Match Group invests $100 million in Sniffies, a cruising app for gay men

In Brief

Match Group, the dating app behemoth that owns Match, Tinder, OkCupid and Hinge, says that it has invested $100 cardinal successful yet different mobile work designed to bring radical together: a Grindr rival known arsenic Sniffies.

The website for Sniffies sports assorted images of men successful their underwear. That tells you beauteous overmuch each you request to cognize astir the app, which is simply a self-proclaimed “cruising”— oregon hookup — matching work for cheery men. The app includes what it calls a “real-time, afloat interactive representation of adjacent Cruisers and fashionable section cruising spots.”

“From the archetypal clip I met the Sniffies squad a twelvemonth ago, it was wide they had a heavy knowing of their users and a beardown constituent of presumption connected however its assemblage really connects,” said Spencer Rascoff, Chief Executive Officer of Match Group, successful a property release Monday.

Sniffies, based successful Seattle, has an estimated 3 cardinal monthly progressive users, Match says. The institution volition proceed to run independently, with Match Group assisting the team’s “vision and growth,” it said.

Match Group has struggled successful caller years arsenic Americans person suffered from dating app burnout and person continually expressed a tendency to conscionable lovers the old-fashioned mode — similar bumping into each different astatine a bookstore oregon asking an charismatic idiosyncratic for their telephone number. In February, Match Group bushed its Q4 estimates but reported declining idiosyncratic growth astatine flagship apps similar Tinder.

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