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For regular users of Sniffies and Headero, as well as Zalo’s URL-meets-IRL technology, their presence on the platform alone communicates their desires - no, Hey, what brings you here? questions asked. They’re each designed with a frustrated digital native in mind, whose desire to subvert the dating culture underscoring the likes of Hinge or Tinder - even, at times, Grindr - are looking for alternative routes to meet their needs.
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Until that final moment on our platform when someone decides they’re going to arrange the hookup, they have many ‘outs’ at their fingertips should they decide it’s time to abandon ship.”įundamentally, the goal of each platform is to create a stigma-free experience for sex-seekers.
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“In fact, we’re the only app where the deleting of a conversation is deeply ingrained into our platform’s culture. “When it comes to consent, it’s our job on the digital side of the hookup to make sure users have the tools they need to exit an interaction,” Eli says, adding the app also allows users to block incoming chats from anonymous profiles. “This also creates a positive incentive structure for living up to our values that goes beyond the app’s ‘report’ feature,” Stephen says. After a Headero interaction, you can rate your partner according to the Headero value system (inclusivity, sex positivity, enthusiastic consent), and the average sum of those ratings remains on your profile page. Headero, alternatively, takes cues from the likes of Uber or Depop by deploying a feedback system. Moreover, each toy holder must give access to the controller in order to initiate app-enabled play. The video feature means users can ensure their play is with their desired partner, and their ‘Blacklist’ feature can be enabled upon any misbehavior. Not only can partners message, voice call and video via the Zalo-created app, one partner can control the vibrator worn by the other and therefore, their pleasure.Ĭonsent is at the core of Zalo’s approach. Designed with long-distance loving in mind, Zalo bridges the enormous gap between IRL intimacy and Facetime sex. For those unable to intimately connect in person, there’s Zalo, the sex tech company behind an app-operated wearable vibrator operable. Headero “randomizes” profiles in groups of 20, to connect users with oral sex lovers in their area without resorting to the ‘0 feet away’ approach of other apps which, Stephen notes, can feel a little “creepy”.īesides, sometimes distance can be a turn-on. Stephen hopes Headero’s carousel interface will signal a new frontier for hookup apps that have long relied on swiping or grid formats. Headero is for oral pleasure aficionados to connect with fellow “head” lovers. Informed by his sexperiences as a gay man in New York City, Stephen Quaderer was determined to create an inclusive, sex-positive and consent-grounded space. Nonetheless, crossover for hetero and homosexual connections in the tech space is rare. Cougar Life is for men and women who are looking for partners outside of their age demographic, BDSM aficionados can use Alt.com, while Swapfinder is for swingers. There are, of course, many apps that cater to those specific niches, too. Any time spent chatting comes down to aligning on specific kinks and fetishes.” When you’re on Sniffies, there’s no question that the guys you’re chatting with are looking for pretty much exactly the same thing you are. “What makes hybrid apps like Grindr especially frustrating to use is that you need to wade through all of the profiles who are looking for one or the other. “The other apps in our space are actually dating-hookup hybrid apps,” Eli says. In general, the desire of the digital generation to subvert the back-and-forth chatting to immediately meet IRL. The demand for resources that facilitate no-strings-attached sex for both parties has also birthed apps like HUD - allowing users to be anonymous, like Sniffies - or the post code-oriented Blendr, which both priotize physical over emotional intimacy. While the evolution of “wam, bam, thank you ma’am ” technology hasn’t happened overnight, the industry is fast-evolving.