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Simkhai: Grindr traffic and downloads increased after outages and negative press

Joel Simkhai · Grindr: Joel Simkhai · Jul 17, 2023 · at 48:01

Grindr founder Joel Simkhai reflects on how frequent server outages and subsequent media coverage unexpectedly drove user growth.

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“And one of the things I realized also is that, you know, our outages actually, we had a lot of outages. And we would actually see that anytime we would have an outage, our traffic would go up afterwards. And anytime we would have a negative news article about outages Our traffic would go up, and we'd get more downloads, and so one of the things I realized here was that even bad press, you know, quote-unquote bad press, might be good.”

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