Happn - Everything You Need To Know About The New Tinder

The other day I received a random text from a guy I haven't seen in at least a year saying “Hey - this new app I'm on says we're neighbors, are you on Hampton Ave?” He knows where I live? I completely forgot I've already signed in. Impressive to say the least. This is how I felt about that text and about the newly born e-dating app. The name? Happn. 

 

The app officially launched in March 2014 in Paris and after landing in the UK, it's now available in the US, too. How does it work you ask. Well, the tagline says it all, 'find the people you've crossed paths with', which means discover other singles within a 250m radius, literally. Every time you cross someone’s path, this person’s profile will be added to the top of your feed. '"It could be people you’ve crossed paths with and that you really wanted to see on Happn, it could also be someone you came across 44 times because you live in the same area." says Happn co-founder and CEO and former Dailymotion COO Didier Rappaport. Here are some numbers.

 

 

And what about the US? The app has expanded into Chicago and Los Angeles with 360,000 users. Fun fact, thousands of Bay Area singles are jumping on it every week! Living in LA, I hear stories of married couples that have met on Tinder, I wouldn't say on a daily basis but weekly for sure. It's almost strange not to have an active profile on a dating app at this moment. Tinder has dominated the scene for a while even though Happn has slowly taken over the losangelinos. Tinder and Happn have some similar features but Happn is mostly focused on fixing what’s not working on dating sites, like fake profiles and search. When you download Happn, you can create your dating profile by logging in to your Facebook, then you'll have to do select the gender you're interested in dating and the age range. The GPS tracking will then show you a list of people near you. It'll tell you whether you've crossed paths with them once or several times, giving you a map of roughly where you crossed paths, their photos, name, age and profession. If you're interested in what you see you can hit the red love heart and if the other person is feeling the same way you have a 'crush' and can start messaging. What if you don't receive a reply right away? You can just go for it and send a 'charm', which they will definitely see. And if at that point you don't get a 'crush', you can assume this user isn't interested. 

 

Dating in LA is quite tough since the city has its own way of setting people apart just by the fact that it's so spread out and sometimes the idea of living in West Hollywood and dating a guy that's in Santa Monica feels pretty complicated. Also, among the older crowds, it’s very likely to be introduced by mutual friends and to be set up on dates that are supposed to be safer but this doesn’t often happen to the younger peeps. The dating game is hard, this is for sure in any metropolis!

 

Overall, I feel like users enjoy using the app. The concept of “crossing paths” makes them feel a bit more romantic about this whole new e-dating scenario and less like ”We met online. We're a product of the di