When Grindr CEO and founder Joel Simkhai went about creating the gay dating smartphone app for the iPhone that has now become a two million-user, multi-operating system enterprise, he was simply looking to build a mechanism to make it easier for gay, bi, and otherwise curious men to meet each other.

But as the phenomenon continues to spread to new platforms (including the Android and Blackberry, as of last month), demographics, (via its lesbian- and straight-inclusive Project Amicus) and inspire other apps (namely Scruff and the latest addition, GuySpy) who tweak the formula to add other components and capabilities, it appears increasing likely that the when, how, and where of queer men and very possibly others meeting and hooking up will never be quite the same.

The trend has led to some hysterical, terrified headlines — as a May 27 Vanity Fair article proclaimed, “Grindr: Welcome to the world’s biggest, scariest gay bar.” Still other queer pundits fear the post-Grindr era will contribute further to the demise of gay men meeting the good, old-fashioned away — in bars, parks, and a variety of gayborhood hotspots and haunts — as the younger, tech-savvy generations turn instead to pursuing guys exclusively via mobile devices.

But despite all the histrionics, anecdotal evidence seems to point toward a contrary effect as many gays are using GPS dating platforms like Grindr and GuySpy to supplement, rather than replace altogether, the sometimes sticky, shady world of gay barhopping and face-to-face human interaction of all types.

That was exactly the intention, according to Simkhai, who told EDGE he felt apps like his are actually helping to “get people back into the bars.” The users of his app spend an average of nearly an hour and a half logged on and are literally located all over the world these days — half the app’s users live outside the United States and metro centers like London and Tokyo are among their most popular locales.

“You’re no longer confined to a computer to meet someone virtually,” he noted. “You can do it anywhere and it’s more integrated into your real life. You don’t have to stay at home; instead you can go out, live your life, and can even go to a bar and use it.”

And, subsequently, you can find out if the IT guy with serious gay face or that temp with the almost-too-perfectly tapered trousers plays for the queer squad.

The curiosity factor appears to be the leading motivation for many gays to download apps like Grindr, whether it’s in their workplace, in a bar, near their home, or even in their childhood hometown. While many GPS dating apps have a bit of a reputation as purely a tool proceeding hookups, as more and more users take the plunge, it appears guys are using the technology to meet up for purposes far beyond a no-strings-attached frolic.

David from San Francisco, Calif., said he has been a Grindr user since late 2009, just about six months since the app debuted. He said the app has taken on the most utility for him during his travels to other cities and countries due to the ease with which one can meet guys who pique one’s fancy, or identify popular hotspots to hang with hotties face to face. While never a fan of online dating sites previously, he considers himself a new convert thanks to the app.

“It’s definitely a nice plus for travelers to get more of a sense of the local scene,” said David. “Some call it addictive but it is very effortless and easy to use on a day-to-day basis.”

Josh, another Grindr user who said he checks the app several times a day, said the app was helpful when he moved recently to Cleveland. One guy he began talking with eventually became one of his closest friends and remains so today. He also said the app has helped him locate folks to head to bars with, rather than encouraging him to stay at home and “chat eternally” with no intention of following up in person — as some feared GPS apps might encourage.

But there are some drawbacks to the apps, as several users interviewed for this story noted. Of course, there are the headless six-pack torso men, fake profiles, and trolls that are to be expected in any sort of online dating realm. But the streamlined design of an app like Grindr can blur users’ intentions.

Max, a twenty-something Grindr user in Chicago, indicated there are typically two types of guys on the app: “Those that want to fuck and those that want to meet other local gay guys and have polite conversation.” It can be difficult to tell who’s who, particularly when there is no specific “looking for” category for no-frills fun. Grindr, in fact, has some particularly stringent rules against the use of provocative (i.e. full frontal) photos that suggests that sort of motive. The vagueness has led him to use the app less often than he previously did.

“I think that if more conversations were like ’You wanna hook up?’ ’Yes.’ ’You got a big dick?’ ’Yes.’ ’Let’s do this,’ I would be more willing to take the time to Grindr but consistently you are [on there,] an hour passes, you know this guy’s life story but are no closer to hooking up than an hour before,”

By Thomas Rogers

As Anthony Weiner’s leaked photos have been endlessly circulating in the media, one question has been popping up again and again: Who, in God’s name, would have found them sexy in the first place? For most women, it seems, receiving a headless photo of a flexing man or a close up of an erection is about as arousing as finding a toilet brush in your mailbox. But one of the most noteworthy things about those photos, aside from the fact that they reeked of pathetic narcissism (and that Anthony Weiner, clearly, works out) is that they looked almost identical to the countless photos that exist on gay hook-up sites and apps, like Manhunt and Grindr.

So if you’re still wondering who could have been turned on by that photo of Weiner clenching his chest, the answer is: Gay men.

