Friender claims that it is a “friends only” type of app, which means that it is not specifically designed for dating and starting romantic relationships. Its goal is to simply connect you with people who have similar interests. After creating your account, you are given a list of 130 activities, from which you can choose your favorites. Friender claims that it is a “friends only” type of app, which means that it is not specifically designed for dating and starting romantic relationships. Its goal is to simply connect you with people who have similar interests. After creating your account, you are given a list of 130 activities, from which you can choose your favorites.

Whether you’re looking for true love or a quick hookup, dating apps have become the go-to for finding what you’re craving. But what about friends? After using Tinder and OKCupid for dating, I was actually more interested in finding new pals and I figured I could keep using the same tools but with a different purpose.

I’m open to love but not looking for it.
I’m taking a very chill approach to new relationships these days, preferring to let the right connection come to me rather than chasing it. That said, I’ve always found dating apps really interesting and I love dating, so even though I’m not looking for romance, I still enjoy that aspect of it. Why not keep the parts of dating I enjoy and use the same approach to simply find cool people to hang with?

I’m upfront about it.
I state in my profile that I’m looking for friendship so it’s clear to anyone perusing my stats what I’m open to. I also make sure to talk about it explicitly before I meet anyone in person. A dating site isn’t the typical place for people to find platonic connections, so I make sure I’m upfront about it. I have no interest in leading people on.

Friendship is more important to me than partnership.
Don’t get me wrong, I love being in a relationship, but the older I get, the more I realize that a solid network of good friends is much more important. I want to have a community of amazing people around me more than I want to find “The One.” I’ve spent way too much time giving up my friendships for the sake of whichever relationship I was in at the time. Now it’s time to start putting friendship first.

An online connection doesn’t mean a real-life romance.
Even if I meet someone online who I think could be an incredible partner, you never know until you’ve actually met them. I’ve met a few guys who, on paper and from our messages, seemed like real keepers, only to find there was no chemistry in real life. In those situations, I was open to keeping them as friends rather than scrapping all that potential because the spark of romance wasn’t there.

Not everyone has the same idea.
Unfortunately, some people aren’t into it. Some of those dudes just dropped off the face of the earth when they realized I wasn’t interested romantically. I get it, they were looking for something specific and I just wasn’t on board. To me though, it just seems like a shame to shut off the possibility of platonic connection just because I wasn’t DTF.

It’s hit and miss.
Just like searching for real-life romance through a screen doesn’t guarantee a connection, neither does looking for friends. I love dating because it’s an opportunity to meet an entirely new human being and friendship dating is no different. That said, some people just do not fit together and there’s a lot of time spent awkwardly sipping coffee over a forced conversation, calculating how many minutes until I can politely exit the interaction.

Frnd Dating App Review

I’ve had some weird dates come out of it.
Even if I say on my profile that I’m looking for friends, and even if that’s explicitly stated before we meet, there are still some people who equate dating apps with, well, dating. On the one hand, that’s totally fair enough. On the other hand, we’re all adults here and we (hopefully) all understand the concept of consent. When one of us is looking for friendship and the other is only interested in hooking up, nobody wins.

If we can use apps for romance, why not for friendship?
We’re living in a world that is steadily becoming more and more digitized and if we can use technology to find our soulmates, why can’t we do the same to find friends? There’s an app for that, right? The social stigma around online dating has pretty much disappeared, but when I tell people I find friends online, I still get some funny looks.

The tech world is catching on.
For a hot minute, Tinder launched a version of the app created for exactly this purpose. Unfortunately, the idea tanked, probably because as a hook-up app, it’s not particularly geared towards meaningful connections. Nevertheless, there are a bunch of other apps that are designed for exactly that market if, like me, you’re not opposed to finding cool people through the power of the internet.

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By Aniruddha Ghosh, Subrat Patnaik and Sarah Morland

I’ve just come out of a long-term lockdown. Can we be friends?

Amorous entanglements aren’t uppermost in the minds of many people emerging from long periods of pandemic isolation. Instead, they crave the friendships and social groups they have been starved of over the past year.

That’s the verdict of dating apps such as Tinder and Bumble, which are launching or acquiring new services focused entirely on making and maintaining friends.

“There’s a really interesting trend that has been taking place in the connection space, which is this desire to have platonic relationships,” said Bumble founder and CEO Whitney Wolfe Herd.

“People are seeking friendship in ways they would have only done offline before the pandemic.”

Her company is investing in its Bumble BFF (best friends forever) feature, which it said comprised about 9% of Bumble’s total monthly active users in September 2020 and “has room to grow as we increase our focus on this space”.

Meanwhile its archrival Match Group – owner of a string of apps including Tinder and Hinge – is also pushing beyond love and lust. It paid $1.7 billion this year for South Korean social media firm Hyperconnect, whose apps let people chat from across the world using real-time translation.

Hyperconnect’s revenue jumped 50% last year, while Meetup, which helps you meet people with similar interests at local or online events, has seen a 22% rise in new members since January.

Meetup’s most searched word this year was “friends”.

Such friendship services have experienced increased engagement from users since COVID-19 restrictions have gradually been lifted around the world, allowing people to meet in person, according to Evercore analyst Shweta Kharjuria, who said that it made sound business sense to court more customers.

“This opens up the total available market from targeting only singles to singles and married people,” she said.

Friend-making networks such as MeetMe and Yubo have even outstripped some popular dating apps in terms of daily engagement over the past few months, according to market research firm Apptopia.

Jess Carbino, an online dating expert and former sociologist for Tinder and Bumble, told Reuters that social isolation had been “staggering” due to the pandemic, particularly for single people living alone.

“(This) has inspired people to use the tools available to them, namely technology, to find companionship and connection.”

LGBTQ+ dating apps have done a lot to push the social aspect of dating, according to brokerage Canaccord Genuity, with China’s Blued offers surrogacy services, for example, and Taimi providing livestreaming.

Gay dating app Hornet, meanwhile, aims to be more of a social network focused on users’ personal interests, rather than solely a hook-up service centred on physical looks and proximity.

Frnd Dating App Reviews

Hornet’s founder and CEO Christof Wittig said it was unlikely that people would revert to the “old ways” of connecting with their community exclusively offline, such as through nightlife, activism or LGBTQ sport events.

Witting said the number of users tapping the newsfeed, comments and videos rose 37% in the year to May.

He said the number of people looking for friendship and community online had increased during lockdowns when people turned to digital platforms for a sense of belonging when bars, gyms and pride events were shuttered.

Is There A Dating Site For Making Friends

“These trends are here to stay,” he added. “Just like video conferencing and telecommuting.”

My Single Friend Dating

Reuters