What is Grindr, and how does the Grindr application allow users to contact other users?
Grindr is a geolocation-based social networking application for the LGBTQ+ and broader community. You can chat via Grindr's messaging system; the chats are transmitted within Grindr's platform. You may send messages containing text, images, video, and voice. Upon opening the application, you are presented with a grid, or cascade, of other members who are sorted by distance. Grindr collects your location information within a 100m radius of accuracy. You have the option to "Show Distance," which will display an approximate calculation of the distance between you and other members (i.e. relative distance between one user to another). Even if "Show Distance" is off, your relative distance is used to arrange the cascade based on distance.
You can select any profile in the cascade to view that person's images, profile information, send a message, or “tap” another member. A tap is an emoji reaction people can send to one another to indicate they are interested, in addition to or instead of sending a chat message. You can select certain filters to help identify people nearby that they may wish to interact with (i.e. age, body type, etc.). You may subscribe to our premium service which provides more features, including the ability to apply multiple filters.
The "Explore" feature allows you to search in a different geographic area (other than where the searching user is located) to find new people to connect with within that other region. Everyone has the ability to search using Explore; however, only our premium service subscribers have the ability to interact (i.e. chat, favorite, etc.) with Grindr users found in Explore. Everyone on Grindr has the option of opting in to and out of appearing in Explore searches by toggling "Show me on Explore searches" from the Grindr settings page.