As Adriana de Souza e Silva argues, locative media create hybrid spaces where physical and digital spaces are merged or blurred, allowing for “new way of moving through a city and interacting with other users” (262 see also de Souza e Silva and Sutko de Souza e Silva and Frith Farman). Grindr thus acts as locative media (also called location-based technologies or geospatial media) that draws on the GPS capabilities of mobile devices in ways that allow users to interact with (and thus change their experiences of) their physical environments. Using geolocation, profiles are mapped onto a cascading grid so that a user can see and message the 100 profiles closest to him (or 600 profiles, if a user subscribes to the premium version, Grindr XTRA). Since its launch in 2009, Grindr’s goal had been to help men find other men for sex, dates, or chatting nearby. In 2015, the mobile gay male dating and hookup app Grindr began a shift in its marketing, technological infrastructure, and interface: While the app remained a “gay dating app” in much of its marketing and uses, it also become a “platform” in an attempt to generate revenue through advertisers and partnerships and to broaden the app’s usefulness for users.
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