Dog News

New York City Animal Shelter Using Tinder Dating app to Match People with Dogs

by Fred

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8.5.14 - New York City Animal Shelter Using Tinder Dating app to Match People with Dogs

If you’re not already familiar with it, there is an application or “app” as they are known called Tinder, aimed at connecting lonely singles through the magic of the internet and smartphones.  In an effort to get the word out on some lonely dogs in NYC looking for loving forever homes, a dedicated no kill shelter called Social Tees is using the app to fix people up with their very own furry best mates, and the response is surprising.

This is in stark contrast to “selfies” taken with dogs, then uploaded to Tinder by people hoping to find a date.  These are actual profiles of shelter dogs available and ready to be loved, complete with photos.  The profiles are then uploaded to Tinder, and can be viewed, selected and responded to, in much the same way you would respond to a profile for a human.

This has been tried before as a standalone application.  Smartphone users can download BarkBuddy which essentially provides the same service.  The difference being, with BarkBuddy you don’t have to “swipe” past several human profiles to go along with doggy profiles.  Nope, BarkBuddy is dogs only.

It seems to be, however that as we get busier, and more people actually used internet based smartphones the world gets smaller.  Social networking websites like Facebook have been in use for a while to keep people connected, so it’s only logical that social networking would evolve to make it easier to keep us connected with our furry loved ones as well.  Who knows, in time we may be using other forms of social networking to find furry best mates for our own furry best mates.

There has been no official announcement about how long the project will last.  Initial response is actually positive, and some very good forever home “matches” have already been made via the app.  Getting a date online can still be a bit troublesome, but for every match made, that’s one less lonely city dog, stuck in a shelter.  How can that possibly be a bad thing?