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Demand for a new social/dating app?


SoulMale

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Hello, I'm Tom from SoulMale. We are looking into releasing more LGBTQA+ apps, alongside our gay male dating app that launched September 2018.

 

We noticed there isn't a great deal of selection for asexual people to use. However, we are unsure of the demand or if another asexual app is wanted. The next app we will be releasing is a lesbian app in Q2 of this year, then possibly an asexual or bisexual app in Q4.

 

We would be grateful if anyone would like to answer the following questions:

1. Do you think a new asexual app is needed?

2. What is lacking in current asexual apps?

3. What features would you like to see in our app?

4. Should it be targeted towards dating or social?

5. Do you prefer the name AceClick, AceConnect or AceRelate?

6. Anything else we should bare in mind when making an asexual app.

 

Many thanks for taking the time to read this 😀

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1. I think anything that helps bring asexual people together is a great idea! But there can be some problems, addressed a little more below.

 

2. As of right now, just a strong userbase. Whereas it's pretty apparent when you're gay or straight because you know what you're attracted to, asexual people have a hard time identifying a lack of attraction. Sadly, this might be what hinders the start of a new site, because asexuality is still relatively unknown. There will be even fewer asexuals in any given area than homosexual people because of a lack of awareness (and often, in women, the incorrect assumption that this is "just how women are" and men are the ones who desire sex).

 

3. I like to be able to sort people, a lot. We need to be able to sort asexuals by aromantic vs. heteromantic vs. homoromantic, whether they're looking for friends or a platonic life partner or a romantic relationship, and whether they're not at all or mostly or entirely touch-averse. All of that on top of the normal parameters, like religion, etc.

 

4. I think both. I know it's hard to focus on one or the other, but I think aces would be keen for being able to pick and choose as needed.

 

5. I think AceConnect has a nice ring to it.

 

6. Just that it'll be very tricky. Point no. 3 alone illustrates how difficult it can be for aces even on here to connect. I'm very romantic and not at all touch-averse, so I like kissing and cuddling up, but some aces are romantic but put off by touch, or completely aromantic. I think it'll be difficult to get enough of a population on the app for compatible people to find each other.

 

But honestly, I would welcome it.

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Slice of Ace

1. If it works, then it would certainly be appreciated. The few ace dating sites/apps there are either have a very small userbase or are poorly designed from my experience

2. Hmm, there's mainly just a lack of users to be honest. Partly because asexuality is uncommon, and partly because there is a lack of visibility about it

3. Definitely able to put in and sort by romantic and sexual orientation. The main ones being hetero-/homo-/bi-/pan-/demi-/a-romantic for romantic orientations, and a-/grey-/demi- sexual to start. Obviously a variety of gender identities as well, but I imagine you've got that covered since you're doing LGBT+ apps. Umm, it would be nice to be able to state what kind of relationship you're looking for. The ones that come to mind are romantic relationships, QPRs, and whether you're open to polyamory. I think being able to search for people who want QPRs would be useful for aro aces. And I suppose, maybe what kind of physical intimacy people like. Some aces are touch-averse for example, whereas others really enjoy kissing, cuddling etc.

4. I would say dating. I haven't had too much trouble meeting other aces through AVEN or apps like Meetup. But dating as an ace is something I'm kind of lost on at the moment

5. I like the way AceClick sounds. It gives off a more dating vibe as well, à mon avis. 

6. You're already doing the right thing in coming here! It's definitely good to get the views of the ace community. Be aware that the userbase probably won't be massive, because there aren't many aces, and even fewer alloromantic ones

I checked out SoulMale quickly (since I'm essentially gay) and most of the users had blank profiles. Of course, that is mainly their fault, but there was only one field for the profile, being profile text. That doesn't really encourage people to write stuff, and I'm not interested in just a face (or torsos in some cases 😂)

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I don't use dating sites but if I were interested in meeting friends and something worked for that I might consider it. However, I only use my phone to make calls, texts and listen to mp3s. There would need to be a full site version for me to even consider it.

