Grindr is going straight. The mobile app that helps gay men track their nearest potential date is launching a new service that will allow women to turn their mobiles into GPS-powered dating tools.

Joel Simkhai, Grindr's 33-year-old founder, said he had received tens of thousands of requests from women asking for a straighter, female-friendly version of Grindr. Project X, which will be named in the next few weeks, will be very different to the gay version. "Proximity is less of a turn-on for women than it is for men," said Simkhai.

But Simkhai said location would still be the service's key selling point. "This desire to meet is not just a gay thing. We are all social creatures. But men and women are different. Grindr was made for a man. If we are going to bring women in to this we have to do things differently." He said he hoped to launch the new app in "the very near future".

Simkhai said Grindr would work for straight men as it is, if it were populated by straight women. "The way their minds work is pretty much the same," he said. "For gay men just the fact that there is someone 400ft away and gay is interesting." But the new app will incorporate specific features to appeal to women. "For a straight woman, a guy who is 400ft away from her? So what. It happens all the time. We have got to provide more," he said. "Grindr is very photo-centric. Women obviously want to see someone that they might find attractive, but they need to know more than that."

Simkhai said that, while he is most interested in getting women to sign up, people will be able to sign up as gay, lesbian, bisexual or any mix of the above.

Grindr now has more than 1.5 million gay members and is available on smartphones including iPhone, BlackBerry and Android mobiles. London has the most Grindr users in the world, ahead of New York and Los Angeles. Users sign up with a photo and the barest of stats – age, height, weight. No graphic nudity is allowed. Once you sign on, the app presents a grid of pictures of potential dates sorted by proximity using GPS technology accurate to a couple of hundred feet. People interested in meeting can text each other or send more photos using the app.

The app has become a gay phenomenon. Blog The New Gay called Grindr the "biggest change in gay hookups since the 'hanky code'".

"I don't know about that," said Simkhai. "It certainly has allowed new possibilities," he said, adding that the service had removed the guesswork from spotting fellow gay men. "You walk into a new room and you can find out who is gay. I was in London recently, and when I landed at Heathrow I was on Grindr. I didn't have to figure out who was gay. Every time you go somewhere new, you have a new set of guys."

The app has its critics who argue it reinforces a gay male stereotype. "We provide what we provide. I'm not going to tell people you have to go out on a date with someone, and you have to hang out for at least three hours before you do anything else. That's not going to happen," said Simkhai. "We show you who is there around you. That's all we do. To me what you do with that information is up to you. Sometimes you meet people and you become friends, sometimes you fall in love, sometimes you have a sexual relationship, sometimes you want nothing to do with them. That's life. Grindr is just part of what real life is all about."

Other dating sites have advised users not to meet people just because they are close, said Simkhai. "I'd say the opposite. Why not just go and meet the people who are close to you instead of spending hours and hours chatting online only to meet and find there's no chemistry?"

Scott Valentine, a New York-based artist, has been using Grindr to find gay men for a portrait project, Project Targeted. He said he was fascinated by the service. "It shows the whole range of gay men, from 70-year-olds to teenagers, muscle guys, really straight-looking guys, skinny, fat, tall, bald. It's all there." But asking them to take their portraits has proved difficult. "They just want to hook up," said Valentine. "I don't know that that's going to work for girls. They can walk into any bar and have that already."