Lauren O’Reilly, Director of advertising at OKCupid, states compared to their present 10 million active users, females looking for ladies just comprise 7 % of this. However the great news is because the site expanded their sex and orientation choices, they have seen a 7 % increase in feminine LGBTQ users, suggesting that numerous ladies could have sensed stifled by the necessity to recognize as one gender or one sex, which may additionally be a problem whenever looking to get queer ladies for an app that is lesbian-specific.
The number of identities of women-seeking-women not just causes it to be difficult to subscribe to apps that only have three options (right, lesbian, bisexual) but may possibly also explain why most of the queer females we talked to express they would rather fulfill times through friends. “we develop every thing on trust, ” my pal Valey, 27, whom satisfies other females through buddies IRL, told me. Most likely, she claims, it really is more straightforward to ask all your buddies what that attractive woman’s situation is when each of them understand her and probably have for years. While that is clearly the exact same in right relationship, right people need not find out precisely how right somebody is, be concerned about navigating a relationship with somebody who’s not away, or potentially suffer from some body with them being a experiment. Fulfilling somebody throughout your LGBTQ network that is social a degree of Date Insurance that numerous queer ladies can not manage to do without.
All this work partner-vetting is not to express all lesbians are serial monogamists. A 2013 research from Liverpool Hope University that studied 126 lesbian and right females with all the normal chronilogical age of 27 unearthed that lesbians had and wished to have as much sex that is casual straight females. However the homosexual ladies we talked to stated they must involve some types of link with your partner, even though their only intention is hook-up (which can be usually is).
“Tinder changed the landscape of internet dating a little, ” my friend Nomi*, 30, whom identifies as queer, said. “I used years that are OKCupid also it had been awesome. I’d some legit fortune here. Nevertheless now on Tinder everybody is apparently scared of being too earnest. Dating apps nowadays make me wish to relocate to a cave into the mountains and alter my title. “
Another buddy of mine, additionally known as Lindsay, 34, whom additionally identifies as queer, echoed comparable sentiments, saying that she hates lesbian dating app Her because it is an excessive amount of like Tinder in every the incorrect means. “I would like to really hear more about the individual than one headline and 10 selfies. ” Her creator Robyn Exton did tell CNN Money back might that the app that is rebranded do have more text boxes and photos in order that people could see “the interesting elements of exactly just exactly how she lives, ” but a recently available tour through the application reveals that the additional information continues to be pretty seldom filled away.
Therefore, associated with the a huge selection of dating apps that you can get, how comen’t here a much better, queer-women-friendly dating app yet? Are lesbians not online dating sites because there isn’t any good application, or perhaps is here no good application because lesbians can’t stand dating that is online? Lauren Kay, co-founder for the Dating Ring, claims it’s a bit of a chicken or egg situation.
“Getting money for the dating application is extremely, very difficult. Everyone else and their sibling has unique dating application, and investors frequently are not enthusiastic about this room, ” Kay states. “also then because of that tiny pool, users most likely would not get great matches, plus they’d hate the software rather than refer their buddies, after which it could perish. In the event that you had a group working very hard for per year on building the greatest LGBT application on the market, but even with all their work, they just had 1,000 users —”
Andrew Chen, an advisor/investor for technology startups including Dropbox, published on their weblog that generally speaking, it is hard for just about any dating application to attract interest from investors. He claims that dating apps rely a great deal on folks who are nearby, if those folks aren’t here straight away, individuals will keep the application. “People are prepared to happen to be satisfy one another, but just a great deal, ” Chen writes. “And there has to be the right mixture of male/female participants (or whatever permutation is reasonable). ” The odds you’d find the correct permutation in a given area is slim cupid dating sites indeed with a 2011 report by the Williams Institute showing that only 3.4 percent of Americans self-identity as lesbian or bisexual women.
Chen adds that “until there is word-of-mouth, and people that are enough produce an excellent experience, the market will draw. ” Therefore lesbians who possess primarily friends that are heterosexual perhaps perhaps maybe not find out about the application, and homosexual ladies who spend time along with other homosexual females most likely see individuals they already know just from the application (aka exes they would instead perhaps perhaps perhaps not see again).
Dinesh Moorjani, co-founder of Tinder and CEO of Hatch laboratories Inc. Where Tinder is made, states that another reason lesbian dating apps might have neglected to prosper might be that investors do not note that 3.4 percent of America as a sizable market that is enough tackle (never head that homosexual and bi men compensate a comparable percentage of this populace as homosexual and bi ladies, and Grindr has 10 times the users of Her). “Investors may have the present options are enough to handle the marketplace need, given that they enable users to toggle between looking for either sex. It is possible the market size has not been compelling, well documented, or communicated to investors that are prospective business owners, ” he claims, suggesting that investors think Tinder, Hinge, while the other straight-focused apps are serving lesbian ladies adequately.