【Bayo (2025)】

While dating apps have Bayo (2025)exploded in popularity, they're most often built with straight, cisgender men and women in mind.

Winkd is a soon-to-be launched dating app made for the LGBTQ community. Founded by Diana Kalkoul and Neda Robat-Meily, two 20-something Sydneysiders who both have backgrounds in technology, the app aims to be LGBTQ-friendly from the start.

"We're two queer individuals ... that are kind of frustrated with the lack of inclusivity dating apps present people with," Kalkoul told Mashable.

The pair looked at dating apps like OKCupid -- traditional and a bit slow -- and Tinder -- the first to double-down on mobile -- but found none were quite right.

"Tinder always catered to the hetero-market first," she said, "so you could either be male, you could either be female ... It was adopted by queer people and kind of augmented, but that was never the purpose."

Winkd aims to capture some of Tinder's immediacy, but break down the barriers even further to taking that awkward first step when meeting someone new.

On Winkd, you check into a location, be it a park or a LGBTQ club night, and you can see who else has checked in. Users indicate interest by "winking" at someone on the app, and if there's a match, the chat window stays live for 20 minutes. Move too slow, and it will vanish.

This element is aimed directly at eliminating "ghosting," Kalkoul said. "We're creating a time pressure to push people to go out there and talk to people and get offline."

While the location feature sounds somewhat similar to the app Happn, a comparison Kalkoul said she'd heard before, she argued that Winkd's check-in feature will also be an advantage.

"Just because you cross paths with someone, it doesn't actually mean you could have something in common with them. Whereas if you are going to the same venues and you have the same interests, you'd probably have a lot more in common," she explained.

Unlike Tinder, the app won't list the user's name or age on their profile card -- it will only be revealed once you match. This was decided for privacy reasons, Kalkoul explained, and to eliminate elements of ageism.

In 2016, Tinder got a lot of press for introducing identifiers other than male or female in the U.S., Canada and UK. Kalkoul said the Winkd team had discussions with the LGBTQ community around whether to have specific trans and non-binary identifiers on the platform, but decided to choose what they saw as the most gender-inclusive approach.

"We decided to go with 'human,'" she said. "Everyone's default option once they download the app is actually 'I am a human seeking a human' unless they change the settings to male or female."

In her view, having too many options on Tinder to overcompensate for not having had options in the first place may be "a bit of a disaster."

"They haven't come up with a good way for people, I think, who fit under a certain umbrella -- which is queer and LGBT -- and have one place for an entire community that understands each other to look for each other," she said. Besides, the feature hasn't yet launched in Australia, which means Winkd can capitalise on the oversight.

Of course, the gay community also has Grindr, but Kalkoul speculated that people are looking for multiple ways to find each other. "People are so discontent with the ways they're connecting," she said, "it's a way of breaking that down."

The pair plan to launch the app during the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras in February before rolling out to other Australian cities. Initially, the app will be limited to invited or referred LGBTQ-identifying individuals, or those who are questioning or exploring.

"It's not up to us to police that -- people's identities are very personal -- but we trust that as we promote it through LGBT platforms, we'll get the right people and that will keep it safe and autonomous," she said.

"We are two queer people ... creating an app that is going to be inclusive from the get-go."