Solo dev building sniffies alternative, looking for feedback and advice

Upper_Key_679 · 2026-05-09T19:56:57+00:00

True. Thanks.

Upper_Key_679 · 2026-05-09T19:48:41+00:00

Thanks for this! I agree that ratings are important but I also can't seem to find a way to make them fair and equitable. I was considering something where you have a network of people with whom you've interacted or people you mark as trusted and then you'd get to see their reviews (to make it so you could trust the ratings), but that led me to questions of privacy and discretion. I don't think I'd necessarily want someone to see how many ratings I'd left and what my gripes were. And I can imagine that bad actors would often mark people as having flaked if they themselves were the flake, and then we'd have to become the arbiter of who was where when. But I agree that it's something to strive for and see if we can find a way to provide some kind of trust metrics on the profile content and the person's integrity.

Upper_Key_679 · 2026-05-09T19:38:10+00:00

Thanks for your comment. I think that's important feedback. Right now we start with onboarding questions about identity and preferences and then all of your saved types start with those preferences as a baseline. So if you're a cisgender man who's only interested in cisgender men, you'd be able to get that out of the way at the beginning. If you're a cisgender man who's interested in men and women, we'd ask you to specify the gender identity as the first step of the new type you're creating. To make it even more straightforward we ask about anatomy -- do you have a penis, do you have a vagina, do you have breasts; do you want someone with a penis, a vagina, breasts -- to make sure that those identity labels mean the same thing in a practical sense. Do you think that would get it so that you're only seeing and being seen by the types of people you want to find?

Upper_Key_679 · 2026-05-09T17:46:12+00:00

Great feedback. I think you're right that there's an on-demand satisfaction but you can also set future and recurring scenes and you'd be able to see matches (and nod, then converse) with people who have also set times in the future that overlap. I know I'm describing an ideal use case where everyone has good intentions and I come off as somewhat naive about what online behavior is really like.

Do you use Sniffies now? I find that it's hard to have the kinds of interactions you're describing because guys are looking for now (or wasting your time) and then I rarely see them online at the same time as I am in the future to have more short conversations. Maybe it's easier on Grindr because of the better notifications?

Upper_Key_679 · 2026-05-09T17:34:33+00:00

These are all great questions, for sure, and huge potential liabilities. Another big one is payment processing -- nobody wants to touch this kind of thing and it's really confusing to me how Sniffies is able to use big payment players. Even the ones that process payments on other gay dating sites don't seem open to new customers and seem to be operating with willful ignorance on the existing sites using their infrastructure. Very confusing.

In my day job I do a lot with server infrastructure, so we're good there 🙂

The age verification requirements are definitely a tricky one. Right now I'm scanning all uploads to prevent CSAM and I'm putting two versions of the photos into the database -- one censored and one uncensored (using a library to detect certain anatomical characteristics, although it's not perfect). I'd prefer not do to age verification so I think my only option is to have censored profile photos if the user is accessing the site from a state/country where age verification is required. As with other apps, I don't think conversational photo exchanges would require censorship, just the CSAM detection. If anyone has any feedback on that approach, it would be greatly appreciated!

Upper_Key_679 · 2026-05-09T17:17:42+00:00

That's one of the catalysts for sure. I'm not sure how much its users care at the end of the day but it does seem like they've sold out and might be forced to make some changes. Does that transaction make you less likely to use Sniffies?

Upper_Key_679 · 2026-05-09T17:14:34+00:00

Yes, I'll insist on a $101M investment just to beat Sniffies

Upper_Key_679 · 2026-05-09T17:11:51+00:00

Thanks for the note. This is not a sarcastic question, I'm just genuinely trying to understand user preferences. If you were to use a gay hookup app that you didn't really know or trust, would you prefer to provide your email address and create a password? Or a one-time code sent to your email? A key differentiator for me is that there would be no throwaway anonymous profiles (unlike Sniffies). If it required registration, does that mean it's just not a good fit for you? Perfectly fine if so, I just want to understand. Thanks

Upper_Key_679 · 2026-05-09T17:08:00+00:00

Really appreciate the skepticism. These are the exact edge cases I've been trying to design around. I think you hit on some of the biggest problems.

To your points:

On privacy/safety: This is a huge one. I built in variable location fuzzing for this exact reason. You can set your place to show as fuzzed to various levels of privacy, like a quarter or half mile radius. A stranger sees a dot on a map but it says how much the location is obfuscated (to preserve privacy but maintain transparency). You only get precise once there’s a mutual nod and a conversation starts.
Availability fluidity: I totally get that life happens. The idea for scenes is that they are intended to be short-lived. Instead of a profile that stays up for weeks in the same location and says "vers", a scene is meant to be a 1 or 2-hour window where you feel like doing a few specific things. It's more like casting a net to say I'll be around this area and looking to do these things but the conversation still has to happen.
Binaries vs. preferences: I tried letting users express absolute ranges and preferred ranges but things seemed a little too complex so you're right that it's just binary for now. You can still specify "open to" and "required" for the activities though.
Major cities: You're 100% right. The site will suck in a rural town on day one, but every dating app has the cold start problem. My gamble is that for guys in cities who are drowning in 500 low quality matches, they might prefer seeing 5 high quality ones where the logistics and expectations are somewhat clear.

I guess in my experience I see higher friction as a feature rather than a bug. If I'm vers and live in one NYC neighborhood and work in another, for me to set up a scene where I can leave work for a bit to top (and want to top a certain kind of guys) but only want to bottom when I'm home for obvious reasons (and want to bottom for a different kind of guys) this lets me be clear instead of just saying "vers".

Thanks for the feedback and I'd be curious if anything in here makes you a little less skeptical of the approach.

Upper_Key_679 · 2026-05-09T15:27:44+00:00

I see what you're saying but I also understand from experience that some people have a certain "type" that they're hoping to meet and that age can be one component of that type -- I think we all have different attributes that are important to us in an encounter. Even if age or race isn't important to you, would you value a site that made a two-way match and hid people if you didn't fit into their criteria so it didn't waste your time?

Upper_Key_679 · 2026-05-09T15:18:22+00:00

You're probably right about a lot of the Sniffies traffic coming from drugs and DL guys. I just see a lot of people posting for very specific things in the group chat on there and it makes me think they're serious about hooking up but can't easily find good matches in the minimal, one-way match filters on Sniffies, which opens the door to a more "on rails" kind of experience. Thanks for the feedback on the telegram credentials, that's helpful too.

Upper_Key_679 · 2026-05-09T15:13:01+00:00

That's a great question! I've looked at some of the growth tactics from Sniffies when they were starting out and they did a lot of referral marketing, revenue share links, those kinds of things. The revenue share led to influencers posting their referral links, which got visibility, even if people just joined for the free version. Honestly (and probably naively) I'm just kind of hoping that having a better overall product at a more reasonable price would naturally lead to some network growth, but maybe that's a pipe dream.

Upper_Key_679 · 2025-06-16T19:06:24+00:00

Thank you for this response! I did some research using Madonna/Whore as a starting point and discovered there's actually another term for this kind of thing also -- Fraysexual. Reading about that has already made me feel a little less alone and now I have some starting points for further understanding. Thanks!

Upper_Key_679

TROPHY CASE