For years gay men in Miami have had the upper hand over the city's lesbians. Their dating sites are better, their clubs are better, and they have a sweet, little app called Grindr that helps them locate available booty calls within walking distance.
Enter Dattch, a new app that should facilitate the lives of lesbians by helping them find like-minded local women for dating and friendship. The app is currently available in the United Kingdom and launches this Friday in Florida, with San Francisco, Los Angeles, Portland, and New York to follow. The free app can be downloaded from iTunes or the company's website Dattch.com.
How did our gay-unfriendly state beat out Frisco, LA, Portlandia, and the Big Apple? Robyn Exton, Dattch's CEO, says, "I think Miami and Orlando have a great LGBT scene going, but there aren't as many female specific spaces for women to meet each other so the demand for a platform that brings everyone together is even more important."
All right, so we're getting the app first because Florida has less to offer lesbians than more culturally progressive cities do. We agree. Does this mean that Miami lesbians and bisexual women will soon have their own version of Grindr?
We spoke to a few lesbians whose main concern was that they would be chatting with horny guys posing as women, but thankfully, Exton assures us that measures are taken to assure the veracity of each profile. "We also check that every single user is female when they join app; we use Facebook one hundred percent privately for this."
In case you're worried that your wifey is going to troll Dattch for cheap thrills, don't. "We've got relationship mode so couples can still join and check out the community without their partners being concerned," says Exton.
"To be honest," Exton adds,"we're probably the best example of the opposite of Grindr. Completely opposite users, completely opposite interactions, and used for almost the completely opposite thing."
Exton believes that women are looking for more than just sex. "We don't show you the closest user to you," Exton explains. "Most women don't really care about this as they are rarely looking to meet up on the same day; they're normally meeting up a few days ahead so seeing the closest person to them is just kind of weird."
And how else might women differ from men, according to the company? Exton says that women need more than some stranger's sexy selfies to pique their interest.
She explains, "Grindr has a couple of face pictures and very basic stats. For our users, this just creates a bit of an empty feeling when you look at a profile - you get no sense of who someone is. Our profiles are built for women; they're like Pinterest boards with Instagram content. You upload the images that show who you are and what you get up to; how you spent your weekend, your last holiday, your favorite food."
We've heard these generalizations before: Women are less shallow than men. We love Pinterest. We share pictures of what we ate for lunch on Instagram. And we don't cheat. But what about women who don't fit that stereotype? What about women who want to get their casual, no-strings-attached groove on with a total stranger?
"If you really wanted to you could," admits Exton. "In filters you could adjust your distance to within two miles and see who was online and give it a shot. But we can't say if it will work! It's not really the vibe of the community, so it may surprise someone a bit. We find our users are rarely out to hook up. They normally just want to meet someone new and from that point decide what will happen."
We're betting Exton hasn't perused the "Women Seeking Women" section on Miami Craigslist.
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