Meet David. (Photo: Grindr.com)

To celebrate its fourth birthday, gay mafia invention Grindr released some important findings regarding its cultural impact on the gay community. Turns out, gay guys love it!

In a press release calling itself “groundbreaking” and a “global sensation,” Grindr revealed Monday that it has amassed more than six million users since 2009. What's more, 40 percent of new accounts were created within the last 12 months. However, users who use something beside their torso as a profile pic weren't included in the company’s release.

The location-based meetup app also said 90 percent of their horny millennial user base publicly share their location, an option that can be disabled. The survey found that users are "most addicted" to Grindr, along with social networks like Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. Eighty percent of the millennials surveyed also described themselves as oversharers; 71 percent of them are fine in sharing "personal information," like the graphic results from their ab routine, presumably.

Tapping into the millennial mindframe, founder/pioneer/CEO Joel Simkhai said the app has become an “invaluable resource” for bored gay guys waiting around for their OKCupid dates. He also praised the app for disrupting the garish gay club scene, which in the olden times was the only way to meet others DTF.

"Grindr opened up a whole new world for gay men by finally providing a more spontaneous, exciting and instantaneous way to meet guys. Since our launch, and specifically over the past year, our user base has grown exponentially and we owe that to our loyal and engaged users," wrote Mr. Simkhai.

You're welcome, Mr. Simkhai. What kind of Facebook gift would you like for your community service?

(Photo: Mike MIka)

Weird guys spying on women through their webcams sounds like something your dad made up in high school to keep you from getting a MacBook. Actually, it's very real--and very creepy. [Ars Technica]

Some awww for your Monday morning: a dad hacked Donkey Kong so that his daughter could play as Paulina and rescue Mario. Who run the world? [Reddit]

"In fact, 'innovation' is something of a magic word around here, shape-shifting to fit the speaker's immediate needs." Finally someone fucking said it. [San Francisco Chronicle]

If you can't catch a cab at SXSW, employees of ride-sharing service Lyft will give you a piggy back ride. Gimmicky! [AllThingsD]

Hookup app Grindr is responsible for revolutionizing the way we connect with each other? Sure why not. [New York Times]

A gallery of potential "Jewboos"

The guilt that a Jewish mother imposes on her own children can knot up your stomach worse than fasting on Yom Kippur. And nothing brings out that motherly nag like the institution of marriage, specifically their matronly desire for Jew on Jew marriage--the holiest of holies.

Luckily there's now Yenta, a location based dating app for young Jewish singles, straight or gay. Upon starting up it tells you to "find your Jewboo." It's like Jdate on wheels, or Grindr in synagogue. Tara Palmeri from The New York Post put the app to the test on Thursday. However, as a gay Jew with an iPhone, who’s ready to meet the culturally Jewish husband of his mother’s dreams, we feel better qualified to assess the neuroses that happen when two Jews connect. The app doesn't expressly promise that it will get you hitched, but we've decided to include that as a factor since it's the endgame for all Jewish singles--or so their yentas hope.

The sign up process for Yenta is really easy. Post a picture of yourself and choose a username and you're ready to go. The app also asks you to answer three things: "What's your shtick?," "What will impress my mother?," and to pick a position on a sliding scale of how Jewish you really are.

Other similar apps, like Grindr or Scruff, ask users to submit a wealth of details like age, height, weight, location, interests, what they're looking for, and even in some cases, what category of "gay" they are (i.e. bears, twinks, muscle, etc.) Part of Yenta's problem is the lack of information that's displayed on a user's profile. Most users skipped answering the only two real questions, so the only viewable details on most profiles are a username, a picture, and how Jewish they are. Not sure that looking at a gallery of punams is the best way to find a guy to bring under the chupah.

We downloaded the app yesterday and spent a day flirting around. The app is pretty buggy, often saying that it couldn't find our location or that users were not available (to be fair, yesterday was launch day). This reporter answered that our shtick was "whiskey" and that "being any part Jewish at all" would be the thing that could impress our mom. We moved the "Jew meter" as close to "Just Jewish" as possible--sorry, mom.

