Don’t get me wrong — I love my colleagues and I’ve managed to strike up the occasional conversation with a stranger at yoga. But actually forming new friendships? That’s a bit tougher.
Thankfully, there’s now an app for that, for women at least. Because the whole online dating thing worked out so well, there’s now a similar concept for creating truly platonic relationships based on mutual friends, geography, and in-app quiz data. So download Hey! Vina, and swipe right for a new gal pal.
Branded as an app whose mission is to build “global communities of women who make each other feel supported, inspired, free, and above all else, happy,” Hey! Vina launched Tuesday with the hope of taking the surprisingly popular Tinder set-up and putting it to a different use. “It’s super easy to find a date on the Internet, but why isn’t it as easy to find a new friend?” asked Olivia June Poole, co-founder and CEO of Hey! Vina in an interview with FastCompany. “We built this app to solve for our own needs as women who have moved, traveled, changed careers, and shifted lifestyles and life stages. Through our adult lives we go a lot of places that our existing friendships don’t always support and it becomes time to expand our circles.”
It seems like a combination of your extended Facebook circle and your LinkedIn community — you’ll be able to strike up new relationships with other awesome women who share the same interests, background, or even friend groups as you. You will take profile quizzes to determine what lifestyle, personality, and interests you’ll jive best with, and will be introduced to a whole new group of women who may be open to anything from an activity to an advice session to a professional meeting. Really, Poole insists, the limit does not exist.
Sure, it’s a bit ridiculous to tell a generation of people who seem more likely to lose friends than to gain them as a result of spending too much time on their phones to use an app in order to form new relationships. But if this really is a sign of the times, perhaps it’s best to embrace rather than further alienate one another with technology. “We can’t force an entire culture to be like, ‘okay, everybody put down your phone,” Poole told TechCrunch. “If we can help people adapt and fulfill their needs … we think that’s great.”
And at least with this kind of swiping, you’re less at risk for STDs.
