Grindr

Grindr was launched as an iOS mobile app on March 25, 2009 by tech entrepreneur Joel Simkhai in Los Angeles, California.[4] The free version displayed 100 profiles of nearby men, while a $2.99 version (plus a monthly fee) contained no advertising and broadened the dating pool to 200 guys.[5] Cautious but generally positive reviews about the app circulated through the gay blogosphere on sites such as Queerty[6] and Joe My God.[7] By August 2009, there were 200,000 total users in Grindr's network.[5] By March 2010, there were 500,000.[8]

For its first anniversary on March 25, 2010, Grindr released the app for BlackBerry devices.[8]

In January 2011, Grindr won the iDate Award for Best Mobile Dating App.[9]

On March 7, 2011, Grindr launched the app for Android devices. Along with a free version, users could pay $4.97 for a premium version of the app that featured no banner ads, more profiles to choose from, more "favorites," and push notifications of messages received while the app is running in the background.[10]

In January 2012, Grindr won TechCrunch's Crunchies Award for Best Location Application and two iDate Awards for Best Mobile Dating App and Best New Technology.[11][12] In April 2012, Grindr won the About.com Readers' Choice Award for Best Dating App, after 74 percent of readers chose Grindr over Zoosk, SKOUT, Tagged, Tingle, and Are You Interested. In May 2012, the 2012 Webby Awards named Grindr an Official Honoree in its "Social (Handheld Devices)" category.[13] Fewer than 15% of entries submitted to the Webby Award committee that year received the Official Honoree distinction, which recognizes the best in Internet content, services, and commerce.[14]

On June 18, 2012, Grindr announced that it had officially hit 4 million registered users in 192 countries across the globe.[15]

In August 2013, Grindr released an updated version of the app requiring users to verify their accounts by providing a valid email address. Grindr says this was done to reduce spam and improve portability. Critics argued it stripped the app of its anonymity.[16]

On September 30, 2013, Grindr released version 2.0 and began rolling it out on iOS and Android. The redesigned user interface brought stability improvements, a new automatic scrolling feature, larger grid images, and a unified chat inbox. Grindr also introduced a new profile field called Grindr Tribes, allowing users to identify themselves with a niche group and filter their searches to find their type. Grindr Tribes include: Bear, Clean-cut, Daddy, Discreet, Geek, Jock, Leather, Otter, Poz, Rugged, Trans and Twink. In addition to Tribes, Grindr users can also filter by Looking For.[17]

As of Grindr's fifth anniversary on March 25, 2014, the app was averaging more than 5 million active monthly users worldwide.[18]

In January 2016, Grindr announced that it sold a 60% stake in the company to a Chinese gaming company, Beijing Kunlun Tech, for $93 million.[19]

By 2017, the app was averaging 3.6 million daily users.[20]

Kunlun purchased the remainder of the company for $152 million in January 2018.[21]

In March 2018, Grindr announced it would be introducing a new feature that, if opted into, sends the user a reminder every three to six months to get an HIV test. It also planned to advise users on the nearest location for testing.[22]

In August 2018, Grindr's parent company Kunlun Group granted permission for an initial public offering.[21]

In March 2019, Kunlun started seeking for a buyer of Grindr after the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) informed Kunlun that having the app owned by a Chinese company poses a national security risk.[23] This also led Kunlun to halt its plans for an IPO for Grindr.[24]

In January 2020, an Italian app development firm named Bending Spoons offered $260 million to purchase Grindr from Kunlun Tech.[25]

In March 2020, Kunlun announced that it will sell its 98.59% stake in Grindr to U.S.-based San Vicente Acquisition LLC for $608.5 million.[26] Grindr’s senior management and core employees will continue to hold 1.41% of the company’s shares after the transaction.[27]

The Android version of Grindr has a substantial number of negative reviews stemming from unresolved technical issues. The app has a 3.5 star rating on Google Play as of January 2015.

In January 2012, a vulnerability in the app's security software potentially exposed the personal details of hundreds of thousands of users. Grindr subsequently commenced legal action and pursued software changes to block the site responsible. The site impacted a small number of primarily Australian Grindr users and it remains shut down.[30]

In August 2014, it was reported that Grindr's relative distance measurements could facilitate triangulation thereby pinpointing individual users.[31] A proof of concept has been published and more than 2 million detections were performed within a few days.[32] One unauthorized client allows any logged in user to pinpoint other users' exact location.[33] After public protest from the LGBT community and the appearance of reports that the Egyptian police uses Grindr to locate gay people,[34] Grindr responded and globally disabled distance display.[35] As of May 10, 2015, distance display has been re-enabled and location pinpointing is still possible.

In May 2016, a group of computer scientists from Kyoto University had demonstrated to Andy Greenberg at Wired magazine how location pinpointing is still possible even when the "show distance" feature is disabled.[36] By exploiting a novel attack model called colluding-trilateration introduced by the group,[37] locating any targeted user becomes a very easy and cheap task without employing any hacking technique. The attack model not only works with Grindr but also with Jack'd and Hornet, or any LBS app that shows photos of nearby users in order of proximity.

Grindr has been criticized for not taking sufficient action to prevent the display of offensive, racist, and homophobic language by some users.[38][39] In 2014, when asked about offensive and racist speech on Grindr, the app's creator Joel Simkhai said in an interview with the Israeli newspaper Haaretz that he "didn't like it" but he "[isn't] a sixth grade teacher" and it "[isn't his] job to police such things."[40]

In April 2018 a Norwegian non-profit organization called SINTEF reported that Grindr's data bundles sent to third-party companies could potentially contain users' personal information such as: HIV status, testing dates, location, e-mail, phone number, ethnicity, etc.[41] It has been shown that this information was shared to these third-party companies through non-encrypted text meaning.[42] While users do have a choice to present their personal HIV information or not, it is never explicitly stated that this information may be sold to other entities.[43] This discovery is generating conversation about Grindr's privacy policy as a whole.[44][45][46]

The app is partially or entirely blocked in Turkey, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates,[47] Indonesia[48] and Lebanon[49] and has been used by authorities in Egypt to track and arrest gay men.[50]

In December 2019, the mutilated body of Kevin Bacon, a 25-year-old hairstylist from Swartz Creek, Michigan, was found hanging from the ceiling in the home of a man he met on Grindr. The alleged murderer, who has mental health issues, said he cut off and ate Bacon's testicles.[51]

Several cases of criminals using Grindr to honeytrap gay people, followed by blackmail, extortion and assault have been reported.[52][53][54][55][56] [57]