iPhone meat market sparks gay sex revolution. A location-aware iPhone app has spawned a sexual revolution in Australia's gay community by providing what is effectively a meat market enabling people to meet other gay men who may be just metres away from them. In bars, restaurants or just walking down the street, users of the Grindr application can fire it up and see a list of other gay men in their area sorted by how far away they are. They can choose to start up a chat through the app or walk over and say hi.

The app, which uses the phone's GPS to pinpoint users, has taken Australia by storm with Sydney and Melbourne placing fifth and ninth on Grindr's list of top cities. It has about 100,000 local users, making Australia the third largest Grindr community behind the US and Britain."I haven't seen an app that's become so popular in the gay community as this one," said Tim Duggan, co-founder of SameSame.com. au, Australia's largest gay and lesbian online community.

"It's been quite remarkable how it's swept through the gay community and I know a lot of people whose sole reason to get an iPhone was to get Grindr on their phone."

Grindr has more than 900,000 users around the world and is growing at 2500 new users a day, with its popularity skyrocketing after British TV personality Stephen Fry mentioned it on Top Gear. Joel Simkhai, 33, who lives in Los Angeles and launched Grindr in March last year, said in a phone interview that his goal was to have the app in the pocket of every gay man in the world. It solved a key problem: knowing who else in your immediate vicinity is gay.

"I go to a party or I go to a supermarket or I go to the gym - anywhere I go I have guys I look at and I'm interested in talking to them but for whatever reason I don't," Simkhai said.

"I'm curious to know who's in the same building as me, who's in the same room, who's right around me ... this idea has been in my head and, I'd argue, in the head of most gay guys out there: how can I meet that person right across from me?"

A recent survey of 1000 Australians conducted by research firm TNS found 65 per cent of Australians were keen to start using location-based mobile apps such as Foursquare, but only 10 per cent were interested in such apps for dating. The research found that location-based services were set to explode, with fears for security and privacy outweighed by the perceived benefits of the technology.

Compared with regular internet dating, Simkhai said Grindr was far more immediate and facilitated more real-world connections, avoiding frustrating email ping-pong.

"A hi or a handshake certainly hasn't been made obsolete here - this is just an ice-breaker, " he said.

Full story at source: http://www.smh.com.au