Grindr’s new Right Now feature brings a spicy live feed to the hookup app

Grindr has ever excelled astatine helping its users find folks looking to walk immoderate prime clip together, but the hookup app is looking to velocity up the “looking?” process adjacent much with its latest feature.

Today, Grindr announced that Right Now, its societal media-like unrecorded provender feature, is rolling retired to each of the platform’s users pursuing a aviator trial successful prime markets. Unlike Grindr’s accepted grid that shows you an array of different users’ profiles based connected however acold distant they are, Right Now functions a spot much similar X / Twitter and displays a watercourse of caller posts that tin see some substance and photos. 

Right Now posts vanish from the unrecorded provender aft an hour, and portion they don’t have to beryllium utilized for hookup purposes, posters tin deed a toggle specifying whether they’re looking to big (read: person idiosyncratic implicit for fun.) At launch, Grindr says users successful definite locations “will person a fig of escaped hour-long Right Now sessions per week (refreshed each Friday)” meaning that the provender volition lone beryllium accessible successful hour-long windows. Down the line, the institution besides plans to marque much sessions disposable to purchase.

In a property merchandise astir the caller feature, Grindr’s main merchandise officer, AJ Balance, explained that Right Now was designed to assistance radical “find precisely what they want, erstwhile they privation it – without the guesswork.”

“We built this intention-based diagnostic based connected feedback from our assemblage truthful they tin link with like-minded radical without wasting clip connected mismatched expectations,” Balance said. “The effect to our archetypal March motorboat was truthful beardown we accelerated the planetary rollout up of docket due to the fact that it’s wide radical privation this… well, close now.”

Grindr is not the archetypal app of its benignant to present functionality intelligibly inspired by societal media platforms. Sniffies, a much cruising-focused Grindr rival that doesn’t necessitate signing up for an relationship and allows users to station sexually explicit photos connected their nationalist profiles, has had a diagnostic akin to Right Now for immoderate time. But Right Now’s wide motorboat is the latest signifier of Grindr’s larger program to rotation retired a bid of caller features — galore of which are powered by generative artificial quality — meant to boost gross and marque users spot the app arsenic “the Global Gayborhood successful Your Pocket™.” 

Previously, Grindr introduced A-List, a instrumentality that uses Anthropic’s Claude Sonnet 3.7 exemplary and Amazon Web Services’ Bedrock to summarize chats with the volition of helping users rekindle “meaningful past connections” and prosecute “high-potential matches.” Bloomberg reports the aforesaid level is present underpinning Grindr’s Wingman, a generative AI adjunct that tin draught chat responses for users who can’t deliberation of things to accidental for themselves, provide enactment tips, and springiness suggestions astir places that mightiness marque for bully dates. Some of Grindr’s AI features are escaped to try, but for continued entree to them, the institution requires users to motion up for its monthly subscription plans.

All of the features are portion of Grindr’s effort to bring successful much wealth and staunch the fiscal bleeding that came pursuing its archetypal nationalist offering successful 2022. As Platformer reported past year, Grindr’s banal terms plummeted by 70 percent following its SPAC, and the institution has been scrambling to found caller gross streams amid worker unionization efforts and interior concerns that Grindr “was losing its progressive culture.”

At the Wall Street Journal‘s Future of Everything conference this week, Grindr’s CEO George Arison spoke astir however AI has changed his ain productivity, and his tendency for the institution to commencement reasoning astir however the exertion tin beryllium much profoundly integrated into its services.

“For each the caller things that we build, I privation them to beryllium built arsenic if we are an AI-native startup,” Arison said. “If you’re going to bash selling for this, great; commencement reasoning with AI archetypal and past spell to radical due to the fact that that’s however I deliberation companies are going to beryllium built moving guardant and that’s what we should beryllium doing arsenic a concern arsenic well.”