Key Takeaways
- Grindr’s new feature, Right Now, has officially made its world debut in the ‘global gayborhood.’
- Right Now aims to make casual relationships quicker and easier for Grindr users, celebrating its roots in hookup culture.
- Grindr users can expect to see more innovative app features that cater to diverse relationships, including long-term romantic connections.
Grindr has taken its ‘Right Now’ feature to a global audience giving users around the world the opportunity to find hookups fast, and making good on the app’s goal to become the “Global Gayborhood in Your Pocket.”
Unlike Grindr’s main interface, which recommends profiles to the user, Right Now allows users to post pics and texts in real time. It’s called “Right Now” for a reason, as the pics and text will only show up on the Right Now live feed for one hour.
It’s an innovative way to make quick connections with like-minded people — to keep hookup culture alive as authenticity continues to become more dominant among Gen Z.
‘Right Now’ Celebrates Grindr’s Classic Hookup Culture
Grindr’s Chief Product Officer, AJ Balance, explained the significance of Right Now to the app’s LGBTQ+ community in a press release:
“Right Now empowers our users to find exactly what they want, when they want it – without the guesswork,” Balance said. “We built this intention-based feature based on feedback from our community so they can connect with like-minded people without wasting time on mismatched expectations.”
The average dater wants the power to choose between casual hookups and more serious relationships. With Right Now, Grindr aims to make hookups seamless, sticking to its hookup roots while looking to the future.
The Global Gayborhood Has Casual and Serious Relationships
Various features and add-ons are currently in test-mode at Grindr as part of its ongoing goal to innovate with AI, expand its brand awareness, and diversify its offerings. Some of these upcoming features push Grindr in a more relationship-heavy direction; take Woodwork, its future telehealth service, or its advice-giving AI Wingman, for example.
“Whether you’re seeking casual connections, long-term relationships, travel tips, or ways to meet new people while exploring, we’re building features that cater to your needs and desires, no matter where you are,” Grindr CEO George Arison and Balance explained in the app’s 2025 Product Roadmap.
Tristan Pineiro, Grindr’s Senior Vice President of Brand Marketing and Communications, told Chief Marketer how Grindr’s future will include products that, like Right Now, highlight the needs of the LGBTQ+ community while celebrating the diverse relationships that make it so vibrant:
“By us being proud about who we are, putting positive stories out there, celebrating our community, creating content that has our community front and center as the hero there, is going a long way to challenge [stigmatized] perceptions,” he said.
Other features teased in the Product Roadmap, like AI chat summaries, are still in testing mode, and probably won’t be available until later this year. But if it gets the same response as Right Now, we could see it even sooner.
Balance noted how select markets in other countries and in the U.S. were able to test Right Now before its global debut, ensuring it meets the needs of the average user. “The response to our initial March launch was so strong we accelerated the global rollout ahead of schedule because it’s clear people want this… well, right now.”
