AD WEEK – May 3 – Not so long ago, you’d assume that a girl alone at a bar on a Friday night, furiously thumbing her smartphone, had been stood up. Now, thanks to apps like meetMoi NOW, SinglesAroundMe, and Skout, she could just be planning her evening’s assignation. While dating sites sift and sort according to compatibility, apps pre-screen for something else: instant availability. There’s another name for the inefficiency these apps eliminate: courtship. They might dance around it, but what the apps are really offering is the ability to order up sex on demand. One of the pioneering location-based apps is Grindr. Launched in 2009, it allows gay men to locate other nearby users. It claims ~1M users. The developers of Badoo, Facebook’s fastest-growing third-party app, liken its ambiance to a club. Friend.ly makes the search for love a more convivial experience by quizzing users about friends and interests. It has ~4M monthly active users. Among the newer apps is Singlesquare, a Foursquare offshoot launched in Jan.
by Hephzibah Anderson
See full article at Ad Week
Mark Brooks: Finally, location aware apps are gaining significant traction. Facebook has driven people to be more willing to share private info. The tech is now mature. Apple has driven the smart phone into ubiquity. iDating will morph considerably now.
(Full Disclosure: Friend.ly is a former client of Courtland Brooks)
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