Over the last decade, gay hook-up sites have completely changed the way that gay men find each other, interact with each other, and have sex with each other — and many of them are premised on the posting of photos very similar to Weiner’s. Manhunt, one of the most popular of these sites, is primarily a catalogue of men looking for sex in your particular neighborhood. Click on any man’s profile picture and it will take you to an description of their interests, height and penis size, among other details, and a trove of photos of them kissing their biceps or lounging around their apartments in their underwear or doing bicep curls in their jacuzzis or, often, pictures of their erect penises. You can chat with other men on the site, exchange photos and then, if you’re interested, meet up to have sex or go on a date.

And Manhunt is just one of many sites and applications that fill this purpose. Dudesnude is a dating and social networking site premised entirely around people posting naked pictures of themselves. Big Muscle and Big Muscle Bears do the same for, respectively, gym queens and gym queens with body hair. And Grindr is a wildly successful iPhone app that allows gay men to hook up based on their current geographical location. Log onto Grindr and it’ll tell you that there’s a man 1,200 feet from you looking for someone with a hairy chest and a foot fetish. Each profile has information, like height and weight, but the most important thing is the photo. If you log onto Grindr in your apartment, your screen will fill up with a hundred men looking to connect with other men, an army of headless, flexing torsos.

In the Grindr universe, photos like Weiner’s are constantly traded back and forth, partly to prove that men are who they say they are but also because they’re a part of the flirtation process that precedes an actual flesh-and-blood meeting. What’s a clearer sign that you’re aroused by him than sending  a picture of your erection? And for some users, just the exchange of these kinds of intimate photos is an easy substitute for sex.

How would Anthony Weiner have done on Grindr? We uploaded Weiner’s shirtless shot to a phone, and logged on in midtown Manhattan. Almost immediately, men started sending him messages. “More pics,” one 31-year-old man, wearing an oversized baseball cap and standing on a beach, asked immediately. When Weiner responded with the image of himself posing with his cats, and then the picture of his bulging gray briefs, the man answered by asking Weiner’s age, and sending a shirtless photo of himself in his underpants.

Over the course of the next 24 hours, Weiner’s Grindr profile received six more messages from people who were intrigued and interested in potentially meeting up. Their entreaties ranged from a straightforward “hey handsome” to “where you at?” to a man sending a picture of himself upside down on a trapeze.

So why are gay men so much more receptive to these kinds of photos than straight women? It might be because men are simply more turned on by visual cues than women. (A point made by Cindy Meston in this interview with Tracy Clark-Flory.) It might be because gay male culture has always had a much greater emphasis on casual sex than the straight world, and if you’re going to hook up with someone and never talk again, you’re probably going to be more interested in what his chest looks like than how he feels about current events like, say, Anthony Weiner. Throughout much of gay history, men were only able to connect through furtive glances, behavior that remains firmly ingrained in the way we interact.

Ironically, one could actually also argue that Weiner’s conspicuously hairless, gym-built torso is also the curious end result of this particular aspect of gay culture. The obsession with hyper-muscular torsos that emerged in gay culture in the  1980s helped foster a widespread obsession with the body that fed the metrosexual craze of the 1990s. Weiner’s carefully sculpted, quite possibly waxed, torso belies a male vanity that would not have been acceptable before gay men managed to convince straight men that it was a good idea to spend $200 a month on a gym membership and go to a tanning salon.

As the revelations around the Weiner scandal keep getting more and more unpleasant, much of the remaining sympathy for him seems to be withering. But the fact is, in a different context, his actions wouldn’t have seemed all that questionable — and they probably would have gotten him laid.

Posted on May 30, 2011 by Brent Lambert

Somehow I’ve resisted the use of GRINDR, the ubiquitous iPhone app that can tell you where the nearest/hottest gay man is so you can bump uglies — I mean, “get to know eachother.” A friend of mine lives in a small British town with a population of 300 homes and recently noticed one night how something unusual was going on with his GRINDR app: “I live in a village of 300 houses and there is someone on Grindr 460 metres away!” An hour later he FB’d again: “There must be some homo party going on that i don’t know about as now there is another person 190 metres away!!! The men in the white pointed hats will be swarming through soon.” At a recent concert I was with another friend of mine who pulled out his GRINDR and noticed there was a hunky gay man a mere 3-metres away.  Of course we spinned our heads around to track him down but the possible love connection remained elusive.  Over and over again I keep noticing the massive popularity of GRINDR, which I can confirm is a massive success judging from the number of my friends of mine in Montreal who are addicted to it.  With more than 1,000,000 users in 180 countries, including Iraq, Iran, and Haiti, it’s being dubbed a “revolutionary dating tool” as well as “the scariest gay bar on earth that is all over the earth.” For the GRINDR newbies out there, Vanity Fair author Matt Kapp decodes the lingua franca of the smart-phone-assisted gay dating app and wonders if GRINDR can translate into hetero.

Read More @ http://www.feelguide.com/2011/05/30/vanity-fairs-report-on-popular-geosocial-networking-app-grindr-can-it-work-in-straight-market/