Overnight we were finally messaged! Our Jewish prince had arrived and he was beardy, young looking, and only two miles away! "Matt" is his username which made us wonder if he's a Matt Rubenstein or Matt Goldstein, or possibly something even more Jew-y. He even called us "cute" in his introductory message. But uh-oh, big snag. On his "mom question," Matt admits that he's a gentile and "maternal guilt doesn't work" on him. Oh to be fetishized, what a disappointment!

Users should have to show their bar mitzvah certificates to get an account or else this Jews-only country club is going to be rendered completely useless.

This is a mock-up the company made for us based on previous tweets. Nitasha will not actually buy you goat curry, unless you ask nicely.

Everyone enjoys getting a special unexpected treat every so often. For some it's just a small red velvet cupcake after work, but for others it's getting your entire college tuition taken care of by a stranger. Luckily, there is now myTreat, a location-based iPhone app that lets people consensually take advantage of one another for smaller ticket items.

The app launches today and was created by Ben Tao and Eric Lai, the team behind Offbeatr, the "Kickstarter for porn." Although there is a risque element to this new app, the creators stress that this is a new project that doesn't involve any adult content.

myTreat is easy to use. Treaters post what they want to offer--like a cup of coffee, for example--and the qualities they're looking for in a treatee. Those looking to get treated then express interest in available treats by messaging the treaters.

The site obviously runs the risk of enabling the wrong kind of quid pro quo relationships. With that kind of power dynamic, it's almost an inevitability. But sugar daddy talk aside, the app can also be used for meeting new people in a strange city ("I'll buy you lunch if you show me around"), as well as potential business partners ("I'll treat you to coffee if you can help me solve this bug"). Nonetheless, brace for a backlash if myTreat gets the same kind of attention as Seeking Arrangement.

The company attempted to crowdsource an ad for the launch of the app and got back some unsavory results:

"Push" his "buttons." (Photo: Badoo)

Badoo--which you might recognize from the aggressive New York ad campaign--is a "social meeting site" with 150 million-plus members. It's intimately tied up with mobile: You log on and immediately see a list of people in the area you might want to meet, many of them young and relatively attractive. According to VentureBeat, the social network's sweet spot is single users 24 to 28, especially in France, Spain and Latin America.

Now, what's the first use case that comes to mind? If you said anything other than hookups, your pants are on fire.

However, founder Andrey Andreev will not have you reducing his service down to the smoosh: 

“Think of it like it’s a nightclub! It’s not just about sex,” says Andreev, slightly ruffled at my suggestion that it sounded like a Grindr for straight hookups. “Some people use the service in this way, but … If you own a nightclub – you have a space, you have music, drinks, lights – you bring people together and then it’s up to them to figure out what they want to do.”

That having been said, he added that, "we’re not a dating site. A dating site is a place where you are looking to find someone to live with forever, you know, 14 pages of profile questionnaire.” Mmmhmm, we know how it is. Not looking for Mister Right, just Mister Right Now, amirite?

He whips out his iPhone – “So what we have here, is just random people who are around. We’re a meeting network. People come here for a quick chat, a quick meet, a quick… whatever.”

Just meeting, for, you know, whatever happens when two strangers meet. Watch a movie, grab a coffee, talk about teaching Sunday school.

(Photo: Wikipedia)

When we talk about "disrupting" stuff, this is not exactly what we have in mind: According to New York Mag, the "delicate social ecology" of Fire Island, a favorite vacation spot for many New York gay men, has been tossed into upheaval by the cruising app Grindr:

As Occhipinti and others see it, Grindr is an intrusion of digital artifice into what was once an analog gay Utopia—a place free from traffic, straight people, and, to a large extent, technology, where you could meet other men with a freedom and spontaneity that were impossible almost anywhere else....“What’s the point?” he asked, before wandering off to check out the Blue Whale, “if everybody is on Grindr?"

Damn technology! Even the centuries-long tradition of cruising isn't safe from its implacable impact.

Presented without comment.

Not long after Grindr launches Grindr for straits, New York and Canada-based mobile startup SinglesAroundMe (SAM) today announced GaysAroundMe (GAM). “In counterpoint to other gay dating apps such as GuySpy, Grindr and Maleforce, GaysAroundMe offers a classy platform through which to meet other gay singles," said Christopher Klotz, CEO of SinglesAroundMe Inc."

