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Date: 17. January 2017

Winkd: The LGBT Friendly Dating App

Dating apps have been exploding in popularity in the last few years. However, many of them are built with heteronormative standards in mind: namely, for straight, cis men and women. The game is about to change, however for the LGBT community thanks to Winkd founders Diana Kalkoul and Neda Robat-Meily.

The two young Sydney residents (both in their 20s) have technology backgrounds and are planning on creating Winkd as an LGBT-friendly dating app from the very beginning. Kalkoul said to Mashable, “We're two queer individuals ... that are kind of frustrated with the lack of inclusivity dating apps present people with.”

Having a Look at Other Apps

Both Kalkoul and Robat-Meily did take time to try out other dating apps such as Tinder and OKCupid (which is apparently much slower). Kalkoul went on to explain how Tinder always catered first to the heterosexual market. Queer people did indeed adopt the service and augmented it to suit their needs, however this had never been in mind when being developed.

Winkd wants to gain some of the immediacy that Tinder offers, however also to destroy those barriers which prevent many singles from actually meeting someone else for the first time.

Checking in on Winkd

You can check into locations on Winkd (even if it’s just a park) and see others who have checked in there. Interests can then be shown by “winking” at another person. When a match forms, there is a live chat window that appears for 20 minutes. You have to be fast, however or else it will disappear.

Kalkoul explained that this was to get rid of “ghosting”, or people disappearing on one another. She wanted to put time pressure on singles so that they would just bite the bullet and meet someone.

"Just because you cross paths with someone, it doesn't actually mean you could have something in common with them. Whereas if you are going to the same venues and you have the same interests, you'd probably have a lot more in common," she also said.

 

Soure: Mashable
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