 

1. Do you think a new asexual app is needed?

No

 

2. What is lacking in current asexual apps?

No clue. What is missing in dating sites is safety. Full of trolls lying about their sex/gender/orientation/etc just for their own amusement. They are also filled with con artists just out to lie to people and scam money out of them.

 

3. What features would you like to see in our app?

Item selection on everything with ability to filter on all of them. The whole asexual spectrum including a/demi/grey/sexual, and others Romantic, Sensual, Aesthetic. Filters on sex (not just binary), gender (wide assortment here), beliefs (religion, politics, eating style [I am vegan], ...), etc

 

4. Should it be targeted towards dating or social?

Social

 

5. Do you prefer the name AceClick, AceConnect or AceRelate?

of these? AceRelate

 

6. Anything else we should bare in mind when making an asexual app.

Monitoring, make it easy to report and block trolls.

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if you are looking to make money then I would say this isn't a good choice. a very limited number of folk use ace centric dating and social things. and of those, many are aware that it is not a bountiful harvest, and are not willing to spend money on that pipedream.

 

if you try to squeeze money out of us you will fail.

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I predict that people would be open to giving the app a try provided that it's free to use, but will baulk at a user fee since it's common knowledge that the chances of finding compatible people within one's geographic proximity are low. I think you might do better with an app geared towards socializing rather than dating. The problem with dating is that there's so much heterogeneity within the community, like between two people who identify as falling under the ace umbrella, one might be heteroromantic while the other might be homoromantic, or one might be asexual while the other might be demisexual. Thus, not only is it a small community in the first place, but that community is further divided into a number of subsets of people who are incompatible with each other.

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everywhere and nowhere

I agree with several things others have mentioned, so my own other thoughts:

Ad 5: I prefer AceConnect (it's kinda like voting, isn't it?).

Ad 6: Please make it computer-friendly. Make it more than what is usually understood as an "app". Basically, make it usable for people who don't have smartphones. I don't want to use a smartphone - because I just so much enjoy having a mobile phone completely unlike what most people have nowadays, because I have thick fingers and find it very hard to type on tiny touchscreen keyboards, because I don't want to have to buy touchscreen-compatible gloves... And I don't want to feel like I'm being blackmailed: either I buy a smartphone or I have no access whatsoever to a lot of useful stuff...

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Slice of Ace
4 hours ago, Nowhere Girl said:

Please make it computer-friendly.

I would also prefer a site, honestly. I know the whole location-based thing might not work as well, but I much prefer computers to phones

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4 hours ago, Slice of Ace said:

I would also prefer a site, honestly.

Yes, same for me. Reading and typing on a phone with such a small screen is super uncomfortable, especially when you have a big screen and a real keyboard right next to it. I don't know how people can actually do work on a mobile phone.

I vote for the name AceConnect in the list mentioned above.

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Hi everyone, thanks for all the feedback! 😄

 

@Grimalkin Thanks for your feedback, I see your points about lots of different categories/subsections of asexuality and we would need to accommodate all of these :-)

@Slice of Ace Thanks so much for having a look at SoulMale! It's still in early release so missing a few features we want to add. It can be tricky to get people to add text to their profiles. We currently have measures in place to encourage users to add a picture and accept location sharing. in the future We are going to add "interests" and "looking for" to the app, hopefully this increases profile richness.

@MakeLoveNotWar Thanks for your feedback. We are concerned about the level of trolls and toxicity on dating apps. Currently we only allow people with pictures to send messages. We also recently added automatic hiding of nudity to the feed and will roll this out across all images on the site. We also don't allow users to directly share images with one another, to prevent nude pictures being shared but we aren't sure if this is too limiting.

@Probably Alexandra Thanks for the feedback about filters. This seems especially important to the asexual community and will make sure to have some level of filtering added. There is also a feed on SoulMale which would be on all the dating apps we release, so people can communicate with each other outside of direct messaging. It's kinda like a cross between tinder and Instagram right now.