Mobile dating apps are popping up like mushrooms in New York; HowAboutWe and OKCupid both recently released apps, aiming for a piece of that $3 billion. We're also told that "the web's premier relationship compatibility site Moonit (www.moonit.com) is introducing the Moonit Social iPhone app. Now you can walk around with your very own “virtual wingman” in your back pocket that lets you see how compatible you are with everyone you meet for flirting or for friendship." And don't forget Bromance, a location-based, ostensibly platonic friend dating app, or Color, for that matter. (JK! JK!)

But apparently, not all mobile dating apps are the same.

Some are classy.

Some are not.

GAM shows other users of the app from 100 feet to 100 miles of your current location, with results displayed on a map. Users can then view each others' profiles and send "various types of winks and messages to begin flirting."

The app also features a “Destination Search” tool that allows users to look for gay bars, gay clubs or even gay-friendly restaurants.

GAM's press release notes that /"Existing Gay users of Singles Around Me can login to the new Gays Around Me app with the same login details and all their information will be seamless between the two apps." GaysAroundMe is available for iPhone and soon for BlackBerry, the company says.

More fun than jumping into a real blender!

The MoLoSo (mobile local social) space is really heating up. OkCupid recently launched a mobile app to help horny folks find a little local love that they swear is the "anti-Grindr". Betabeat already told you about Bromance, the location based network for "dudes that do". But who better to do the anti- Grindr than the OG of spontaneous celly sex, Grindr!

Today Grindr unveiled what it called the "highly anticipated Prject Amicus", a platonic grindr for straights called Blendr. From the presser:

With Blendr, users can discover new people based on a broad range of interest categories. For example, college students can interact and make new friends on campus and at concerts, while travelers can make new connections abroad, and sports fans can find other fellow enthusiasts.

Users can check-in to venues, browse how many others are at those venues, and determine whether to venture to the trending hot spot. Blendr is integrated with other social networks, directly allowing users to share and update their Blendr activity on Facebook, Twitter and Foursquare. Unlike other social networks that connect users to people and places they already know, Blendr facilitates the discovery of new people and places with secure privacy settings and rich features that give users total control of how they want to connect and interact with others.

Oh wait. This is Sonar. Ok, not the most original thing we've ever seen, but hey, Grindr had staying power and this seems like a feature rich play on the same space as Sonar from someone with a lot of experience making the "meatspace" so damn appealing.

Betabeat got Mr. Yagan on the phone to find out what exactly he meant by that, what makes OkCupid Locals any different, a time before smartphones (yes, Virginia, it did exist), and why we may soon see the resurrection of  CrazyBlindDate, a dating service before its time.

Were you trying to imply that other dating apps have poor adoption? Which apps were you referring to there?

So Grindr is obviously the most successful mobile dating app out there. The things that make it so successful—I’m going to terribly stereotype this community—but it’s larger used as a vehicle for short-term, physical relationships. Now it turns out, taking the stereotypical heterosexual case, that the vast majority of women don’t want that. In fact that’s what creeps them out the most about this. They’re worried about stalkers, they’re worried that it’s 10:30 at night on a Friday and you know someone at the bar next to you thinks you want to have sex with them.

How is OkCupid Locals different?

Number one, we’re populating Locals with the OkCupid database. Our entire reputation is built around the fact that we have this data-oriented way to understand people’s personalities. We can actually layer in compatibility. So now, when you make yourself available in Locals, it’s not just, “Oh, who are the people around me who are hot and horny at this moment.” It’s sliced by who are the people around me who are compatible with me. Instead of it being like everyone’s out there in this meat market, it’s more like I can say, “Who wants to go to karaoke.” You can post that not to just everyone in the West Village, but you can say: everyone in the Village who has a compatibility with me over 80 percent.

It sort of cleans the unwashed masses. It’s like, ohhhhh. You’ve been on OkCupid for a couple years, you know that people with high match percentages tend to be people that you could tolerate having a beer with. (Or not—there are creepy people everywhere in every compatibility index.) But in general we’ve got this sort of filter of the users, which I think is super valuable.

What else do you think will get you more adoption than other dating apps?

