Contrast Grindr’s success with that of Blendr: the founders weren’t willing to disclose the number of users, opting instead to send me an anodyne statement that they “are thrilled with the pace of Blendr’s growth,” which, they say, “was faster in the first six months of launch than Grindr’s adoption rate during its first six months.” The company declined to say how many of those users are actually, well, using the app. In June, Grindr announced it now has four and a half million users (six hundred thousand of them in the U.S.), and that they spend an average of ninety minutes browsing every single day. It was created by the same folks who made Grindr, the hookup app that’s become ubiquitous in the gay community. Blendr is the most high-profile of a series of new location-based dating apps for straight people.