@gisiebob Thanks for the feedback. The asexual app would remain free with minimal ads as I don't imagine it would take up many server resources to run due to the userbase size.

@Pramana Thanks for the feedback. It would most likely be free, especially as the community is currently quite small so we shouldn't incur many costs in running it.
@Nowhere Girl @Slice of Ace @mace_ We may release a web version but this would be a lot further down the line as it would require a lot more time and effort to port it to a web version. Our front end code is in flutter which means we might be able to release a desktop app version: https://medium.com/flutter-community/flutter-on-desktop-a-real-competitor-to-electron-4f049ea6b061 It looks like this is very alpha right now and I don't imagine it being out till later this year or next.

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(Creative name)

I've always wanted there to be an option that changes the icon and name on your home screen to like a weather app, or something of the sorts, and when you go in it has the weather or whatever else could be used. But you could press a certain sequence of buttons and it would open up the actual app, I always thought that'd be really helpful for aces that arent out yet. I know this only answers question 3 but everyone else has already stated all my other concerns sooo.

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On 1/4/2019 at 6:38 PM, SoulMale said:

1. Do you think a new asexual app is needed?

2. What is lacking in current asexual apps?

3. What features would you like to see in our app?

4. Should it be targeted towards dating or social?

5. Do you prefer the name AceClick, AceConnect or AceRelate?

6. Anything else we should bare in mind when making an asexual app.

1) Yes. The more the better

 

2) Not sure I haven’t seen any

 

3) Different sections for the variety of ace types (sex averse, sex repulsed, like sex with the right person)

 

4) Dating

 

5) AceConnect

 

6) I think it should include religious beliefs within a persons profile 

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greynonomous

I’d like a general app that sorts for social, as that been my issue. Finding a way to make close friendships as a person in a committed relationship.

 

i always feel like it’s either too focused on the dating side, and social apps cast too wide (basically I want to find 1-2 new best friends, not go to a bunch of events with superficial acquaintances)? 

 

I wouldn’t mind if it’s not even just aces on, but have you thought instead of using sexuality labels, to focus on maybe what each person is specifically looking for?

 

so for example, a profile may state the person to be looking for:

sex-no

hugs-yes (platonic only)

kisses-no

To meet IRL-yes

Romance-no

End goal -‘besties’ or ‘QPR’ or ‘committed relationship’

 

 

 

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Horse Ham Radio

Hi @SoulMale,

 

I have been directed to this thread. It is honourable of you to offer to make an app for those on the asexual-spectrum for free. I think if you can keep your overheads and cost-per-user low, then you should be able to reach a cost neutrality (or thereabouts) through donations. I appreciate that the vast majority of people (easily 95+%) will not wish to donate to something like this, but I would be happy to support this with monthly donations and I'm sure there are others out there who would too. Something that fills the holes and fixes weaknesses within our community is definitely worth supporting, in my opinion.

 

As others have made clear in this thread, the world of asexuality is very complex. There are a huge range of aces out there, and trying to design "one app to fit all" is not going to be straightforward. I urge you to consult regularly with the community during development and to have a few members who can work with you to plan out the app. If you go off and make the app without doing this, then there is a real risk of you designing something that just isn't suitable.

 

You will need volunteer moderators on your app to help keep it secure. I'm sorry, but the automated systems and built-in restrictions you have mentioned just don't cut it for me. Safety needs to be prioritised and you need humans for this. I think you won't have too much trouble finding people to do this.

 

A website version of the app would be more cost overhead, but in terms of technical difficulty, doesn't seem to be to be a major obstacle. I have some (basic) web development skills myself (front and backend) and I have others in my network who I'm sure would be happy to help out porting the app. I can really see this as a possibility. Focusing on the app first and making the website once its form has settled would be the best thing to do. Costs to benefits would need to be carefully considered.

