Blendr was an online dating application based on geosocial networking for Android,

iOS Ios, Io or Nio (, ; ; locally Nios, Νιός) is a Greek island in the Cyclades group in the Aegean Sea. Ios is a hilly island with cliffs down to the sea on most sides. It is situated halfway between Naxos and Santorini. It is about long an ...

and

Facebook Facebook is a social media and social networking service owned by the American technology conglomerate Meta Platforms, Meta. Created in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with four other Harvard College students and roommates, Eduardo Saverin, Andre ...

. It is designed to connect like-minded people near to each other. It was created by Joel Simkhai and patterned after his previous app

Grindr Grindr () is a location-based social networking and online dating application for gay, bisexual, queer, and transgender people. It was one of the first geosocial apps for gay men when it launched in March 2009, and has since become the large ...

which is instead aimed at gay men. Blendr claims to be "powered by"

Badoo Badoo is an online dating-focused and social networking application. Founded by Andrey Andreev in 2006, Badoo originally launched as a web product. It has headquarters in London. In 2012, the app was launched in the United States and later beca ...

but largely appears to be the same service. As of 2022, it had 200 million users worldwide and requires users to be over the age of 18. On 31 October 2022, Blendr ceased activity in all territories worldwide. A statement on the Blendr website stated that all user data would be deleted by 30 November 2022 and the website would go offline from 7 December 2022.

Description

The application combines GPS location sensing with a social networking framework, to provide users with the opportunity to meet people who are near to each other. The application can also be used to communicate with people in real time about a location, such as getting information about the current status of a local restaurant, or for determining whether a club currently holds people that the user might want to meet. Users must be over the age of 18. Users provide a photograph and basic information about their interests (though they are not required to give out their actual name or other personal details), and then are able to browse other people who are nearby to their present location. In order to protect the privacy of its users, the application only provides a rough estimate of the user's location, and also allows users to limit themselves to contact to people who meet their self-defined criteria. Simkhai specifically designed Blendr to be less focused on casual sexual encounters than Grindr, intending it to be a tool for meeting new people who share common interests from business to hobbies and relationships of all types. The company has strict rules forbidding the use of nudity, pictures or written descriptions of sexual acts, and

racist Racism is the belief that groups of humans possess different behavioral traits corresponding to inherited attributes and can be divided based on the superiority of one Race (human categorization), race or ethnicity over another. It may also me ...

statements or other

hate speech Hate speech is a term with varied meaning and has no single, consistent definition. It is defined by the ''Cambridge Dictionary'' as "public speech that expresses hate or encourages violence towards a person or group based on something such as ...

Platforms

Blendr was available through the website, or for

devices through the

iTunes iTunes is a media player, media library, and mobile device management (MDM) utility developed by Apple. It is used to purchase, play, download and organize digital multimedia on personal computers running the macOS and Windows operating s ...

app store and for Android through Google Play. As of September 2012, the application was free and supported by advertising, with a subscription option for increased functionality.

History

Blendr was announced to the press at

SXSW South by Southwest (SXSW) is an annual conglomeration of parallel film, interactive media, and music festivals and Convention (meeting), conferences organized jointly that take place in mid-March in Austin, Texas. It began in 1987 and has conti ...

on March 14, 2011, under the code name Project Amicus. The name "Blendr" was ultimately revealed when the app launched in the iTunes app store on September 8, 2011. Blendr released a statement that the service would cease activity in all territories worldwide on 31 October 2022, and all user data would be deleted by 30 November 2022.

References

{{reflist iOS software Geosocial networking Meta Platforms applications Mobile social software LGBTQ-related websites 2011 software Android (operating system) software Online dating applications

Description

Platforms

History

See also

References