Queer idea will try to go straight - Sydney Morning Herald

CALL it another slant on a queer eye for the straight guy - or girl. Using a savvy mix of online dating and social networking, the makers of the popular gay dating app Grindr have a new, almost philanthropic mission: to improve not the style but the social lives of straight people.

Grindr's Los Angeles-based designer, Joel Simkhai, will next month launch a location-based app codenamed Project Amicus - Latin for ''friend''.

While the Grindr app is primarily for gay men looking for spontaneous sex, Amicus is intended as a way for everyone - straight people, lesbians and gay men - to expand their social circle, Mr Simkhai said. ''It's bringing people out of the house and getting them out in public more often.''

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While he is tight-lipped about how the app will find ''similar'' people, he said it would use GPS technology and leverage off your existing social networks such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. ''Project Amicus is less about dating and more about making friends. It will be a tool to find other people around you that are like you.''

Grindr was launched in 2009 and now has more than 2 million users worldwide and is growing at a rate of 8000 new users a day. More than 120,000 Australians are on Grindr, with 36,000 users in Sydney.


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