 

As for "social" vs dating, I think the app should do both, but you would need as least something of a distinction between the two. I'm not entirely clear on what you mean by social, but I presume you are talking of real life meetups? If you meant more like online socialising, then I think AVEN is pretty good at that already and trying to make something that is more useful than AVEN in this regard is a silly quest. (at least, these are my thoughts)

 

Meeting other aces and dating other aces are two concepts that can co-exist within an app but should absolutely not be intrinsically mixed. Meetups should be clearly defined as either for friendship or dating, and just from experience I believe most of the meets would be friendship-based. However, there are certainly people out there who are looking for dating-focused meets. There should be a separate part of the app for finding relationships. Other posts in this thread have summed up pretty well what the dating part of the app should consist of, so I'll focus on what the meetup side could look like. I have been hosting ace meets for over two years and have attended a variety across the UK as well as international ones.

 

Last year I presented in a session at the UK Asexuality Conference on meetups and part of my talk was on a "this-would-be-cool" meetup platform idea that would overcome the shortcomings that other meetup sites have. Things like how AVEN is just a forum - it lacks many features that meetups really need, Meetup.com is a paid site for hosting (and the fees aren't cheap!), Facebook requires one to reveal their personal information before a meet (or use a fake account) and isn't used by many young people anymore. And so on for other sites. I came up with an idea that tried to account for these issues. I have put the key slides I presented on this below (with some notes on what I would have been saying), but these are little more than a sketch of possibilities. These slides were aimed at the UK meetup community. Meetups on other sites should be able to be easily copied over to the app.

 

Spoiler

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In an ideal world all of these would feature for the meetup community.

 

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In our world ("UK") at the moment, we aren't achieving the dream. There are frequent meetups and attending them is fun, but they take some effort to host, the meet community is fragmented across many sites, and it isn't that easy to find information on meets unless you keep track of all these sites and have good connections within the community. Not everyone, especially people living outwith major cities, have access (let alone easy access) to meetups.

 

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To step in the right direction we need more meetup locations. We could do this by making hosting easier, so we get more hosts. And we can work towards having the meet community more connected by making it easier to view information on meets.

 

K5WUuQB.png

This map shows planned meets (blue) and recent past meets (grey). The size shows how many people are/were interested in that meet. You can zoom this map in and out and clicking on a meet will take you to its details.

 

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This could be what you see when you click on a meet. Details of the location and date, as well as the number of peope going or interested. Clickable links to see further details, contact the host, or set yourself as going/interested are present.

 

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The platform also features an automated messaging system for when people join your meet event. This can be used to send out key information. There is also a means of messaging all attendees at once for updates as well as posting public updates on the meet. After a meet, the host can mark who attended and invite these users to a private group for staying in touch with each other and forming a community.

 

Your thoughts (and indeed the thoughts of all who see this post!) are very welcome here :)

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@nameinagame Thanks for your extremely detailed feedback on this app idea and the slides. I like the idea of having something to do with meetups, in this respect we could add an event/ meetups tab to the app where moderators or certain members could post events then people can agree to join the event.

 

Automated moderation is only so good as you say, it takes the burden off human moderators slightly but we still require human intervention.

 

Maybe a various coloured shapes (or mini flags) could be used to represent the various types of asexuality. Such as triangle or square symbol in various colours, so it is recognisable no matter where you see the user, so that you can identify their category throughout the app without visiting their profile? Is there a definitive list of what people would expect for all options / categories?

 

sex-positive - blue triangle
antisexual - green triangle 
demisexual - purple triangle

etc..

 

I'm unsure of the best way to make it easy to identify a users category in a nice way, without having to press on their profile to view the text version. Your opinion is welcomed on this :-)

 

 

 

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7 hours ago, SoulMale said:

Maybe a various coloured shapes (or mini flags) could be used to represent the various types of asexuality. Such as triangle or square symbol in various colours, so it is recognisable no matter where you see the user, so that you can identify their category throughout the app without visiting their profile? Is there a definitive list of what people would expect for all options / categories?

