Is Tinder’s owner buying Sniffies? What Match Group’s investment means for the gay cruising platform

The parent company of Hinge and Tinder is courting a potential new addition to its roster. Match Group on Monday announced a $100 million investment in Sniffies, a map-based cruising platform for queer men. As part of the investment, Sniffies will continue to be led by founder and CEO Blake Gallagher, the company said. “From the first conversations with the Match Group team, we knew they understood what makes Sniffies different. This partnership is about supporting that, not redefining it,” Gallagher said in a statement on the Sniffies Instagram—which was met with skepticism by followers. Sniffies launched in 2018 and has three million monthly active users via its web-based platform. Investing to own? Match Group’s announcement noted that the minority stake came with the option for a full acquisition in the future. Alongside the Sniffies investment, the company told Bloomberg that it would be winding down Archer, its platform for queer men launched in 2023. The company’s strategy with Sniffies mimics the one it followed with Hinge, which Match Group first backed in 2017 and acquired in 2018. Within Match Group, Hinge founder Justin McLeod built that platform into the crown jewel of its portfolio. Unlike Hinge, Sniffies has managed to scale to 20 million messages sent daily without a traditional app. Users access the platform—which shows a map of nearby “cruisers”—via web browser. Though users can register with an email address to keep message history and uploaded photos, they can also join just with their date of birth. Despite working with Apple to launch an iOS app in March 2025—eliminating the anonymous login option in-app—it was removed within two months for what Sniffies said was “ongoing content restrictions.”’ Seeking queer users Match Group’s Sniffies investment follows last year’s acquisition of Her, an app for women attracted to women, signaling a focus on courting LGBTQ users as companies like Grindr show growth among part of that demographic. Grindr rema