAYUK, lots of people say they just want to hear the truth…

CREDIT: GaudiLab/bigstock

What do you do when someone you’re not interested in, messages you on a hookup app like Grindr? Do you ignore, block or tell them truthfully that you’re just not into them? Trouble is, it’s quite difficult to be truthful to someone about your lack of attraction to them, without coming off rude.

Well according to our research users of dating apps would prefer that you told them directly that they aren’t your type. In fact, overwhelmingly, 68 per cent of us would, apparently prefer to know the truth.

Twenty-five per cent would prefer to just be ignored and the other seven per cent said that they’d be happy to just be blocked.

How do we actually react?

However, in contrast, when asked how people actually react when someone they don’t fancy hits them up on a dating app, most people admitted that they just tend to ignore or just block. Only around 44 per cent of guys say they are actually truthful and tell the other person that they’re not interested.

What’s the best way to tell someone you’re not interested?

CREDIT: Ryazan / BIGSTOCK

We asked our readership on Facebook what the best way of letting someone down. Jonathan told us, ” Imagine that it is you who is being rejected. Speak to them as you would like to be spoken to”

Whereas, Robert kept it nice and simple saying “Not my type, sorry fella”.

Gaz revealed that he’d write, “Hi, thanks for dropping me a message. Great profile but don’t think we are a match. Gaz”

Billy suggest that typing, “Politely say sorry I’m not interested we are looking for different things” might be the politest way of letting someone down gently.

17th July 2019
Gay dating app, Growlr just got sold for a lot of $$$s

GROWLr just got sold Y’all!

GROWLr has become the latest dating app, aimed at gay and bi men to be sold, and it was sold for some big $$$s!

Although the amount paid for it is dwarfed by the amount paid by a Chinese gaming firm for Grindr, the buyers still parted with nearly $12,000,000 ($11.8m) for GROWLr and that’s not to be sniffed at. This also means the app is no longer gay-owned or operated and becomes an “acquired property” of the much larger company, The Meet Group.

Currently, GROWLr has around 10 million users of which 200,000 of them use the app daily.

Speaking about the acquisition, Geoff Cook, the CEO of The Meet Group, said, “In addition to reporting a strong quarter, I’m excited to announce the acquisition of Growlr, which provides a meaningful step into the large same-sex dating market and expands the base of users to whom we can deliver our live video product,

“We are thrilled to add Growlr to The Meet Group portfolio,” said Cook.

“Similar to what we have done with our other acquired properties, we plan to be aggressive in bringing our video model to Growlr. We expect to begin rolling out live video on Growlr in the fourth quarter of 2019.

“We also see opportunities to grow advertising revenue on the app, and we plan to further invest in user acquisition to expand brand awareness and reach.”

12th March 2019