We sometimes use playing card symbols to represent different facets of asexuality, so:

Ace of hearts: alloromantic ace

Ace of spades: aromantic ace

Ace of diamonds: demisexual/-romantic

Ace of clubs: graysexual/-romantic

 

Obviously, you could use just heart, spade, diamond, and club, maybe with another symbol to represent if you're homoromantic/heteroromantic/biromantic etc. (if you aren't aromantic, obviously). The problem is that not everyone agrees on the meaning clubs and diamonds yet, and I'm not sure how many aces know of the cards. I don't know about indicating attitudes towards sex though. 

There are also flags for asexuality and demisexuality, but I don't know about the others 

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Horse Ham Radio
On 1/13/2019 at 10:37 PM, SoulMale said:

@nameinagame Thanks for your extremely detailed feedback on this app idea and the slides. I like the idea of having something to do with meetups, in this respect we could add an event/ meetups tab to the app where moderators or certain members could post events then people can agree to join the event.

 

Automated moderation is only so good as you say, it takes the burden off human moderators slightly but we still require human intervention.

 

Maybe a various coloured shapes (or mini flags) could be used to represent the various types of asexuality. Such as triangle or square symbol in various colours, so it is recognisable no matter where you see the user, so that you can identify their category throughout the app without visiting their profile? Is there a definitive list of what people would expect for all options / categories?

 

sex-positive - blue triangle
antisexual - green triangle 
demisexual - purple triangle

etc..

 

I'm unsure of the best way to make it easy to identify a users category in a nice way, without having to press on their profile to view the text version. Your opinion is welcomed on this :-)

Hey, thanks for getting back :) I'm glad to have helped. The meetup tab sounds like a great idea ^^

 

So the visual stuff.. There are many, many orientations (plus many more not on that link) and I don't think it will be easy to have a visual representation of all of the types without it being confusing. Having too many colours/shapes/etc. is just going to be a pain to remember.

 

I see the idea by @Slice of Ace too, and while I do like the concept, my concern is that it is an exclusive set of labels. If you don't fit nicely into one of the four suits, you could feel excluded. (For example, the lithromantic orientation does not cleanly fit. In some ways it's like being romantic, in some ways it's a bit aro, and in other ways it's a little grey.) Then there is the added problem of complexity within a label too. Greyromantic, for instance, is a very broad term. Would all greyromantics be happy with just using that term to describe themselves, or would they want more? And then, of course, there are people who are questioning or don't know. What would they do?

 

I think just having an easy-to-view text field would be better, @SoulMale. I'm not sure how you are imagining the app will look, but something where tapping on a username or user picture triggers a popup showing that user's orientation (as text) and maybe a few other basic details about them (maybe gender, maybe age, maybe location?) could work. Tapping off the popup closes it while tapping on it could take you to that user's full profile. I'm just throwing around ideas at the moment.

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starting over
On 1/13/2019 at 12:37 PM, SoulMale said:

 

@nameinagame Thanks for your extremely detailed feedback on this app idea and the slides. I like the idea of having something to do with meetups, in this respect we could add an event/ meetups tab to the app where moderators or certain members could post events then people can agree to join the event.

 

Automated moderation is only so good as you say, it takes the burden off human moderators slightly but we still require human intervention.

 

Maybe a various coloured shapes (or mini flags) could be used to represent

 

 In our world consider using slices of cake that are different colors… Read more about us and you’ll understand why but I think you’ll get a lot of smiles out of it! PS I think you’re doing a great thing and keeping it free for a while, at least would be the way to go… Nobody wants to join a club and pay if there are so few members that match their specific needs and location… And like several users before have mentioned, we are very specific in our needs which is part of our complexity. Please do consider doing the app for asexual’s… It is truly needed. The younger generations have asexuals  popping up like crazy (yea!!!) … Maybe you can somehow help the older generations become aware of this and open up to the idea that they may be asexual as well ( please know we are not trying to “turn” anyone into an asexual… It’s just that a lot of older people never have even heard the term and it’s amazing what a “a-ha“ moment it can be) and benefit from this. …   I wouldn’t mind a few ads to help pay for it as long as they’re respectful… 

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