After receiving thousands of requests to bring Her, a social dating app, to Canada, it finally launched on July 31. Thousands of Canadians have already signed up with the online dating social media app for lesbian, queer and bisexual people, most of whom are in Toronto.
“It started in London where people are more conservative,” says Robyn Exton, founder, who launched the app in the UK in March with great success. “People in America have been much more receptive. Canada was next on the list of countries to launch because of such a high demand.”
Exton was working on a similar product when she came up with the concept for Her.
“When I was first looking for a product, I was signing up to crappy lesbian dating sites created by gay men,” Exton says. She says that queer women need something more social. The concept of Her was something she wanted, personally.
Her isn’t just a swipe-right situation it functions more like Facebook or Pinterest. Users can share articles and other content about their likes, dislikes, interests and so on, so that other users can get to know them on a more genuine level.
“You can see events happening in the area to attend. There are profiles designed for women instead of a face or dick pic, you show who you are: images of vacation, food or whatever. You can get a sense of who they really are,” says Exton.
It’s not just women who identify as lesbians that are using Her – individuals who identify as pansexual, trans, bisexual and labelless women are also signing up for the app.
Alexis Ohanian, founder of Reddit and Michael Birch, founder of Bebo and Y Combinator, are both investors in the venture.
Feedback from Canadians has been mostly positive so far.
The team at Her is working on more ways they can connect their users. “We’re building out the community part of it. For example, we have a feature where a daily question is posted and users respond. We’re making a part where users can post their own questions. We’re working on creating meet-ups, so people can post meet-ups,” Exton says. “We want to give you everything that’s queer in your life in one app.”
Her is not yet available to Android users, but they hope to roll-out the Android version in late fall of this year.
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