We all have our opinions on Grindr – and despite its downsides it has enabled huge swathes of the gay community to – err – “connect.” But it’s not a great app: it’s buggy & insecure, people lie on it, filtering sucks, and, I’m sorry, but it’s kind of sketchy. You may even end up on a website. What would your mother say?

iPhone battery overload

Everyone’s trying to build a better Grindr – you’ve got Jack’d, ManhuntMobile, Hornet, and literally ten billion other apps. Some allow better filtering, more than one picture, etc, but ultimately they’re all exactly the same. And we can’t be on all of them – Grindr already drains so much of our iPhone batteries that we can barely send text messages!

Another problem with Grindr is that you have always be on it – it’s real-time. But real people have jobs, hobbies, friends – they can’t always be checking into a hookup site. Do we really need to meet someone right this second?

In Search of Hot Bike Messengers

Gay guys need something different, something new. Something normal, non-sketchy, and honest, where it’s harder to misrepresent yourself.

“It’s time to wage war on the headless torsos.”

How do you meet that cute bike messenger you see every now and then pedaling up your block? You have no mutual friends, different hours, and he goes to bars you’ve never even heard of. Online may be the only way you could connect. But do you really want that first connection to be on Grindr?

Remember when you could see who is gay on Facebook?

Remember when you could search for men interested in men on Facebook? It made college so much more interesting! These days that kind of searching is basically impossible – listing “interested in” is getting rare, and privacy settings are more important than poking.

“When was the last time you were Poked?”

The idea behind Circl.es is to bring back the old “interested in men” search – except make it better by adding some filters and making it more discreet. So a gay guy can see other gay guys who live nearby and who match some basic criteria. You can select guys you’re interested nearby, and if they’re also interested in you, you can message them on Facebook and get a drink somewhere.

Facebook forces people to be at least partially honest – your friends will probably raise their eyebrows if you attempt to pass off Brent Everett’s abs as your own in your Facebook profile pic. It is also mainstream – meeting through Facebook is probably less sketchy than meeting at a bar!

Best of all, Circl.es filters out your Facebook friends. In a community as small and closely linked as ours, this is huge. If you want to date a Facebook friend, ask them out. If you want to find someone new, turn to Circl.es. Nobody on Facebook even knows you’re using it.

The Challenge

Gays are pack animals. They like to go places in herds. And it’s very hard to get them to move. So it’s hard to sell a gay guy on a “new dating website” where there aren’t many people yet.

If you like the idea and want to create a more honest, less sketchy platform to meet guys nearby, please give Circl.es a try. And more importantly, share this post and the site with your friends – click the sharing buttons and talk it up – only sharing can bring on enough users to make it work!