We come with a user base. It’s just so critical. Mobile requires both synchronicity and proximity—you have to be at the same place at the same time. And that makes it super hard unless you have millions of users already to populate the system with. [Ed. Note: Mr. Yagan emailed us later to say the OkCupid has 1 million downloads, which is an eighth of its 8 million registered users.]

Unless you have massive database, you don’t want to start filtering too much because you’ll take an already small database and make it even smaller.

Are all OkCupid users now going to be in the Locals App?

You’ll be able to turn it on. But a third of our log-ins everyday are on people’s mobile phones. So even if we don’t get 100 percent of our people using it, we’re gonna to instantly have a lot of people, especially in dense populations like New York.

Does this mean you have to ask permission for location? Because I don’t think you were before?

That is right. Oh actually, I think we did ask before?

Now if people log-in at a certain place, will it show on the app that another OkCupid member is there?

Once you’re in Locals, then yeah, you have the ability to show up. The thing that I think is cool is this idea of broadcasting what you want to do for the evening. With Foursquare you check into where you are, but it’s not great for planning events. We allow the ability to post to people of a certain compatibility level or a certain geography and be like, “Hey, I’m going to be at a piano bar in the West Village.” Or better yet! “Me and three of my girlfriends are going to a piano bar in the West Village, let’s find three guys who want to come hang out with us.”

How does that mitigate the idea of being a woman alone in a bar making it known that you’re  . . . available?

There’s a process. You can post the idea of saying, “Hey I want to hang out in the in the West Village,” without necessarily saying where you are at that moment. Then there’s a back-and- forth process where you guys can suggest venues you want to go to. Because you know we’re plugged into the Foursquare venue database, so you can say “How about this place, how about that place, you guys pick.”

Wait! Didn’t you guys do Crazy Blind Date too? [Company description via Crunchbase: “Users fill out a set of questions to help match them to other Crazy Blind Date users, and then indicate at what times and in what neighborhoods they are available for a date. When Crazy Blind Date has a match, they will text you to confirm that you are still available for the date.”]

Yes. We did! But that was pre-Foursquare.

God, that was a long time ago.

I know!

My friend and I would try to use that because we thought it would be really funny, but there were never any dudes who signed up together. Why do you think it’s going to work this time?

First of all the time may come again when Crazy Blind Date will revive itself.

Oh, really?!

Yeah, Crazy Blind Date was pre-smartphone, so we had to have this like bizarre text message relay thing where we had to anonymize your text message. And now you just have an app. It’s so much better now.

Before smartphones it was very, very hard to maintain anonymity across the communication layer, right? You really only had texts as a way to communicate when you’re out on your mobile. And texts obviously reveal a very personally identifiable piece of information, which is your phone number. So there was also this clunky process where OkCupid had to mediate the texting and that was just a pain in the ass.  We had tens of thousands of people, but it was so hard to find overlapping people who wanted to go on dates at the same place at the same time. But if Crazy Blind Date were integrated into the OkCupid app, I think you can imagine it would  be much easier to have blind dates set up all the time. That may be something that we would pursue down the road.

You mentioned Grindr. But you know they’re putting out an app for straights, right?

Sure. But I think their straight user base is probably zero going into it. So they’re going to have this problem of how do you seed it with a million people. I hold Grindr up as a model of success. I’m not disparaging them. But their reputation and their name in many ways is about something that I think the majority of straight women don’t want. It’s one thing to be on an adult dating site and you’re in your home and there’s this fantastical element that it’s not really happening. It’s another thing to be on an app that’s about one-night stands and being in a bar on a Friday night kind of drunk.

I don’t think the folks at Grindr see it that way. But you’re right, it will be a hurdle for them to cross into that market. Say I’m someplace and I don’t want to use the forecasting. Can I just look up who’s nearby?

Yeah.

So that’s like Grindr?

Yeah, but that’s more or less all Grindr is. The very first wave of mobile dating apps were like, “Find out who’s close to you!” And to me that’s like an oh-by-the-way in what we’re doing, to me it’s much more about the filtering by compatability, so you don’t have freakshows hanging out with you.

[Checking app] Oh, I have to answer 25 questions before I can use it??

Yes.

Aw, man.